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New law affirms rights to native foods and foodways ORDINANCE IS FIRST TO ADDRESS GE SALMON Moderator’s Note: In what is sure to become a widely replicated action, The Yurok Tribe of California has just announced the adoption of an ordinance supporting indigenous food sovereignty while banning the use of genetically engineered organisms (GEOs), including both plant and, in a first, animal species. The ordinance specifically establishes a ban on AquaBounty’s transgenic salmon  (trademarked as AquAdvantage salmon), which was recently approved by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and earlier by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). The inclusion of GE salmon is especially important and speaks to the cultural, economic, and ecological significance of wild salmon to the Yurok. The Yurok Tribe ordinance joins a growing list of tribes, municipalities, and counties endorsing resolutions or adopting ordinances that ban GEOs to protect indigenous, other traditional, and organic fa...

Faith Spotted Eagle and Tom Genung at the Cowboy and Indian “Reject and Protect” demonstration. Photo credit: Kristin Moe Moderator’s Note: Last week, I started writing an essay criticizing the discourse surrounding the Clive Bundy protest in Nevada over grazing rights on what is technically BLM (Bureau of Land Management). We say “technically” because the lands claimed as ancestral by Cliven Bundy really belong to the Shoshone Nation under the  Ruby Valley Treaty.   Our last post on the struggles led by the Dann sisters of the Shoshone Nation to restore these tribal lands was posted in March of last year in an essay by UW student, Lologo Salatielu Lologo, who focused on the limits of environmentalism without native autonomy .   As I was completing the essay that was about to reiterate Lologo’s analysis, this excellent essay by Jacqueline Keeler appeared in The Nation magazine on April 30 and adapted from the original appearing in Indian Country Today media Network (IC...