Many tribes and Indigenous communities around the world are collaborating with academic researchers to develop innovative solutions to support traditional food systems and nutrition. Yet these studies and projects have never had a dedicated journal focused exclusively on this topic.
To give this scholarship a proper platform, Seeds of Native Health provided a grant to the University of Minnesota’s Healthy Foods, Healthy Lives Institute to fund a new section in the Current Developments in Nutrition journal. The Food and Nutrition of Indigenous Peoples section highlights work from both academic and Indigenous academic perspectives by publishing quality research studies on Native food and nutrition. The Seeds funding covers the publication costs for authors unable to provide these funds, making the papers free to publish and free to access for researchers and readers alike.
Additional projects
In addition to funding the Conference on Native American Nutrition and the Food and Nutrition of Indigenous Peoples journal section, Seeds of Native Health has provided funding for the following University of Minnesota projects.
Reconnecting the Wisdom Within
The University of Minnesota study, Reconnecting the Wisdom Within, analyzes the obstacles between Western academic research and Native American traditional knowledge and experiences relating to food and nutrition.
Reconnecting the Wisdom Within covers three focus areas:
- A framework for mindful critical reflection in academia
- The importance of cultural awareness in the fields of food and nutrition
- The strategy of cultural interfacing to help bring different communities together around shared goals
- The study provides actionable recommendations for academic researchers and Native American practitioners to achieve more respectful cultural exchanges.
Research database
Navigating research on Native nutrition can be challenging, as it’s not always easy to find relevant studies and experts. That is why Seeds of Native Health funded the development and launch of two publicly accessible, comprehensive, and searchable databases – one a multi-disciplinary bibliography relating to Native American nutrition and the other a database of leading experts in relevant fields.
