MAZON Blog

This month marks Native American Heritage Month — a time to celebrate the history, culture, resilience, and contributions of Indigenous peoples. At MAZON, we are working to ensure that the needs of Tribes and Tribal communities are centered in ongoing deliberations about food policy and anti-hunger programs. We were delighted that last week, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow introduced the text of her Farm Bill proposal, which aims to expand Tribal authority to administer federal nutrition programs.

However, many of our partners in Indian Country are still reeling from a recent crisis of empty shelves, hungry families, and broken trust in the wake of extreme food delivery delays and food shortages in the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR) — with no immediate resolution in sight.

The crisis began in April 2024 when the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) — which runs FDPIR and other federal nutrition programs — consolidated warehouses from two locations to a single vendor responsible for food warehousing and distribution for the entire country. FDPIR serves nearly 53,000 Native American participants each month, providing essential food assistance to income-eligible families at more than 100 Indian Tribal organizations. 

Almost immediately following USDA’s consolidation, Tribes across the country began reporting delayed, inconsistent, and incomplete food deliveries. Some Tribes received expired shipments, damaged food, or shipments meant for other communities, with many reporting no trucks arriving for weeks, leaving participants scrambling to put food on their tables.

Ignoring Tribes Has Real Consequences

Sadly, the crisis wasn’t completely unforeseen. At the February 2024 Tribal consultation where USDA announced the plans to consolidate, Tribal leaders and FDPIR managers were skeptical about the approach. Despite the concerns Tribal leadership expressed over the need for a regional rather than national food system, USDA moved forward with its plans without Tribal consent. The ensuing crisis spoke to the importance of recognizing Tribal sovereignty and thoughtfully weighing Tribal input in order to avoid unintended harms. 

MAZON joined Tribal leaders in calling on USDA to immediately address the urgent food shortages and delivery delays. We have been participating in weekly calls with USDA, FDPIR managers, and leaders of the National Association of FDPIR (NAFDPIR) to discuss short-term corrective actions, hear from Native leaders about ongoing challenges, and chart longer-term solutions to the problem. 

MAZON staff also attended USDA’s emergency Tribal consultations to hear first-hand from elected Tribal officials about the impacts that food disruptions are having on their people. Some Tribal officials have pointed to the federal government’s constitutional responsibility to uphold its trust and treaty obligations to Tribes in their impassioned pleas for USDA to rectify the situation immediately. While the extreme disruptions could be viewed as simply an unfortunate logistical challenge, Tribal communities have experienced the situation as another instance of longstanding broken promises to Indian Country.

Historical Roots and Colonial Legacies

The U.S. has a long, troubled history of government food aid in Tribal communities. The historical forced relocation of Native Americans by the federal government from their ancestral lands to reservations decimated access to their traditional foodways that had included hunting, gathering, fishing, and farming. The loss of traditional lands and food sources resulted in dependence on federal government programs, including FDPIR. Congress established FDPIR in the 1977 Farm Bill to provide USDA commodity foods to Native Americans living on or near reservations that have limited access to affordable, nutritious food and SNAP retailers. While the program has a legacy of colonialism, paternalism, and poor health outcomes, over the last decade FDPIR managers, NAFDPIR, and Tribes have successfully advocated to improve the nutritional value of the food box and for the inclusion of culturally appropriate, traditional, and Native-produced foods in the package. 

But this crisis could have a lasting effect on the perception of FDPIR in Native communities. With unpredictable food deliveries and continuing shortages, Tribes are left juggling staff, paying for food out of their own limited budgets, and seeking additional support from other sources to keep their FDPIR programs going. FDPIR managers report program participation is down as frustrated participants lose trust in the program. 

In August, USDA began implementing several short-term actions to try to get more food to the reservations including distributing a total of $11 million in funding from the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) directly to Tribes to buy food. But there is still a long road ahead before the problem is solved. Long-term, Tribes are calling on USDA to implement a regional food distribution system — a solution they’ve advocated for decades  — and the Native Farm Bill Coalition will be pushing for these changes in the next Farm Bill. But it could take years to get that system up and running.

Standing with our Partners in Action

At a recent Congressional Joint Oversight hearing, our friend Mary Greene-Trottier, President of NAFDPIR, summarized the current situation in a succinct and powerful way:

“Our program sites are among the most remote sites in the United States […] We feed some of the most vulnerable people in the United States who have, in most cases, extreme limitations on their ability to access food. We at NAFDPIR predicted that at some point we would find ourselves here — experiencing food shortages. We never wanted it to happen — but we also knew that our supply chains and our communities we feed are impoverished and remote. Let us all decide here today that we will work together to solve these problems, right the ship, and fix the long-standing concerns that NAFDPIR has warned USDA Food and Nutrition Service of for years and years.”

We at MAZON are proud and honored to partner with Tribal organizations and leaders like Mary, who are doing all they can to ensure the current food disruptions are solved as quickly as possible — and to put forth their long-term vision for safety net programs like FDPIR. This Native American Heritage Month and always, we hope you will join us as we remind policymakers that they have an opportunity and obligation to listen to, respect, and support sovereign Tribes and Indigenous communities.