"Gather" - a special screening of the new documentary film
Monday, November 16
5 - 6:15pm PT
Gather is an intimate portrait of the growing movement amongst Native Americans to reclaim their spiritual, political and cultural identities through food sovereignty, while battling the trauma of centuries of genocide.
For tickets & to learn more about “Gather,” click here.
Indigenous Food Sovereignty: A Restorative Revolution
Tuesday, November 17
12-1:30pm PT
As organic farming becomes more and more popular and regenerative practices are being widely embraced as well, it is critical to acknowledge the indigenous roots of these systems in the United States. Far from a wilderness, pre-Contact and colonial America was an intricately interdependent series of ecosystems carefully tended by indigenous stewards who practiced a range of traditional methods from permaculture and dry farming, to complex irrigation, genetic, and herd management techniques.
We will discuss the ramifications of the departure from that way of life on our food systems, as well as the environmental issues stemming from the erasure of California Native Peoples from forest, water, and farming ecosystems. We will also hear about Native-led initiatives in a variety of different bioregions designed to address some of these challenges.
Please join cast members from the recent hit documentary Gather, Sammy Gensaw (Yurok) and Elsie Dubray (Cheyenne River Sioux, MHA Nation), as well as the film’s director, Sanjay Rawal, and Ventureño Chumash anthropologist Dayna Barrios for this sure-to-be riveting webinar.
Panelists
Dayna Barrios, Ventureño Chumash
Dayna Barrios is Ventureño Chumash and was born and raised on her traditional homelands of Ventura, California. Her ancestors are from the village of Swaxil on the island of Limuw (Santa Cruz Island) which is right off the coast of Ventura County. Dayna received her master’s degree in Sociocultural Anthropology where her research focused on human rights and the impacts of casino-capitalism, specifically in regards to how they relate to tribal disenrollment within California. Dayna has worked with Native communities throughout California for almost a decade. She currently is the program manager at Owens Valley Career Development Center’s Tribal TANF program in Ventura County.
Elsie DuBray, Cheyenne River Sioux Nation
Elsie DuBray is a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Nation and is currently attending Stanford University as an undergraduate. Her analysis of lipid structure in buffalo meat, which her family raises and harvests, took her to the Intel World Science Fair, where she placed fourth in the biology division in 2018. Elsie is committed to using the resources of Stanford’s biological sciences program to further her research of traditional indigenous diets as a way to combat the diabetes epidemic in Indian Country.
Samuel Gensaw, Yurok
Samuel Gensaw is an enrolled member of the Yurok Tribe and a co-founder of the Ancestral Guard, committed to the foodways of the North Coast California indigenous as well as supporting indigenous environmental movements worldwide.
Moderator
Sanjay Rawal
A James Beard Award winning filmmaker, Sanjay made FOOD CHAINS (EP Eva Longoria, Eric Schlosser) which chronicled the battle of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a small group of Oaxacan and Chiapan indigenous farmworkers in Florida, against the largest agribusiness conglomerates in the world. The film was released theatrically in a number of countries and won numerous awards – including citations from the US Conference of Mayors, the Clinton Global Initiative and the White House. The film was also a Winner (shared) of the 2016 BritDoc Impact award and several festival prizes. Sanjay’s last film 3100: RUN AND BECOME won several festival prizes, had a robust theatrical release in the US in 2018 and opened in Europe and Australia in 2020.