Skunk Warriors

Minding the Indigenous Mind

                                                                    Skunk Warriors

Greetings Mindful Friends and Relatives,

Ecclesiastes 11:9 says “Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth, and walk in the ways of your heart, and in the sight of your eyes.” This passage about celebrating one’s youth reminds me of the boyhood days that I shared with several young friends and relatives when I was growing up in White Shield, ND. In this column I share a two-part short story about how I and a number of other young boys rejoiced in our youth and became warriors on a hot July afternoon in 1964.

The Vision

As young boys in our reservation community in White Shield, ND, we spent much of our summers searching for ways to initiate ourselves into warriorhood. We knew that becoming a warrior was a very difficult undertaking, especially since our role models were our “old Indian” warrior ancestors, whom we had heard were the toughest, bravest, and most daring guys in the world. As far as we knew, there were no people on earth as courageous and daring as these Indians.

In our secret boy circles we gathered together to discuss how the old Indians could go for days without food and water; how they could run for hundreds of miles over the roughest terrain without stopping – sometimes barefoot. We spoke of how they didn’t need a saddle or bridle when they rode their horses, and how some of them could run faster and further than any horse. We talked about how they could swim across the widest part of the Missouri river and back again and then do victory dances all night, without getting tired; We talked of how when an enemy cut them with a knife or shot them with an arrow they could tough it out and keep on fighting while singing their death song. Man, they were they tough.

We admired the old warriors because they got to camp out wherever they wanted to, and as far as we knew, they didn’t have to eat slimy canned USDA commodity spinach or other nasty canned vegetables that we were forced to eat in school. Instead, they lived off “the fat of the land.” They drank fresh river water whenever they were thirsty, and dined on wild berries, turnips, and onions, and ate huge chunks of fire-roasted buffalo or deer meat. They sat around a fire under the sacred stars recounting the origins of our people, and as far as we knew, they didn’t have to clean up after themselves or be in bed by nine o’ clock.  And because they were so brave and respected, they didn’t get yelled at by their mothers to fix their beds, clean up their mess, or take out the garbage.

In all honesty we didn’t know much about our warrior ancestors since many of our parents would only occasionally mention a few things to us about them, while the books we read at the BIA government school we attended never mentioned them at all.  But it didn’t matter to us what they said or didn’t say since most any group of prepubescent boys is the same: what they believe is what matters. And, what was fact to us was that our warriors were the toughest, bravest humans on earth and it was our responsibility to carry on their legacy.

The Preparation

The night before several of my friends, an older and younger brother, and I became warriors, my mother said I had to take out and burn the trash. This duty turned into a special time because many of the neighborhood boys would come to our house in the evening and gather around to watch the fire and trade stories about how the old warriors had lived.  That evening was particularly meaningful because we decided that the next morning we would gather together and go out to face the enemy. We had made new bows and arrows, tested them, and decided they were ready for battle.

The trash was reduced to ashes in a large, fifty gallon steel drum barrel that was given to us by the Bureau of Indian Affairs; all the families in our community had one of the containers for burning their garbage. Every week, the green BIA truck would come by and pick up everyone’s burned garbage and haul it to the local dump grounds where it would be deposited into the trash pit. This place was a boy’s dream come true since it was patrolled by strange rez dogs that could be brought home and made into pets, and filled with rats that could be either captured or used to perfect one’s practice of counting coup. 

Amongst the burned remains lay broken toys, bikes, wine and beer bottles, old washing machines, and tattered clothes.  The earth in the pit was blackened and scorched by the fires that continually burned the waste. Sprinkled about like snow was white, USDA commodity powdered milk that seeped out of broken box containers; millions of flies buzzed in and out of the shiny empty cans of USDA chopped meat as they glistened in the sun. Every once in a while a rez dog would get its nose stuck in a can of opened chopped meat and we would have to chase it down to remove the can.

This evening of trash burning was special, because for the first time I was allowed to light and burn the garbage without supervision from one of my older siblings or parents. I had planned most of the day what I would do to make sure the fire burned a long time since I knew more tales could be told if the fire had a long life. I had quietly and secretly collected and added several medium and large pieces of wood to the garbage to make sure the fire would last longer than usual. As the fire burned down, and it got later, my friends said goodnight and headed home. I remained alone at the fire watching until the last of it had smoldered out and then went inside to bed.

When I got up in the morning I could smell the odor of smoke and burned trash on my skin and in my clothes. I went downstairs and could hear my older brother saying to our mother that when he was sleeping he was dreaming that our house was on fire. My mother answered, “Well, your brother Michael built a big fire last night when was burning the trash. I don’t know what he was burning.” I smiled to myself as I went downstairs and sat down at the kitchen table to have a bowl of hot oatmeal and fresh baked bread. As I quietly ate, I remembered most of my dreams had been about me running side by side with all kinds of animals who trying to escape a huge never-ending prairie fire that I had started when I was burning the trash. Some of them had chopped meat cans stuck on their noses. I think these were the holy ones.

The Mission

I stepped outside and was greeted by a hot, windless July morning. The heat waves were shimmering in the distance to the east as the boys begin arriving at our house for our sacred mission to find our bravery and manhood. Our band of brothers were a ragged bunch of earthy, brown boys with lean bodies and crew cut hair styles. We wore no war paint on this day because there were no veteran’s in the community to paint us and send us off. Most of us wore dusty, worn out Levi jeans and white tee shirts that we pulled over our heads like hoods to protect us from the summer sun.

We begin heading to the east towards several groves of trees, streams, and high grasses. As the sun rose and we begin to swelter, wanting the feeling of coolness upon our heads, we dipped our shirts into stagnate pools of water that has collected for weeks in the ditches along the roads we were traveling. Even though the water smelled of decaying vegetation and was filled with all kinds of water beetles and snakes, we dove in for a swim and didn’t let it bother us, because we believed it wouldn’t bother the old Indian warriors.

Footgear is one of the most important items for a warrior since it helps him move without delay to the field of battle. Some of the members of our war party wore old basketball shoes, sometimes mismatched in size and color, and laced up with twine from an old white farmer’s hay bale. It didn’t bother us that we had to take twine from the hay bale for our shoes and the bales fell apart and became useless to the farmer. Because, in our minds, we reasoned that our warrior ancestors would have counted coup on the white man’s hay bales in the same way if they were wearing basketball shoes. Others in our squad wore the cowboy boots of an older brother or father that were too large and gave them blisters. But still, they looked cool and the person wearing them could always be put on point whenever we suspected that we were in rattlesnake territory.

Despite our ragtag look, we were well armed with straight, long, strong bows we had made from carefully selected branches of willow trees that we had found near small bodies of water and springs that flowed near the community. Our arrows were made from last year’s tall, straight hollowed weeds or from perfectly round, small, long branches that we had hardened over the trash fires. Each was tipped with metal pop bottle cap that was bent in half and pounded together to make a very sharp, sturdy point. When we shot them from our bows we could flatten a tire or neutralize a fearless, charging warrior rat at the dump grounds.   (To be continued…)

Michael Yellow Bird, MSW, Ph.D., is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes and a professor and the director of graduate education  in the Department of Social Work at Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA. His teaching, writing, research, and community work focuses on social work with Indigenous Peoples, decolonizing social work, neurodecolonization, neuroscience and social work, and employing mainstream and traditional Indigenous mindfulness practices in tribal communities to promote health and well being. He can be reached by email at:  mjy9@humboldt.edu 

Paleo Mama

Minding the Indigenous Mind

Paleo Mama

I have a beautiful 8 x 10 black and white picture of my mother and father positioned on an unpainted wooden side table in my living room. The picture was taken in front of my grandma Nellie Yellow Bird’s old house when my mom was 19 and my dad was 20. Mom looks like a model with her thick, wavy black hair, and her well-defined cheekbones and flawless, smooth skin. I’m not sure what the occasion but, she is wearing a 1940s style tea dress with high heels. She has a beautiful, soft, serene smile on her face. Dad is wearing a dark long-sleeved shirt, a white tee shirt underneath, and Levis. He is exceedingly handsome and has thick black hair that is combed back to the left. He has a big grin on his face and his eyes are closed; possibly a polite and humorous protest at having his picture taken.

I’ve looked at the photo many times and what I’ve noticed most is the glowing, good health that radiates from both of them and how fit they look. My mother said she weighed 115 pounds when the picture was taken and guessed that my dad weighed about 145 pounds, which is about six pounds more than I was when I graduated from high school. When I asked my mother about how she managed to keep herself at this weight she said we ate a lot different than we do today; we also ate much less and we were much more active. She then joked that, “if we wanted to eat fried chicken we had to chase them around for a while and after we caught them we were too tired to eat!”

In this column I wanted to share with you some of the diet and lifestyle “secrets” that I believe kept my mother and father healthy, disease-free, strong, happy, and filled with a sense of wellness. My mother is still alive at age 86 and is doing well, despite her having diabetes for the past 46 years. She remains optimistic, has a sense of purpose, a good sense of humor, loves to learn new things and visit with others, and leads a very prayerful life. I’m convinced that had she remained on her original diet and continued her active lifestyle, she could have easily passed 100 years in a very healthy condition.

My father passed away at age 72 from complications related to diabetes. But, I now know that it wasn’t the diabetes that killed him. Diabetes is only a symptom of the sickness that is created by eating the Standard American Colonized Diet. My father, like many in his generation, transitioned from a healthy traditional diet to one that is overloaded with bad fats, unhealthy carbohydrates, processed, packaged foods, and sugary drinks and desserts. If my father had continued to eat and live as he did as a young man, I believe that he could have made it well into his nineties without any chronic diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, or cancer.    

What My Mom Ate – Meat Protein and Raw Milk

When I asked my mother a bit more about what she ate growing up she replied, “We ate what we could get from our gardens, from the animals we raised, the berries we picked, and the wild game we hunted or fished. We didn’t eat very much store bought foods since we could raise or get our own and we didn’t have a lot of money. A lot of the people lived like this back then; maybe that’s why we didn’t have diabetes or obesity like we do now.” One thing that she made very clear is that they did not eat meat all of the time or for every meal. In fact, she said “there were a lot of meals that we ate that were meatless. Sometimes my mother would tell us to go gather eggs when we got back from school and we would have roasted squash, eggs, and other vegetables for dinner.”

When she did eat meat it included a variety of domestic and wild creatures: “We raised cattle, pigs, chickens, turkey, ducks, and geese. We also ate wild fish and game like deer, duck, geese, pheasants, and sage grouse; and we ate a lot of fresh chicken and duck eggs. We also canned deer meat, pork, beef, and chicken that we used during the winter months.” All of these foods are standard proteins in the Paleo diet and are healthier than the non-Paleo meats you get at the local grocery store. The meats that my mother ate were leaner, had more vitamins and nutrients like beta-carotene, and were higher in omega-3 fatty acids (good, healthy fats). Because they came from organic, wild, and free range sources, the animals were not stressed or mistreated and their meat did not contain antibiotics or synthetic hormones.

One of the protein foods she ate that is not on the Paleo list is cow’s milk. However, she grew up drinking raw milk from cows that were clean, healthy, stress-free, and pastured-raised animals that she knew by name. I asked her if she ever got sick from drinking raw milk and she replied, “No! None of us ever did. We always milked our own cows and drank the fresh the milk; it tasted really good and we made fresh cream and butter from it.” (Both cream and butter are included on the Paleo).

Raw milk became the boogeyman some years ago with the claim that it was dirty and caused disease. Both claims are untrue if it comes from cows like my mother’s family had. Yes, raw milk is much different than pasteurized milk: It is a living food that is loaded with high quality protein and important minerals; it has 20 of the standard amino acids, is easier to digest, has a lot of calcium, and is loaded with enzymes; and it also has beneficial bacteria that aid digestion and boost our immune system. Pasteurizing (heating) the milk destroys most of the benefits that raw milk has to offer.   It is considered a “dead food” by many health advocates. My advice, ditch the pasteurized variety and if you’re going to continue drinking animal milk and try raw goat or cow’s milk if you can find a good, clean, reputable source. But read about it first to see if you agree with my mother and I and whether it is appropriate for your diet. I personally drink lots of almond and coconut milk but am looking to try raw milk in the near future.

Veggies and Fruits

 Fresh veggies and fruits are the foods of the gods; high in healthy antioxidants and a lot of other hard to pronounce phytochemicals; some of them almost as difficult to say as some Arikara words. But, what is most important to remember is that these compounds play an important role in keeping us healthy. Among other things they are an important first line of defense against heart disease, cancer, hypertension, obesity, diabetes, tumors, arthritis, and many autoimmune disorders. When I asked my mother about her intake of veggies and fruits she said, “We ate lots of fresh vegetables from our gardens and canned (jarred) many of them for the winter. We ate lots of vegetable soups with fresh meat. We grew lots of different vegetables: different kinds of squash, cabbage, celery, tomatoes, Swiss chard, lettuce, beets, green peas, green beans, and cucumbers.”  She said that when she was a young girl she thought that the best tasting foods in the world were tomatoes eaten right after they were picked off the vine, or carrots that were eaten right after you pulled out of the ground. She laughed and said “Sometimes we didn’t even wash the carrots. We just brushed them off and ate them with some of the dirt still on them.” 

In regard to fruit she said, “We grew cantaloupe and little watermelons and we ate wild juneberries, chokecherries, plums, and bull berries and canned them and made jams, jellies, syrups, and dried some. We had apples and oranges once in a while and some canned or other fresh fruit from the store, but not so much.”  I think it’s important to note that most of the fruit she ate were of the low sugar varieties.

 Beans, Grains, and Coffee

Many people feel that beans and grains are an important part of a healthy diet due to their nutrient and fiber content. However, because they are hard to digest and can cause inflammatory problems in our bodies, they are generally not considered to be optimal for our health and are excluded from a Paleo diet. As far as coffee goes, some folks that follow a more moderate version of the diet drink a couple of cups a day. My mother consumed all of these foods when she was growing up.

My mom said that her family raised a lot of northern and red beans and harvested them by hand and stored them in large sacks. When there was enough meat and eggs, beans were generally more of a side dish than a main meal. When I asked her about eating grains she replied, “We ate grains because we grew our own and took them to Garrison, ND, and had them ground into fresh flour that we put into 100 pound flour sacks. We used the flour in our baking to make fresh bread, pancakes, and biscuits. The breads we made were simple. We used live yeast, flour, salt, sugar, lard, and milk or potato water. ” I want to point out that the grains that my mother ate were fresh, clean, organic, and very likely had much less gluten protein in them.

I’m a coffee drinker and know that drinking no more than a couple of cups a day has a number of important health benefits, including preventing heart disease and some types of cancer.  My mother has been a coffee drinker for as long as I’ve known her and I wondered how long she had been drinking it. When I asked her she said “When I was about 11 or 12 years old I started drinking coffee. I only drank a cup or two a day. We drank it mostly for the warmth on cool and cold days and then I ended up drinking it for most of my life.”

How Much Did You Eat?

Most research that looks at the relationship between how much we eat and how long we will live says that when we eat less we will be healthier and live longer. In the world of anti-aging medicine this is called the 80% rule: eat until you are only 80 percent full. In my last column, I mentioned a 112 year old man by the name of Walter Breuning from Great Falls, Montana (who died in 2009). He credited his long life to not eating too much (he ate only two meals a day and took one daily aspirin).

When I asked my mom what was the usual amount of food she ate when she was growing up she said, “We ate simple and we couldn’t take too much food, we had limits on how much we could eat. We could take a second helping if we wanted but most of us didn’t. We didn’t eat that much, but we never felt like we were hungry or being starved. We generally had one serving and we felt satisfied.” As you can see my mother followed the 80 percent rule. 

Desserts, Exercise, and Paleo Indians

The world we know is bursting with sugar. It is in nearly every packaged, processed, fast food and is in most everything we drink. It is linked to cancer, obesity, diabetes, and a host of other health problems. I wondered how much sugar my mother consumed when she was growing up and posed this question to her. She replied, “We didn’t have sweets when we were growing up and we rarely had sugar, except in the occasional dessert that we ate. But, even then, if we did eat cake or a pie we would get only one piece, and we would only have a dessert maybe once a month, or during some special occasion.”

I asked her what kind of exercise she did when she was young. She laughed and said, “We were exercising and moving all the time with all of the work we had to do to take of our farm, gardens, and animals. We worked hard and either walked or rode horseback wherever we went. We milked, fed, and took care of our cows. We helped our dad with all the chores and put in a lot of time on our garden; pulling weeds, cultivating, planting, harvesting, and watching over our crops. We rode horseback when we took our cows to water or rounded them up. We did housework, took care of little brothers and sisters, cooked, cleaned, helped with laundry, and did everything else that needed to be done or were told to do. We didn’t have a TV, but even if we did we would have never had time to watch it.”  It's  important to mention that constant movement that includes a variety of physical activities such as pushing, pulling, lifting, walking, squatting, bending, laying on the ground and getting up, etc., are now considered to be the most optimal type of exercises for increasing wellness and longevity. This type of workout is fundamental to a Paleo lifestyle.

My mama has deep healthy Paleo dietary roots. I’m sure that her early healthy eating days shaped her genes to protect her for a long time against the diabetes she now has. I know that the optimal way for her to eat is Paleo. The last couple of summers when I have come home to White Shield I’ve put her on a Paleo diet and watched her blood glucose levels drop to the normal range in a matter of a few days. When she eats this way she sleeps better, has less pain, feels better, is more alert, and sleeps less during the day.

What she and my father ate back then helps to explain why they looked so handsome, healthy, and beautiful in the picture on that sits on the side table in my living room. Back in the day they were Paleo Indians. Isn't it time we all returned to the traditional lifestyle of our Paleo ancestors? Can you imagine a world of healthy, fit, happy, diabetes-free Indians? I can. 

Michael Yellow Bird, MSW, Ph.D., is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes and a professor and the director of graduate education  in the Department of Social Work at Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA. His teaching, writing, research, and community work focuses on social work with Indigenous Peoples, neurodecolonization, neuroscience and social work, and employing mainstream and traditional Indigenous mindfulness practices in tribal communities to promote health and well being. He leads a regular morning mindfulness practice for staff, students, and faculty in his department. He can be reached by email at:  mjy9@humboldt.edu 

Minding the Indigenous Mind Returning to a Paleo Native peoples’ Lifestyle to Cure the Diseases of the Standard American Colonized Diet

Greetings Mindful Relatives and Friends,

Chris Kresser, a leader in an emerging nutritional lifestyle known as the Paleo diet reported on what we know about the health of people before and after they started eating the Standard American Colonized Diet: “We know, for example, that a modern diseases like diabetes, obesity, cancer, autoimmunity and heart disease were rare (or even nonexistent) in Paleo people and are still rare in the few hunter gatherer groups around the world that have been lucky enough to preserve their traditional diet and lifestyle. We also know that when modern foods like wheat flour, industrial seed oils and sugar are introduced in these populations, the incidence of modern diseases goes up commensurately. And, even more telling, when these groups return to their traditional ways, the modern diseases disappear again. This suggests that it wasn’t some genetic vulnerability that caused them to develop modern diseases with the introduction of modern foods.”

In this column I want to share some of my thoughts about a way of eating called the Paleo lifestyle. I’ve read a great deal about it and I’m convinced that it may be one of the most important approaches to helping Native folks reverse the chronic health problems they’ve developed from eating the Standard American Colonized Diet. It is a nutritionally appropriate, balanced, and healing diet for Native folks and matches the “traditional” eating patterns of our ancestors, who didn’t have the food related health problems that we do.

I don’t want give the impression that the Paleo diet is the perfect way for everyone to eat, or that if you do not follow this way of eating you will not recover from serious chronic illnesses. Sometimes all one has to do is exercise, stop eating sugary foods and drinks, and lose weight, and their health will improve. What I’m hoping is that this column will spark some interest in this lifestyle so that folks may give it a try to see how it works for them.

History of the Paleo Lifestyle?

The idea behind the Paleo lifestyle is that if we return to eating as closely as we can to the way our ancestors did 10,000 (plus) years ago, our health will improve. The Paleolithic Age (Old Stone Age) covered a time period from 500,000-10,000 ago; before most of humanity practiced any type of agriculture. While it is hard to know exactly what our Paleo ancestors ate, most experts agree that it was a time when they lived on a diet of wild game, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, fish, shellfish, eggs, and tasty insects. There were no processed, packaged, artificial, additive-laden foods and no sugar, with the exception of the sweetness that came from wild fruits and honey.

The foods that our ancestors ate were in a much more pristine state; the animals they dined on were not fed inferior diets of genetically modified corn, soybeans, or grains, nor were they saturated with antibiotics, and hormones, like our meats are today; every wild plant, seed, nut, fruit, and vegetable was organic and free of pesticides and other man-made chemicals. Fish and shellfish contained no man-made pollutants or heavy metals and the water they drank was clean and fresh and chlorine and fluoride-free.

Research on ancient human diets concludes that as humans began practicing more agricultural lifestyles, health problems began to crop up (no pun intended). The theory is that the dependence on domesticated foods, rather than wild sources contributed to a decline in health because agricultural foods were not part of a natural diet that the human system had evolved to eat. In their book, Perfect Health Diet, nutritional scientists Paul Jaminet, Ph.D., and Shou-Ching Jaminet, Ph.D., reported that the adoption of farming caused the height of people to shorten while their muscles became weakened; tooth decay and osteoporosis became widespread and malnutrition, infections, inflammation became common.

In an important scientific paper about Paleolithic nutrition, scientist Dr. Boyd Eaton, M.D. concluded that pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers did not eat cereal grains, nor did they grow them. Neither did they consume milk or dairy products. And, despite the problems with grains and cereals, especially for many Native people, the USDA and the grain and dairy industries push both as healthy foods that we must have in our diets. However, Loren Cordain, Ph.D., a respected scientist and the founder of the modern Paleo food movement, has found plenty of research that shows that eating cereal grains worsened the health of early agricultural people.

Today we know that cereal grains such as wheat, rice, barley, oats, corn, and beans are not only genetically modified and treated with dangerous chemicals, they are very starchy foods that can raise one’s blood sugar very quickly. We also know that many folks are sensitive or allergic to the gluten protein that is found in grains, and for some ingesting it can result in a very serious autoimmune reaction if they have celiac disease. Non-organic milk, the most widely consumed dairy product, has measureable amounts of herbicides, pesticides, dioxins (up to 200 times the safe levels), antibiotics, and growth hormones, such as IGF-1, which is suspected to fuel the growth of cancer in our bodies. Many Native people cannot drink milk because they are lactose intolerant.

 What’s included in the Paleo Diet?

There are different versions of the Paleo Diet. One proponents of this diet, Mark Sisson, a world class athlete and Paleo diet expert, says that if we want to follow it we must concentrate on: “eating quality sources of protein (all forms of meat, fowl, fish,). It is important that your protein sources are clean, organic or free-range. Eat lots of colorful vegetables, some select fruits (mostly berries), and healthy fats (nuts, avocados, olive oil). Observe portion control (calorie distribution) week to week more than meal to meal. Eliminate grains such as wheat, corn, rice (even brown rice), cereal, bread, and pasta. Eliminate all forms of sugar and sugary drinks; and trans- and hydrogenated fats from your diet.” Free-range eggs are an important source of protein while coconut oil is an important healthy fat that can also be included.  It is important to eliminate all processed meats.

Another Paleo diet advocate Chris Kesser is very clear that some the everyday foods that we eat are toxic and should not be on our menu:    

• Avoid cereal grains (especially refined flour)
• Avoid omega-6 industrial seed oils (corn, cottonseed, safflower, soybean, etc.)
• Avoid sugar (especially high-fructose corn syrup)
• Avoid processed soy (soy milk, soy protein, soy flour, etc.)
• Avoid improperly prepared cereal grains and legumes

Kesser believes we must nourish our bodies by emphasizing saturated 

monounsaturated fats while reducing intake of polyunsaturated fat; we should favor eating deer, buffalo, elk, and beef and seafood over poultry; we should eat real food such as grass-fed, organic meat and wild fish, and local, organic produce when possible. We must avoid processed, refined and packaged food.

Benefits of the Paleo Diet

When one eats the broad variety of vegetables, select fruits, and high quality, lean meats, the Paleo diet is nutritionally sound, safe, and easy to follow. Since the Paleo is patterned after the diets of our ancestors, if we follow it, we can expect to improve our health. In fact, many proponents of the diet are convinced that returning to this way of eating reprograms our genes so that our disease causing genes get turned off and our healthy ones get turned on.

For some folks, “intermittent fasting” is an important part of the Paleo diet lifestyle. When most people fast from foods their health improves significantly and they live longer, healthier lives. For instance, in 2009, Walter Breuning (now deceased), a 112 year-old Great Falls, Montana man credited his long life to not eating too much (he ate only two meals a day and took one aspirin).

Intermittent fasting means one alternates the times, or days, or amounts they eat each day: some folks fast completely from food on one day and eat normally on the next day; some do a 5:2 plan where they eat for five days and fast for two - sometimes the two days are spread out in the seven day period and sometimes they are back to back; and some eat 2 meals and a snack a day between a six hour eating period and then fast for 18 hours for the rest of the 24 hour day; some people, like Walter Breuning, eat only twice a day. Most research agrees that overeating shortens our lives while intermittent fasting is looking more and more like it will increase the length and quality of our lives. One thing for sure is, fasting is a part of our nutritional eating heritage: our ancestors were very accomplished at fasting due to food shortages and for health and spiritual reasons.

Since the main sources of food in this diet are healthy proteins, fats, veggies, and select fruits, anyone that follows it will get plenty of essential nutrients, fiber, and much, much more. Research on the benefits of the Paleo Diet continues to grow as more studies examine the health of people that practice this way of eating. Some of the health benefits include: healthy weight loss, significant drops in blood pressure and cholesterol; and improved blood glucose tolerance, arterial function, LDL and triglycerides. If you’re interested in this research check out Dr. Loren Cordain’s book, The Paleo Answer: 7 Days to Lose Weight, Feel Great, Stay Young, published in 2012.

I am an enthusiastic supporter of the Paleo diet and have been working on incorporating the diet into my lifestyle for about a year. Most times I am very good at following it but at times I slip off. One of the reasons that do the Paleo diet is because I’ve developed a sensitivity to gluten, so I’ve given up eating bread, grain cereals, fry bread, pasta, etc. Eating no grains has been one of the best nutritional decisions that I have made. I also stay away from corn and legumes such as beans and lentils. Even though our ancestors ate them, I’m now convinced they were not the healthiest foods for them or us to eat. Just like grains, beans and corn contain phytic acid (an anti-nutrient in foods), which contributes to our inability to absorb the nutrients found in these foods.

If you are interested in trying out the Paleo diet check out these websites: Chris Kesser (http://chriskresser.com/); Dr. Loren Cordain (http://thepaleodiet.com/); Mark Sisson (http://www.marksdailyapple.com/#axzz2JDsgftEb), and Rob Wolf (http://robbwolf.com/). I also encourage you to read more about intermittent fasting and give it a try if it seems appropriate for you. I fast one to two times a year generally from 10 to 15 days each time and the benefits have been amazing. This year I was aiming for 21 days (three weeks), but after reading about the science and benefits of intermittent fasting I’m now interested in giving it a try to see how it works. I am on my way to becoming a “Paleo Indian.” Remember, if you give the Paleo lifestyle a try I’d love to hear about it. Wishing you a long, healthy, happy, drug prescription free life!

Michael Yellow Bird, MSW, Ph.D., is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes and a professor and the director of graduate education  in the Department of Social Work at Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA. His teaching, writing, research, and community work focuses on social work with Indigenous Peoples, neurodecolonization, neuroscience and social work, and employing mainstream and traditional Indigenous mindfulness practices in tribal communities to promote health and well being. He leads a regular morning mindfulness practice for staff, students, and faculty in his department. He can be reached by email at:  mjy9@humboldt.edu 

Returning to a Paleo Native peoples’ Lifestyle

Minding the Indigenous Mind

Returning to a Paleo Native peoples’ Lifestyle to

                             Cure the Diseases of the Standard Colonized American Diet

Greetings Mindful Relatives and Friends,

The way, amount, and what we eat has led to a health crisis like we have never experienced before in this nation. This crisis has hit Indigenous communities particularly hard: increasing rates of heart disease, obesity, cancer, hypertension, and the big one, diabetes. To combat this diet-driven health crisis, many Americans, including Indigenous folks, have chosen drastic remedies such as lap band and gastric bypass surgery, dangerous weight loss drugs, unregulated fad supplements, starvation diets, and substances such as smoking to suppress the appetite.

In response to these approaches,  Mark Hyman, MD, a leader in the field of functional medicine (a whole systems medicine approach) asserts that “Shrinking someone's stomach to the size of a walnut with surgery is one way to battle obesity and diabetes and may be lifesaving for a few, but it doesn't address the underlying causes.” In regard to the use of drugs to battle this crisis he also adds, “Do we really think we can medicate our way out of a bad diet? Can we really overcome the 54 gallons of soda consumed every year by the average American, or the 34 teaspoons of sugar consumed DAILY by the average child in America with a medication, or some handouts on eating better?”

This column is a two part series dedicated to how we can live longer, healthier, and better by changing our diet. In this first column I discuss problems with the Standard American Diet (SAD) and a bit of history about what I call the Standard American Colonized Diet (SACD). In my next column I share information about a healthy eating revolution called the Paleolithic diet that is patterned after the traditional diets of our ancestors. I am an advocate of this eating lifestyle and will share research that shows that a Paleo diet is the most appropriate way for Indigenous folks to eat, and how it can cure of improve many diseases caused by the Standard American Diet.

Standard American Diet (SAD)

Citing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, The Center for Science of Public Interest says that “unhealthy eating and inactivity cause 310,000-580,000 deaths every year—similar to the number of deaths caused by tobacco and 13 times more than are caused by guns.” If you are, or someone you know is, obese, has had a stroke, has diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, or stomach and digestion disorders, chances are very good that the Standard American Diet (SAD) is a huge contributor.  If you or someone you know has allergies, skin disorders, neurological and neuromuscular disorders, respiratory problems, and/or suffers from mood disorders, such as depression or anxiety, chances are very good that the Standard American Diet (SAD) share some of a good deal of the blame. The meteoric rise of a majority of all the above diseases and conditions correlates very nicely with the rise of the SAD.    

Of course our diets cannot be blamed for all of our health problems:  the fact that we live in toxic environments, smoke and drink what we shouldn’t, aren’t physically active enough, do not have regular, meaningful and mindful spiritual practices, do not have healthy systems of support, and are overstressed, all contribute to our lack of wellness.  Nevertheless, a growing consensus among the more progressive wing of the medical and nutritional communities strongly supports the notion that the way and what we eat has much to do with our deteriorating health.

 The American mainstream nutrition community refers to how most of us eat today as the Standard American Diet (SAD). Critics of the SAD say that it is directly responsible for numerous diseases, premature death, malnutrition and overnutrition, and the poisoning of our bodies and planet. Our eating is so bad that the Centers for Disease Control says that more than one-third of U.S. adults (35.7%) are obese. In 2008, medical costs associated with obesity were estimated at $147 billion; the medical costs for people who are obese were $1,429 higher than those of normal weight.  

And, here’s something for Indigenous folks to seriously reflect upon: Approximately 17% (or 12.5 million) of children and adolescents aged 2—19 years are obese. Extreme obesity significantly decreased among all racial groups except American Indians/Alaska Natives. In fact, our health is so bad that it has given birth to $307 billion dollar prescription drug industry; the weight loss industry alone makes $40 billion a year. And no wonder. Americans spend about $11o billion for fast foods, which are the staples of the SAD.

So what is the Standard American Diet? The holistic-medicine-works.com website says it is “heavy on red meat, pork, foods made from dairy or cow's milk, processed foods laced with dangerous chemical preservatives, colorings, vitamins and flavor enhancers.” It is “also made up of fried foods, foods cooked with high heat and microwaves, foods made with white refined sugar and flour and more and more today, foods that contain high fructose corn syrup. It also includes all kinds of fruit and vegetable juices whose nutritional value is destroyed by pasteurization...treatment with high heat that destroys all enzymes and most nutrients. Not to mention how many of these juices contain large amounts of added sugar, high fructose corn syrup or dangerous artificial chemical sweeteners and preservatives.” Interestingly, a very recent study published in January 2013 in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that brain imaging tests confirm that after drinking a fructose beverage, such as a can of soda, triggers brain changes that may lead to overeating.

This is particularly important to Native folks since so many of us gulp down a lot of soda and sugary drinks that are laced with high fructose corn syrup. I’m sure that a lot of the diabetic amputations, blindness, and neuropathy can be traced directly back to fructose beverages. Some of you may even remember back in the day when corn syrup used to be added to a baby’s bottle because of constipation.  

There are many views of the SAD; most are not flattering. The AskDr Sears website says that “If you were to list the factors that increase the risk of cancer, heart disease, stroke, intestinal disorders – just about any illness – the standard American diet has them all.”

Sarah Aitken a writer for website NaturalNews.com describes the SAD as “extreme…and certainly not healthy.” She says that “the Standard American Diet usually consists of a myriad of processed carbs (cereals, breads, pasta, cookies, cakes etc.), processed meat products, and a few fruits and veggies. This diet is high in many things, most of which your body doesn't really need.  It is full of hydrogenated oil, high fructose corn syrup, phytic acid, acrylamide, sodium nitrate, monosodium glutamate (MSG) and lacking in basic essentials such as vitamins and minerals.”

Most of us have heard of many of these substances and additives. However, Phytic acid  and Acrylamide are ones that less well known. Phytic acid is important because it is found in grains, such as wheat and corn, and makes absorption of important minerals such as calcium, iron, zinc, and magnesium difficult. This is especially important for Native folks since many of us eat a lot of grains and grain products. Acrylamide is a chemical compound that forms in starchy food products during high-temperature cooking, including frying, baking and roasting, and is thought to put us at increased risk for cancer. Again, this is very important for Indigenous Peoples to know about since many of us fry nearly everything that moves.

Colonizing the Indigenous Diet: The Standard Colonized American Diet

You’ve heard the joke about having a “Commod bod” in reference to having a lumpy, full figured, fluffy frame due to eating USDA commodities. Well, nothing could be closer to the truth. The Commod Bod was once both an “urban and reservation legend;” but those of us that were raised on the reservation and feasted on commodities as some of our main source of calories know that the Commod Bod is not hearsay, but a true story. In a 2005 article the fairy tale died when, in Indian Country Today, writer Susan Harjo described the Commod Bod as a “round, doughy physique that results from the high-starch, high-calorie, high-fat and low-protein food.”

While we laugh, tease, and joke about the Commod Bod, I think it is wise and instructional to remind ourselves that USDA commodities are the legacy of Native Peoples’ nutritional and dietary colonialism. That is, these low quality foods were forced upon our folks when they were suffering the ravages of some of the deepest levels of poverty due to reservation living, and are the precursor for setting the standard of today’s unhealthy eating among our people. Commods are the poster foods of the deadly Standard American Diet because they contain all the ingredients and packaging that are responsible for high rates of heart disease, obesity, strokes, hypertension, cancer, and premature death. Recently, a northern California Indian told me that she thought of commods as “genocide in a can.” I couldn’t agree more.

A 2012, Evaluation of the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations carried out by the USDA reported that Commods are made up of a “variety of canned and packaged commodities in such categories as meats, fruits, vegetables, dairy products, grains, and cereals.” They are designed only to “provide adequate levels of most nutrients and food energy to participating households.” And, of course I wonder what they mean by the term “adequate” and what “nutrients” they are talking about. In their description of these foods there is no mention about whether the canned “goods,” and I use the word goods rather loosely here, contain BPA (a compound implicated in neurological and endocrine disorders and cancer) that different advocacy food groups are trying to get banned. Even the US government’s own Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regards BPA as dangerous. A 2010 the FDA wrote a report warning of possible hazards to fetuses, infants, and young children. Since the 1930s BPA has been recognized as an artifical estrogen and can mimic estrogen and lead to health problems.  Since the 1950s it has been in the lining of food and beverage containers.

Commods are made from conventional (non-organic) meats, grains, fruits, and vegetables which are not only over processed, but also loaded with chemicals and pesticides and, in the case of meat, contain hormones and antibiotics. The canned beef, pork, and chicken are more than likely to come from animals that are raised in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), which pack huge numbers of live animals together in a small area. Because animals are so congested together, the rates of disease, injuries, and contamination rises exponentially among them, which mean they will be fed copious amounts of whatever medicines and supplements will minimize the damage.

Due to cost, canned Commod fish, such as salmon are more likely to be farmed than wild. Farmed fish which have less nutritional value, higher amounts of Omega 6 fatty acids, which inflame the body, and are often fed a cheap, inferior diet that can have higher levels of toxins such as PCBs which implicated in hormone disruption and cancer. By now we all should know that none of us should be eating tuna due to its dangerous heavy metal content. In 2007 the USDA dropped albacore tuna from WIC program but kept on supplying “light tuna” despite the risks of mercury in the fish. If you’ve been feeding your children tuna; stop immediately and have their mercury levels checked.

Many deadly, disease-causing SAD foods are served often, and in huge quantities, at community ceremonies, wakes, funerals, celebrations, and other events on our reservation. They are also served in many of our homes as our daily meals. I’m not really sure where this tradition of overfeeding folks with a lot of low quality, non-traditional foods comes from. I think some folks might say that it’s our tradition to feed others; it’s our way. But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t our tradition to overfeed our family, relatives, and friends these types of foods. Of course not all the foods found at these events are unhealthy; some folks bring healthy traditional and non-traditional foods (and I’m not talking about whole grain fry bread). However, I’ve always thought it ironic that at the funeral of someone that has died of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or a stroke, which were very likely caused by eating a Standard American Diet, that we serve these foods in nearly unlimited quantities.

I’ve added the word “colonized” to the Standard American Diet term because Indigenous Peoples arrived at their present “killer” diet through a much different social and political means than non-Native folks.

History is clear that after Native peoples were “subjugated” by the United States and driven off their traditional hunting, fishing and gathering territories, they were put onto reservations and other lands where they were forced to live on starvation diets of inferior rationed foods. This system might be considered the earliest development of the fast food industry for Native peoples since they no longer had to engage themselves in mindfully hunting and gathering their meals. All they had to do was to wait for “ration day,” stand in line at the reservation agency building, and get their order.

 A lot of evidence in the historical record shows that American policy makers, religious leaders, educators, and politicians believed that Native Peoples’ hunting of wild game, fishing, and gathering of wild foods was “uncivilized” and this way of life needed to be extinguished if they were to become civilized.  They believed that eating domesticated animals and crops was more advanced since humans had dominated these forms of life, which was consistent with the Christian belief that man was suppose to “subdue the earth” and “rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”  As this way of thinking was imposed upon Indigenous Peoples very dramatic changes occurred in their attitudes about where their food came from, how they should obtain it, and what they should eat.  

Colonizing the American Diet

The mainstream diet of most Americans shows that they have been just as successfully colonized in their nutritional and dietary beliefs and habits as Native Peoples. And, their chronic diseases, cancers, and obesity are nearly as bad, and catching up fast. Some of the biggest colonizing culprits have been the Big Food, Big Seed, and Big Agricultural industries. For instance, over 100 years ago small farmers and many households grew much of their own produce for their own consumption or to sell to neighbors. In an article entitled, “Do We Eat Better Than We Did 100 Years Ago?” Kerry Trueman, co-founder of EatingLiberally.org wrote that “By 1897, the USDA was distributing 1.1 billion free seed packets to farmers, many of them more common vegetable and flower varieties. The program was wildly popular with farmers, but a thorn in the side of the growing commercial seed industry. So, in 1929, after intense lobbying from the American Seed Trade Association, Congress scrapped the seed giveaway.”

Today, five corporations (AstaZeneca, DuPont, Monsanto, Novartis,
Aventis) control almost one-quarter (23%) of the global commercial seed market, nearly two-thirds of the global pesticide market (60%), and virtually 100% of the transgenic (genetically engineered) seed market.

Colonization of America’s diet is generally due to this nation’s desire for the “modernization” and “industrialization” of the world. In order for this to happen the system required folks to work long hours, under strict working conditions that did not offer much in the way of rest or optimal eating opportunities. The Livestrong.com website says that “Today's standard American diet has moved away from the traditions of homemade meals and is more influenced by ways to speed up the process of grabbing a quick bite.”

To accommodate this need the “Big Food” industry developed a fast, processed foods system. It used its unrestrained marketing power to produce foods that are addictive and profitable, rather than healthy. To keep us in the chains of dietary colonization, it operates a biased corporate food research and advertising agenda that is misleading and confusing, and co-opts mainstream nutritionists and medical professionals to support, ignore, or feign ignorance of its activities. Just to give you an idea of how much money does Big Food puts into keeping us addicted to its fast, processed foods, according the to Nielsen Company, Kraft Foods a major food manufacturer spent $1.7 billion on advertising in 2009. Its brands include Kraft, Oscar Meyer, Crystal Light, Trident and Ritz. In the soft drink industry, according to “Advertising Age,” Coca-Cola spent $2.67 billion on advertising in 2008. The marketing pays off too. In 2009, Beverage Digest reported that Americans spent $73.9 billion on regular and diet carbonated soft drinks. If non-carbonated beverages such as juice drinks, teas and energy drinks are included the figure grows to $115 billion.

So, my question is how different is Big Food’s colonization agenda and success compared to the early reservation system that rationed substandard foods to our ancestors?

 

 

Michael Yellow Bird, MSW, Ph.D., is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes and a professor and the director of graduate education  in the Department of Social Work at Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA. His teaching, writing, research, and community work focuses on social work with Indigenous Peoples, neurodecolonization, neuroscience and social work, and employing mainstream and traditional Indigenous mindfulness practices in tribal communities to promote health and well being. He leads a regular morning mindfulness practice for staff, students, and faculty in his department. He can be reached by email at:  mjy9@humboldt.edu