Food from the Landscape
Traditional foods that address the environmental, cultural, nutritional and spiritual health of land and people is at the heart of Cynthia Wilson’s work. As a tribal member of the Navajo Nation, Cynthia was born and raised in Monument Valley, UT. We talk with Cynthia about her work with traditional foods and the founding of the Women of Bears Ears who seek to restore Indigenous women’s matrilineal roles and the rematriation of the Earth.
Sponsored by the Colorado Plateau Foundation
Meet the Scientist: Cynthia Wilson
Cynthia Wilson is a tribal member of the Navajo Nation, born and raised in Monument Valley, UT. She is of the Folded Arms People clan and born for the Towering House clan. Cynthia holds a Masters of Science degree in Nutrition from the University of Utah. She is currently a Native and Indigenous Rights Fellow, an inaugural cohort of 2021-2022 with Harvard Divinity School. She is the co-founder of the Women of Bears Ears who seeks to restore indigenous women’s matrilineal roles and the rematriation of the Earth. She is formerly the Traditional Foods Program Director for Utah Diné Bikéyah. Her work encompasses traditional knowledge that addresses the environmental, cultural, nutritional and spiritual health of the land and the people.
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Interview Transcript - Nutrition from a Cultural Standpoint
Traditional food represents connection between land, culture, and community. Cynthia Wilson works on traditional food sovereignty in the Bears Ears region with Utah Diné Bikéyah and is one of the founders of the Women of Bears Ears. She talks with us about traditional foods and the role food and language play in safeguarding landscapes and culture.
Science Moab: What got you interested in traditional foods?
Wilson: My educational background is in nutrition. But working at the grassroots level has really changed my insight in what nutrition truly is, and how we can better serve and help our community at the local level. I was raised traditionally, by my grandparents, and my parents. I was always taught that we don’t own the land, the land owns us. And it is our obligation, it’s our duty to give back to the landscape and to always build our relationship through providing offerings to the landscape before we are gifted with the foods and the medicines that come off the landscape. So part of the initiative I’ve been working on is how we restore who we truly are, through our cultural teachings and how we can sustain those teachings for the younger generation.
Science Moab: What are the projects you are working on?
Wilson: One of the projects that I’ve been working on restoring the Four Corners potato, which is a wild potato that grows throughout the Four Corners region, and that’s native to this region. I work in partnership with the University of Utah researchers who dated potato starch residue to 11,000 years ago. My part of the work has been really acknowledging that this is something tribes have always known, that our diet was always rich in these food sources that have been taken away from us, through policies and putting boundaries around our ancestral landscapes like Bears Ears. We need to restore our cultural memories through our food systems and bring those teachings back into our families and in our diet.
Science Moab: Tell me about the Women of Bears Ears group?
Wilson: For me, as a Diné woman, I was brought into this world through my clan mothers. They know a lot about their environment and their landscape, because they stay in one place since time immemorial. And so I think a lot of this teachings coming from our mothers is also something that our elders talk a lot about, because we were originally a matrilineal society. A lot of our teachings come from Changing Woman, and how she oversees the vegetation of the mountains. I see it as an ancestral responsibility to be a caretaker of these places, especially knowing the teachings that have come before us from our mothers that had been living there.
Science Moab: What are your visions for the future?
Wilson: A lot of my work has really made me think about what really needs to happen next. After listening to our knowledge holders, or medicine, people and the elders of our communities, they spoke a lot about how we need to engage our youth to continue these cultural teachings. And they should understand who we are by using our traditional knowledge systems, knowing our foods, knowing our waters, knowing our mountains, our non-human relatives, that is in our surroundings, and in our environment, and also respecting who lives within us. Using our language is something that gives us healing. The elders really believe that acknowledging and educating our youth to speak their language is something very important. When we talk about land management planning, and when we talk about being present, in this world, and in this environment, using our language really activates a lot of our connections to our place and that includes singing the songs or prayers in our language.
Science Moab is a nonprofit dedicated to engaging community members and visitors with the science happening in Southeast Utah and the Colorado Plateau. To learn more and listen to the rest of Cynthia Wilson’s interview, visit www.sciencemoab.org/radio. This interview has been edited for
clarity.
