Challenging the U.S. Aesthetics of Plenty
And centering Indigenous people for a sustainable future
Last week I cooked two pounds of white tepary beans grown 20.6 miles away by the Button family of Ramona Farms. In addition to heirloom tepary beans, they grow ancient wheat and heritage corn on their 200-acre USDA-certified organic farm in the Akimel O’Odham (Gila River Pima) Community. Tepary beans have grown in the Sonoran desert for thousands of years, demanding little water, long before the name ‘Arizona’ had any meaning.
On their website, Ramona Button writes, “In the late 1970’s, some community elders asked us to grow the Bafv (tepary bean), which had nearly become extinct due to the lack of water that put many of the local subsistence farmers out of business.” Velvet Button, Ramona’s daughter, spoke to Chris Malloy for the Phoenix New Times in 2019, “We didn’t do anything to amend the soil other than rotate our crops, and just manage through careful watering and whatnot … We don’t use organic fertilizers. We don’t use organic herbicides. We don’t use those because of those traditional reasons.” Indigenous farming knowledge is becoming increasingly sought as people come to terms with how conventional farming damages the environment. This is promising and a return to order that’s long overdue.
In Not Too Late, Jade Begay, Diné and Tesuque Pueblo and director of policy and advocacy at NDN Collective, writes, “Removing Indigenous peoples from our land took away our ability to carry and pass on traditional ecological knowledge, such as how to manage lands, our connection to traditional food ways, and our traditional economic structures.” She cites an example of a California fire department struggling with wildfires partnering with the Yurok people, who know how to do controlled and deliberate burns. “The success of this partnership demonstrates the importance of centering Indigenous people and our knowledge of the planet in the fight against the climate crisis.”
I have been thinking about what plenty means to me, a white, straight cis-woman raised by people who were pulling themselves out of poverty and generational alcoholism by staying sober, getting advanced degrees, and taking jobs that brought them out of their hometown. I experienced having abundant food, and I consumed TV, movies, songs, and books that told me I was living in the land of plenty. My family sometimes lived in rural places where there weren’t many stores and lived on a single income: My brothers and I ate what we were given, and we ate leftovers until they were gone. To me, plenty means having more than enough of a variety of foods.
But what does plenty mean if, according to the USDA, more than 34 million people, including 9 million children, in the U.S. lack reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, culturally appropriate, and nutritious food?
What does variety mean if a staggering percentage of U.S. food products come from monocrops like corn that contribute to the climate crisis? IowaCorn.org proudly lists how many products contain dry and wet milled corn oil, solids, and starch. “Corn: It’s Everything” is their joyous slogan, but it starts to sound like a threat.
The U.S. is founded on the idea that the explorers, colonizers, and settlers knew better than the Indigenous people. These men brought with them their preferences and refused to accept new information or respect Indigenous knowledge. The meaning of belonging wrought by these men was defined by taking and domination. It shouldn’t be surprising that such a definition of belonging has led to a wealthy country where abundance depends on some people going hungry.
I soaked the white tepary beans and cooked them overnight with water, half an onion, and garlic cloves. The next afternoon I sauteed three carrots, the other half of the onion, two stalks of celery, and one yellow summer squash in olive oil. I added about half of the beans and broth by the ladleful and simmered it all together briefly, seasoned with salt and pepper. I ate it in a large, beautiful wide bowl sprinkled with cilantro and with a generous helping of bread and butter. The following day I made a smashed bean dip with tahini, lemon juice, cilantro, and salt (very loosely following Tamara Stanger’s recipe.)
When I cooked and prepared the tepary beans, I experienced plenty. There is beauty in knowing that my money bought food native to my home, grown by a local Indigenous family, with extra in my freezer ready for future hunger. I took pleasure in the taste of the tepary beans (mild, nutty) and feeding them to my family. The heatwave persists, and we still haven’t gotten much rain: Eating drought-resistant beans feels appropriate.
How can sustainable efforts in Arizona farming center Indigenous people and knowledge? How is it already? In Not Too Late, NDN Collective program officer Dr. PennElys Droz, an Anishinaabe and Wyandot descendent, writes, “A state of dependency was intentionally created, with the Nations having to look to their colonizers for survival assistance.” It’s not enough for a farm’s about page to give a nod to using Indigenous practices. I think we need a radical reimagining of farming that deals with the preposterous idea that a human can own land and only share its bounty with those who can afford it. A wolf in sustainable clothing is still a wolf. And we are all prey if a sudden loss of money means hunger.
For most of history, most people (except those at the highest level of their respective society) ate the same thing every day with little variation. My ancestors in Scotland ate oats. People ate the cheapest and easiest grain to grow in their region in different forms: bread, gruel, mush, and probably the least appetizing sounding: pottage, a semi-solid mix of grain, beans/legumes, bits of vegetables, or meat, if available. Meals were often communal, a pot of grain with a sauce or relish. Feasting mainly happened when the community slaughtered an animal and shared cuts or when a ruler hosted a grand feast and distributed leftovers. There simply wasn’t enough food to go around.
The last hundred years of innovation released many people from food scarcity and opened up a world of increased choice and variety. But the world hasn’t innovated itself out of hunger and famine. The current U.S. idea of food plenty is a creation of the last hundred years. It can change again if more people and leaders start asking questions: Am I entitled to a variety of foods? Can I be satisfied with less so that everyone has enough to eat? And in doing so, will enough begin to feel abundant? I experience this as true when I buy (without hoarding) and cook food I can afford from sustainable family-run operations like Ramona Farms.
An early explorer to what’s now the U.S. might have tasted a tepary bean and dared to proclaim that it was so different from the beans they grew up eating that it was unfit for their own consumption. Following that line of thinking, settlers planted rows and rows of food from their home and attacked Indigenous people, nearly eradicating the tepary bean.
But the tepary bean survived. Not because sustainability was trendy but because it is part of Indigenous peoples’ value system and religious beliefs. Acknowledging this seems, to me, like an integral part of a sustainable and liberated future. Centering Indigenous people means changing farming to attune with Indigenous practices – without white people taking it over and appropriating it for their own gain.
The past can’t be changed, and the origins and building of this country are inextricably linked to taking from and dominating over anyone deemed lesser by the white men in charge: Indigenous people, Black people, people of color, immigrants, LGBTQIA+, disabled, chronically ill, or neurodivergent people, and women. The U.S. is a place where many people don’t know how to live collectively because the model for progress harkens back to how this country started. Contemplating this truth, there’s enough grief and fear to drown out everything. But where there is grief and fear, there is a prompt to try something else.
There’s so much opportunity for change in regenerative farming that follows and centers Indigenous knowledge to heal the soil and grow delicious food. The conventional farming system may seem like the bedrock of the U.S., but that was never true. And, a reminder for myself and anyone feeling overwhelmed: Anything made by humans can be changed by humans, including our sense of what is truly meant by having plenty.
Reading - I got No Meat Required by Alicia Kennedy in the mail yesterday – big excitement! Alicia’s writing has been such a companion and resource these last few years, and it’s a joy seeing how much celebration there is this week around the book launch. I also started Cultivating Food Justice edited by Alison Hope Alkon and Julian Agyeman, and am still working through Sweetness and Power by Sidney W. Mintz and trusty ol’ Pride and Prejudice.
Writing - I’m looking for books to review or do interviews with the author! Let me know if you have one or know of someone with a book coming out in late 2023 or early next year.
Cooking - Roasting eggplant and zucchini with copious green onion. And I slathered the other half of the eggplant in gochujang (inspired by Eric Kim’s recipe in the NYT) and put it in the air fryer until it was almost burning. Delicious.