- Author: Jennifer Sowerwine, Associate Professor Cooperative Extension, UC Berkeley
- Author: Shawn Bourque, project manager, Karuk Department of Natural Resources
UC Berkeley and Karuk Tribe use Indigenous and western science to cultivate resilient food systems under changing climate conditions.
To adapt to climate change, Karuk Tribe members identified the importance of monitoring climate stress on plant species and actively managing and restoring healthy ecosystem processes to increase the consistency and quality of their food harvests, according to a new report. The Karuk Tribe's Aboriginal Territory encompasses over a million acres in the Klamath Basin in Northern California and Southern...
- Author: Jennifer Sowerwine, UC Cooperative Extension specialist, UC Berkeley
UC takes some first steps in addressing historical wrongs
Thanksgiving can be a time of celebration, gratitude and sharing. It is also often a time when people assist the most vulnerable in our communities, through donations to food banks, volunteer service and similar acts of compassion. But it is also a time of remembrance and mourning in Native American communities.
The narrative that many people have been taught beginning in elementary school about the First Thanksgiving celebration in the United States is based on historically inaccurate myths that fail to acknowledge the devastation wrought by settler colonialism,...
- Author: Jennifer Sowerwine, UC Cooperative Extension specialist at UC Berkeley
- Author: Sabrina Drill, UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Los Angeles and Ventura counties
The narrative that many people have been taught beginning in elementary school about the First Thanksgiving celebration in the United...
- Author: Mike Hsu
A farm-edge hedgerow can be more than a boundary or barrier. When it comprises blue elderberry, it can be a way to integrate biodiversity in an often-simplified agricultural landscape – and connect with a legacy of stewardship and use by California's Native peoples.
A new guide, published by UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, provides detailed instructions and advice for California farmers on growing, harvesting and marketing blue elderberry. It is available as a free download in the UC ANR catalog at
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Native Americans suffer from the highest rates of food insecurity, poverty and diet-related disease in the United States. A new study finds that Native American communities could improve their food security with a greater ability to hunt, fish, gather and preserve their own food.
“How food security is framed, and by whom, shapes the interventions or solutions that are proposed,” said Jennifer Sowerwine, UC Cooperative Extension specialist at UC Berkeley, who led the study in partnership with the Karuk, Yurok, Hoopa, and Klamath Tribes. “Our research suggests that current measures of and solutions to...
