Catalyst Trip- Sustainable Food Systems and Land Rights

Each year the center of spirituality, service and social justice (Wesley Center) plans five different catalyst trips over spring break at Hamline University. The purpose of the catalyst trips is to investigate issues of justice while serving in the community.

The trips vary in topic and places but I was fortunate enough to serve in the White Earth, MN catalyst trip, which focuses on food sovereignty and explores land right issues from the perspective of the Ojibwe community in the White Earth reservation. In this trip I was accompanied by 10 other Hamline students. We drove five hours to reach our final destination, and arrived to some cabins which had beautiful scenery of a frozen lake and very tall banks of snow.

In the process we met great leaders and activists, including Winona LaDuke, who once ran as the vice president nominee for the Green Party. She is a widely known activist, environmentalist, economist and writer. Winona founded the White Earth Recovery Project, which is designed to take back the lands that originally belonged to the reservation of White Earth. Winona is also the director of Honor the Earth, and works for White Earth Land Recovery Project  (WELRP), a non-profit which does helps restore agriculture to gain food sovereignty.

Winona LaDuke is a great activist and is constantly working on different projects that affect not only the Ojibwe community but also the environment. In this trip we were able to learn and help her with her activist work by going to home and working side by side with her on researching and writing articles that will be published in different newspapers and websites.

However that was not all, we also learned a great deal about sustainable foods and how this community is growing towards creating a food sustainable community by growing their own seeds and sharing them to become independent from genetically modified seeds and companies like Monsanto. As students we took part in this project by separating the seeds from corn husks; those seeds would later be distributed to other farms.

We were also able to learn the importance of sustainable food systems, especially in the poverty-stricken community of White Earth. We helped rebuild an old greenhouse which was still covered in snow but we were able to finish it.

Another project we worked on is the sugar tapping. We placed over 150 taps on maple trees for their famous maple syrup sold in their store and online at http://nativeharvest.com/. This was an amazing experience and we were able to taste the fruits of our labor, trying the very tasty maple syrup and maple butter.

This service learning trip was simply amazing. I got to meet many great people that are very passionate on what they do. This trip also made me take a step back and look on how dependent we are as a society when it comes to our food. White Earth also gave me a the opportunity to get in touch with my green thumb and learn what it really takes to gain food sovereignty, and just how hard it is to fight for land justice.

Jennifer Peredia is a Program Strageties fellow with NYLC,