Collective Spirit Podcast

S3E7: AJ Granelli

• First Peoples Fund • Season 3 • Episode 7

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In the first episode of our two-part series on Food Sovereignty and its impact on Indigenous communities, we’re joined by AJ Granelli, Farm Manager at Makoce Farm in Pine Ridge, South Dakota—an ally working in partnership with Lakota families to strengthen the local food sovereignty movement. As artists and culture bearers, we recognize the deep connection between food, land, and cultural survival. 

Speaker 1:

The way that people come together around food, when people share a meal. There is something so raw and intimate, and it's how people, I think, are supposed to connect to each other.

Speaker 2:

First People's Fund presents the Collective Spirit Podcast. The Collective Spirit moves each of us to stand up and make a difference, to pass on ancestral knowledge and simply extend a hand of generosity. The Collective Spirit Podcast features Native artists and culture bearers who discuss the power of Indigenous art and culture. Welcome to the Collective Spirit Podcast, where we explore the stories, movements and initiatives shaping Indigenous communities today. This is the first of two episodes dedicated to the food sovereignty movement and its profound impact on Indigenous nations. In this episode, we sit down with AJ Grinelli, farm Manager at Mokoche Farm, located on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. At Mokoche, meaning homeland in Lakota, the focus is on reclaiming traditional knowledge, utilizing the land and empowering the Oglala Lakota Oyate to build a thriving, self-sustaining future. Join us as we learn about the incredible work happening at Mokoche, the role of food sovereignty in healing and restoration, and how these efforts are creating lasting change for the community.

Speaker 1:

Hi, I'm AJ Grinelli. I am the Farm Initiative Director at Makoche Agriculture Development, based out of Porcupine, south Dakota, here on the Pine Ridge Reservation. I live a few miles away from Porcupine in Batesland, south Dakota, also on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Speaker 2:

Well, aj, thank you so much for joining me today. It's really a pleasure to meet you and to learn more about the good work that you're doing out there. Meet you and to learn more about the good work that you're doing out there.

Speaker 2:

You know, I think I had been in conversation with some other folks and I think you know the topic of food sovereignty is really like a timely issue and it's important all the time, obviously, but I think especially now, just kind of given sort of our current circumstances as a nation and you know, I think also post-COVID or during COVID, I think a lot of us kind of came to some realizations about access and or inaccessibility to food and the sources of these, especially now, right Today, we're experiencing this avian flu situation, so folks are paying higher prices or going without access to chicken or poultry, and you know eggs and so forth. So you know food and all of these things are, I think, constantly at the forefront, I think, for a lot of us. The first question I have is can you share what initially led you to this work in food sovereignty and how your efforts are rooted in or influenced by indigenous knowledge systems, whether from your own culture or from those you work alongside?

Speaker 1:

So I'll start with kind of how I got to the role that I have right now. We live in a pretty rural area, and really rural, I'd say. Our nearest major grocery store is 100 miles away in Rapid City. We do have, I think it's, 11 convenience stores and one grocery store around Pine Ridge here and, to be honest, the quality of food in our easier accessible places is not as great as we'd love to see.

Speaker 1:

And so what kind of brought me into food production is two things A the desire to eat tasty food. That is like that was the start. I love chicken wings and at the nearest store we get chicken like not all the time it's the chicken shelf is empty pretty frequently. So myself and my neighbors, we bought 20 chickens and we raised them up like baby chicks and we raised them up and we processed them and that was a whole big fiasco, took us all day, but that was kind of like the launch into food. And so, although chicken is not indigenous to this continent, or certainly not the Northern Great Plains here, I think that what I do really bring in in my passion for food and local food sovereignty development is the way that people come together around food when people share a meal, there is something so um, like raw and intimate and and um, it's. It's how people, I think, are supposed to connect to each other. Um, I think that people forever have been connecting to each other, and I don't know that I really um saw that until um, until I immersed myself in the indigenous community here on Pine Ridge.

Speaker 1:

I I grew up with a small family. We didn't have an extended family around. My grandparents were immigrants and and didn't have too many kids, so my dad's an only child and, and so I didn't get too many kids, so my dad's an only child, and so I didn't get that feeling. But working in the school and seeing all events happen around a meal really drew me into how we can collectively in my community here now, just bring together not just good tasting food but an economy that goes with it. So that's how I found myself here as the to make it a long story short the Farm Initiative Director at Makoche.

Speaker 1:

And at Makoche, what we're looking to do is fill system level gaps to enable the larger food system, and so, to put an example to that, we have been working on developing a poultry processing plant here in Porcupine. Now, this is not necessarily chicken country. We don't have a ton of grain operations and a lot of poultry is grown further east and towards the southeast of the US, of the US, and if we felt if we can prop up that kind of missing piece, then we can enable both entrepreneurs and also home raised potential for other people to grow chicken. And then kind of brings us the question like why chicken right, like it's not native to the area? The thing about chicken is the accessibility is really easy A huge factor.

Speaker 1:

In our area we've got this like massive landmass of Pine Ridge Reservation, but it's some ridiculous statistic like 90 percent of the land is controlled by nine non-tribal members that don't even live here on the rest. So how can we start an inroad Right? We're not going to take over 100 percent of the local economy and food system right away, but if we could grab small percentages at a time, if we can have people that have access to a single acre, they can raise all the chicken that their family would would consume for a year. So that's such a huge step and an inroad and collectively with with our CEO, nick, we've kind of come to that realization and that's what we've been working for for the better part of the past 10 years, that realization, and that's what we've been working for for the better part of the past 10 years. Yeah, so that's how I kind of got here and found my work in food sovereignty.

Speaker 2:

And I guess, like along those same lines, right like as a as an ally, a non-Native ally working in these spaces, I'm wondering if you could just talk a little bit about how you know, like food sovereignty being deeply connected to tribal sovereignty and you're out there on the land in these tribal communities and how it's also related to self-determination, and in what ways does your work help strengthen Indigenous sovereignty and how does access to traditional foods impact the and we I mean people in general are looking at internal reliance as opposed to external, strengthening so many aspects of tribal sovereignty.

Speaker 1:

So with that, like just the pride and connection to where your food comes from, I believe, is like such a powerful thing for for any person and and the reality is that the reservation system was set up to to be to to have a need for external reliance, right.

Speaker 1:

So any way we can kind of start to erode that. Just like on the previous question, we're not going to take 100% chunk out right away and I just last night did kind of an informational session about some of our next poultry avenues and trying to get some more folks into raising poultry. And we know that a million pounds or four or a million chickens or four million pounds of chicken is consumed right here on the Pine Ridge Reservation every year. So if we can grab 10% of that then that's at least a $4.5 million industry. That wasn't right here. So if we can have those dollars to stay here, that normally would just get sent out to Tyson or whoever. We're strengthening the local, just everything about the tight-knitness of the community, the economy, the self-reliance, it's all about grabbing pieces that we can realistically tackle at a time.

Speaker 2:

So I don't know if that exactly answered your question, but yeah, no, that is really great actually, um, because, like you said, it's not necessarily especially like farm. Smaller scale farming initiatives or agricultural initiatives are there's just no way they could compete with, like whole foods or amazon, right, um, but when you put those numbers into perspective, like that, you're're, like you said, like sort of chipping away and keeping those dollars and those resources in the community, within families, you know. So, yeah, when you put it like that, it's like, well, yeah, that's actually a big deal and if you do that every year, right, and increase it, it's making an impact, especially for smaller communities, like you know, pine Ridge or any other native community.

Speaker 1:

The benefit, also with smaller communities, is to have an awareness, especially for our students, our young people, the children around, if they have, even if they were not directly involved in the production, to know that it came from down the road. I think there's something to be said about the health of food by having a connection to it. Even if you can get healthy food from far away, there's a mindset, I think, as you are consuming food, that makes it healthier. So there is some other connection that I don't know, I don't have a scientific study for this or anything, but I truly believe if you are closer connected to it, your body utilizes that food better and more efficiently. And just the pride in that. Like I said, I don't have a scientific study to back that up, but I truly do believe it Just knowing the person or knowing in such a small community.

Speaker 1:

I know the chicken farmer down the road, I know the family that raised enough corn to feed those chickens. That went to the person that was raising the chicken, that connection and then it gets to a table of an elementary student that then eats that and they have that pride that yeah, my uncle was part of that or my auntie was there and butchered the chicken and she's so brave and cut that you know what I mean. Like that, that is so huge, so that that really excites me in in what we do.

Speaker 2:

The next question I have is as we're navigating this current political landscape, and I wonder if, as we continue to see indigenous lands, resources and policies under threat, how have these shifting political climates impacted food sovereignty efforts and what can Native and non-Native allies do to sort of support and fortify these movements?

Speaker 1:

So I think that policy can be a weapon and a tool, and so what we see as an example here on the Pine Ridge Reservation is a bit of a lack of some policy. So one of our initiatives at Makoche is our Chetishakui Food System Alliance. Our Chetishakui Food System Alliance, and our director, tiara, is working on a model food code to present ideas to the local policymakers to say how can we take ownership over and by we I mean the tribal nation here over certain things, if there is not a lot of times there's this concept like regulation is just bad. But regulation helps bring ownership, and local ownership too. We don't have a tribal food code, so to have on the books things that are protecting or things that are setting up avenues or legal avenues being in a very rural area, we are lacking a lot of authoritative bodies, so there's not like a true county health department Well, that is something that this food code that she's trying to develop with like lots of input from a wide range of young and elder folks you know what I mean. Um, that we've, we've been working with the university of arkansas who's developed this, this, this large. I don't know if you've ever seen the, the model food code that they developed. It's like this thousand page book of different example laws from tribal nations all around the country, and to be able to use examples of certain communities that have already started this process really opens up like a potential of self-determination and ownership.

Speaker 1:

So, yes, obviously the external political climate is challenging and it has been challenging for the past 400 years, I would say, for travel communities.

Speaker 1:

Right, how can that narrative, or just the idea of taking what ownership you can to then continue to grow on, I think, is the best course of action.

Speaker 1:

With that said, I'm not a politician and have no desire to be, but little pieces of policy. Another example that we found like, a couple of years ago, all of the local schools, every year we do, we do a Buffalo kill and yeah, there's not a legal avenue because these are primarily federally funded schools to have that buffalo that we killed out in the field, in the buffalo pasture, managed by the tribe to get into the cafeteria because it's not right. So how can we get a policy on the book to take ownership of that traditional wild native food right out the door to actually get into the school where our kids and our students want to and deserve to be eating that, but that gap right so we can look at what we can do. Obviously, huge funding cuts are challenging and it takes creativity and figuring out the most positive routes of what can be accomplished. That's kind of where I stand on the challenges of the external political climate.

Speaker 2:

The next question I have is your work is community-based and intergenerational. How do you see food sovereignty shaping the lives of current and future generations, and what role do youth and elders play in sustaining this work?

Speaker 1:

so we do a yearly convergence and we've we've had three convergence now for makoche and we have it right here in porcupine. We're not traveling like usually when there's a small conference or anything. We everybody goes to rapid city or somewhere. You know what I mean. Um, and the two. There's two panels that we've had the past few years that are the most incredible and powerful and that was the elder panel and the youth panel. Um, and the elder panel, to have the unches and cacas, the grandmas and grandpas there and talking about when they were bringing back memories. You get half a dozen people in their 70s and remembering from time in the 30s and 40s in a really rural area where they were carrying buckets and stealing duck eggs from the creek and stuff, and they remember these stories when they were kids and bringing home things for their grandparents to cook and prepare is like, so powerful. So that knowledge of just remembering connection to food and, just like I said earlier, right, people gather around food and share things and feel that pride and then, at the same time, to see young people having a connection to food may be different, right, maybe they're not out collecting duck eggs next to the creek anymore, but they are still in touch with whatever food they are, is or are consuming, bridging that gap. Although it's different, there's a lot of similarities. So I think that by just maintaining those generational connections allows for our next set of producers or caretakers of the local land. Basically Other things I mentioned about how we've had this a few years now, our families up to 34 families now that produce 75 chickens and we help them process so they can have chicken for the year. And the past few years we've had like six and seven-year-old little kids for spending an hour cutting open gizzards and these were the same kids that they got the chicks when they were a day old and they raised them for seven weeks and they're there on processing. And to have that connection when you're a young person is something that will stick with you forever. Have that connection when you're a young person is something that will stick with you forever.

Speaker 1:

I was in horticulture for a while and plant identification is something that I refer to a lot.

Speaker 1:

And young people the younger you can show someone a plant or something of the natural world, they pick up things that adults can never gain. I compare it to there are different languages around the world that if you don't learn by a certain age, you'll never be able to make that sound right. And young people, if they have they put the connections, get made inside their brain that they will always identify certain aspects that may not even be able to be described with language, but they will understand and see that and have a relationship with it that you can never get if you weren't exposed early on. And so to see just kids and their families engaging is like so powerful and gives so much faith into or I put so much faith into the children around of, yeah, they're going to be good, they're going to raise their food and they will do it. Yeah, it's incredible to have little kids raise the birds and do the chores every day and have that responsibility and then not be afraid of where their food comes from too is really powerful.

Speaker 2:

The final question I have is for listeners who may not be directly involved in farming or food production. Right, and thinking about our friends and relatives who live in more sort of city environments and so on, what are some of the ways that they can support Indigenous food sovereignty, whether in their local communities or on a broader scale?

Speaker 1:

I think the opportunity to share a meal is like the single, to bring it back to the first thing we talked about. Sharing a meal and being together around food is such a powerful way to bridge connections and and find commonalities as opposed to differences, so that's a huge step in the right direction. And with that there's also there's plenty of people that they don't want to necessarily know where their food comes from, but or or intimately, I think a lot of people kind of do. They want, they want assurance that it's safe and filling and full of nutrients right, but to just engage in some way in food that you to kind of take ownership over themselves and their communities.

Speaker 2:

Well, thank you so much. That was so good. I'm so grateful that you were able to take the time from your busy schedule and, you know, just share just a little bit of the good work that's happening at Makoche and in the community at Pine Ridge. So thank you, AJ, for taking the time to talk with me today.

Speaker 1:

Thank you. This was a lot of fun and great to meet you.

Speaker 2:

The Collective Spirit Podcast is produced by First Peoples Fund, whose mission is to honor and support Indigenous artists and culture bearers through grant-making initiatives, culturally-rooted programming, and training and mentorship. Learn more at firstpeoplesfundorg.