In the coming weeks, a new food program on the Wind River Reservation is opening four brick-and-mortar food pantries. The area’s only food pantry recently shuttered.
Odessa Oldham is a member of the Navajo Nation and grew up on the Wind River Reservation. She said the Sweetgrass Food Lodge is a partnership between tribal organizations from both the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes, including the Wind River Food Sovereignty Project, the Wind River Development Fund, Eastern Shoshone Tribal Health and the Northern Arapaho Tribe.
She said the program’s name is significant.
“We came up with sweetgrass because it is good medicine and it does bring everyone together,” Oldham said. “Its use is unique between both the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone, and it's used for healing, and we want Sweetgrass Food Lodge to be a part of the healing process.”
Local farmers are helping, too. 1890 Farms in Fremont County just donated lots of ears of corn. Wind River Buffalo Initiative donated bison meat. Oldham said this is all part of a broader vision.
“We're not just building food lodges. We're actually trying to build a food system,” she said. “So you have the Wind River Buffalo Initiative that's teaching you about not just the conservation of the buffalo, but the value of the buffalo and how you can use that buffalo, how to harvest it properly and not waste anything.”
The program also delivers to the homes of elders and others who are homebound using two mobile food pantries. The mobile pantries recently made deliveries to both the Arapahoe Elementary School and the Eastern Shoshone Health Clinic.
