Posts Tagged: El Dorado County
CalFresh Healthy Living, UC helps connect Native youth with Native foods
Program with Foothill Indian Education Alliance teaches healthy eating to young people of many tribes
More than a tutoring center, the Foothill Indian Education Alliance facility in Placerville also provides cultural activities for youth in El Dorado and Amador counties affiliated with a broad diversity of Native American tribes.
In addition to traditional crafts like drum- and jewelry-making, the center began offering a food component last summer, through a partnership with CalFresh Healthy Living, University of California – one of the agencies in the state that teaches nutrition to people eligible for SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).
“A lot of the kids, because they don't live on a reservation or their family might not be connected to a local tribe, don't know a lot of their history or their foods,” said Cailin McLaughlin, nutrition educator for CalFresh Healthy Living, UC, based at the UC Cooperative Extension office in El Dorado County. “Food is a good way to explore any heritage because food is at the central point of a lot of cultures and customs – sharing meals and sharing stories behind it.”
Last spring, McLaughlin worked with Hal Sherry, the head tutor at Foothill Indian Education Alliance, to create a new, five-week “summer camp” during which youth would learn about and prepare Native foods in the center's kitchen, primarily with ingredients from its backyard garden.
Sherry said that the experience provided the participants – 10 elementary school students and seven middle or high school students – an important perspective on the interconnectedness of all living things.
“Part of the objective of the program is for them to understand that each one of us is part of the natural order of things, and that we have to do our part to fit into that cycle,” he explained. “There's kind of an ecological lesson that's also being learned…and we don't want to put poisons in our bodies, and we don't want to put poisons in our environment.”
Program combines cultural lessons, nutrition information
For the summer program, McLaughlin selected a curriculum centered on garden-based nutrition, and infused it with elements of Indigenous food ways.
“We predominantly picked ingredients that had cultural significance to Native American communities, so things like blueberries, blackberries, pine nuts, squash, things of that nature,” she said. “So we could feed into the history of that ingredient, why it's important to the Indigenous communities – and then give (the students) the nutritional information about it.”
After the youth prepared chia seed parfaits – from a recipe that is part of a series developed by CalFresh Healthy Living, the California Indian Museum and Cultural Center, and the Center for Wellness and Nutrition – a Foothill Indian Education Alliance staff member shared that Native hunters would eat chia seeds for strength before a long hunt.
Many of the participants had never had chia seeds before, and the parfaits were an “absolute favorite,” in the words of McLaughlin.
“I wish we could have made them more often!” said Lacey, a fifth grader who participates in the center's programs year-round.
In addition to working outside in the garden, Lacey said she also liked cooking in the kitchen during the summer camp – and the fact that the young people could take the lead.
“It was all the kids doing it, but (McLaughlin) was just supervising and making sure we were doing it right – it was really nice,” said Lacey, who identifies as Miwok.
Sharing within families, across tribes
Active participation by the young people is one of the strengths of the program, according to Sherry. He expressed admiration for McLaughlin's engaging teaching style, which eschews “lectures” and instead draws the participants into lively conversations about the nutritional content of the ingredients.
“Hopefully they're going to retain some of that knowledge and information and then remember: ‘You know what, yes, I think I would like to have some corn and some beans tonight, because that's going to help my bones grow strong and my eyesight get better,'” Sherry said. “That's really a big part of what we want them to come away with.”
At the end of the summer program, participants also came away with a binder of recipes from a cookbook of Native American dishes, “Young, Indigenous and Healthy: Recipes Inspired by Today's Native Youth.” James Marquez, director of the Foothill Indian Education Alliance, said he heard from students that they were bringing many of the lessons from the program back to their homes.
“I've heard the same kind of thing from parents and grandparents, who have said how wonderful that was and that kids come back home and have an interest in cooking and trying to serve nutritious meals to their families,” Marquez said.
That crucial sharing of knowledge also happens between and among staff members and students, as the center comprises members of many tribes, from South Dakota Lakota to Navajo.
“We serve Native people, we don't care what tribe they come from – they're all welcome,” Marquez said. “What we do represents a lot of different tribes, so we share information from one tribe to another, and that way people can appreciate everybody and what we have to bring to the table.”
Talia, a sixth grader who participated in the summer program, said that she enjoys that cultural sharing.
“I like how I can learn new things…and how I learn more about the people around me,” she explained. “It's also fun to learn about other people's cultures, and what Native American they are, too.”
McLaughlin went on to partner with Foothill Indian Education Alliance on a “Cooking Academy” program during this past fall, and is planning another spring/summer program for 2023, as well. The ongoing teaching and sharing of food ways is just one part of a long process to recover and rebuild Native American cultural traditions.
“Unfortunately, there was a very concerted effort to obliterate the Native culture on this continent; it was a very intentional, very deliberate effort to just stamp that culture out like it had somehow never existed,” Sherry said. “Now there's a much greater awareness of what a terrible thing that was, and so it's like trying to regrow a new garden over an area that was severely burned…and it's being done all over the country.”
/h3>/h3>/h3>UCCE Master Gardeners of El Dorado County focus on conservation agriculture
About 80 Master Gardeners of the UCCE group in El Dorado County came together to learn about the principles and practices of conservation agriculture in a lively discussion with CASI Workgroup Chair, Jeff Mitchell, on June 23rd at the group's monthly meeting in Placerville. The meeting was organized by Master Gardener event coordinator, Catherine Mone, and drew a very animated and engaged group of participants.
Mitchell talked about the core principles of conservation agriculture and the extent to which they're now being used around the world and recently in California. He showcased examples of pioneering innovation that have been achieved in a number of cropping contexts and also provided information and ideas as to why it will be increasingly likely that these sorts of production system options may have greater receptivity and resonance in California in the future. He ended his discussion with some examples of motivation that he has benefited from over the years from his professional mentor, Dwayne Beck of South Dakota State University. "Take the E out of ET and the T out of can't," was Beck's encouragement to Mitchell. This can be accomplished by protecting the soil surface with crop residues that cool soil temperatures and reduce soil water evaporation, and by not giving in to merely accepting the status quo, but by identifying bold, ambitious, and long-term cropping system goals and then coming up with the ways to achieve them. This is, according to Beck, "Nothing short of the agronomic and ecological equivalent of the space race back in the 1960's" and we are going to need to really dedicate tremendous creativity and effort toward achieving it.
CASI was very honored to be invited by the Master Gardeners of El Dorado County and we look forward to returning to Placerville in late September!
East meets West as AquaSol swimmers train together
Placerville mom Chandra Schreck was late this year filling out paperwork to participate in the 4 H International Exchange Program that would bring a Japanese student to her home for a month this summer.
The program, in conjunction with Japan’s Labo progam, pairs students with families in both countries. The exchanges are on an alternating basis. In 2012, students from the United States can apply to visit Japan.
Schreck, the mother of two girls, Maddie, 11, and Calista, 7, was hoping to host a girl but they had all been placed much to her disappointment. But then Sana Kobayashi, 13, from Matsuyama in Southern Japan, who was originally slated to go to Texas, was relocated to California and the Schrecks’ home because there weren’t enough host families in Texas.
And to make the experience even more special, Sana belongs to a competitive swim team in Japan, which worked out well because both Maddie and Calista are members of AquaSol, a year-round USA swim team based at the Western Slope Aquatic Center.
“Her application said she was an advanced swimmer, but you never know how advanced,” Chandra said. “It was a coincidence that we got a swimmer.”
“She’s a faster swimmer than I am. She’s very good,” Maddie said.
AquaSol coach Steve Skidmore welcomed Sana to the program and the month not only included lots of fun excursions, Sana, Maddie and Calista didn’t miss a day of training together.
“She was awesome — a lot of fun,” Skidmore said. “We communicated surprisingly well. She’s a nice sweet girl and a hard worker. It’s been good for our team members to have her.”
Communication was difficult but not impossible.
“It was a challenge but Sana put in a lot of effort,” Chandra said. “She really started to express herself in English the last three or four days. It was tiring for her, but it was fun for us to learn to say some of the more common things around the house.”
Maddie, who will be eligible to visit Japan when she turns 16, thought the experience was “very fun.”
The month also included visits to Lake Tahoe, Sun Splash in Roseville, Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, Sacramento and the state capitol, a River Cats game, boating and tubing at Jenkinson Lake and Gold Bug Mine Park.
“We stayed pretty close to home and showed her the area around here,” Chandra said. “Sana also loved watching Looney Tunes cartoons.”
Sana, who leaves the Schreck home Thursday to return to UC Davis for a night and then home to Japan Friday, could not decide what was her favorite part of her visit.
“It was all good,” she said, also admitting she wasn’t homesick and hinting she would have liked to stay longer.
California hosted 18 students from Japan in the exchange. Five were based in El Dorado County.
To view the original article, visit http://www.mtdemocrat.com/sports/east-meets-west-as-aquasol-swimmers-train-together/