- For Dan Cornelius,
food has always been an important influence in his life.
As a member of the Oneida Nation,
Dan developed a strong connection
with Native American food and culture.
- For me, why I was drawn to food and to agriculture
is food is at the core of life, of survival.
It touches on all aspects of life.
- It was that interest that led Dan to realize
there was an opportunity for Native Americans in Wisconsin
to honor their agricultural history and sell their goods.
- You know the historic economy of Wisconsin
was really centered on food and in agriculture
and a lot of people today
don t even think of Indians, Native Americans
and tribes engaging in agriculture,
but you look historically,
and we had extensive fields as far as the eye could see
of corn with pumpkins and squash and beans and sunflowers
and Amaranth all mixed in.
What I saw in the region here
is that we were really lacking infrastructure
and support for a coordinated transportation and distribution,
marketing of our foods.
- Dan partnered with the Intertribal Agriculture Council
and the Mobile Farmers Market was born.
The market provides access to Native American-produced goods
like beans, corn and wild rice
at farmers markets and food summits across Wisconsin.
And as Dan explains,
the market does more than just provide a production outlet.
- It addresses our land issues and provides opportunities
for sustainable economic development
at the same time as improving community health.
- The way in which food is prepared
is often just as important to health as the food itself.
Dan says that
looking back to how food was traditionally prepared
is one way in which healthier practices can be re-introduced.
- And that s one of the fascinating things worth looking at.
The history of how foods were used.
And the knowledge that our ancestors had is really amazing.
- These are a Hodinoshoni blue sweet corn
and they just started coming up in the past two, three days.
This is a Hodinoshoni.
This is a white and purple calico corn.
It's flour corn.
- At a four-day food summit event,
Dan learned of the impact of indigenous foods
on the health and well-being of two diabetic women.
- And the first day, they were having
a tough time of managing their sugar levels.
But over the course of just a four-day event,
by the end of it,
eating those indigenous foods,
they had a complete transformation
in their bodies and how they felt.
- Response from Native American communities to indigenous foods
and the Mobile Farmers Market has been positive
and Dan says it helps establish open dialogues
and ignite action.
- It s a great opportunity as a conversation starter
and getting a pulse on a community,
and where folks are coming from.
And I think it also helps to inspire people
and just to think of what can they be doing.
Generally when people see all those foods,
they get pretty excited.
- In his own life,
Dan experienced the communal connection
that came from cooking traditional foods.
- I just remember growing up,
my grandma would bring down corn, corn soup at the holidays.
And I just loved eating corn soup.
- By making traditional foods more available,
Dan hopes to instill that same excitement
and love of cooking and food in others.
- Whether indigenous foods or not,
just getting families,
getting our younger generations into the kitchen,
and cooking again
and reconnecting those relationships with food
and making it at home.
That's important from both a health perspective
but also just from a community perspective as well.