 Hi, everybody. We're going to get started here with the next presentation. I'm Stephanie Welch. I'm going to be introducing our next speaker, who is Gideon Maylor. The talk that we're going to have today from Gideon is Decolonizing the Diet, Teaching Early US History in the Home of Ansel Keys. And so Gideon Maylor is a PhD, is an assistant professor in the history of early America at the University of Minnesota, and a former Title A Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge University. He's engaged in a project to raise awareness about ancestral health principles through the teaching of early US history in a large public research institution. So take it away, Gideon. Thank you, and good morning. So I came to the University of Minnesota system from Cambridge, the home of Darwin, and you could say evolutionary health. And I came to the home of Ansel Keys, progenitor of the failed lipid hypothesis, yada, yada, yada, the seven country study. We all know how bad that was, so I won't go into it. It was also a place where in 1954, the Scottish biologist who discovered Penicillin, Alexander Fleming, came. And he was told by various members of the university that it might be great to give some of the antibiotics that he was pioneering to various animals to fatten them up, and maybe even little babies as well. He didn't think that was a great idea, but so these are some of the darker aspects of the university's history in terms of public health. But as I'm gonna try and talk about today, there are also some more positive aspects. And positive aspects that I'm gonna hope to show can be taught through the study of early US history. So there are those are the negatives, and then there are more positives in the state. We all know about the Mayo Clinic, trying to turn the state into a public health destination, often in conjunction with the university. And the Mayo Clinic, as many know, pioneered ketogenic diets, for example, or at least helped to pioneer it. They pioneered various treatments of epilepsy, and they don't always promote a high-carb, low-fat paradigm. There are new models which are being introduced, often in conjunction with University of Minnesota researchers. So it's not all bad. There are other aspects of the university which are looking to promote grains and so on, and so that might be thought of as slightly more problematic. But we've got other positive aspects in the state. We've got the Thousand Hills Cattle Company, who are pioneers in the grass-fed movement. Second, I would say, in terms of accessing grass-fed foods, maybe just to this state, California. And of course, as many people don't realize, the state's home to our great and good Nora Goodgaldis. And thanks to my partner, Nicola, for some of the artwork that you'll see in this original artwork that you'll see in this presentation. And so there's Nora saying, we're all genetically, biologically, physiologically, without exception, hunter-gatherers. Here's another cartoon. There's our friend Rob Wolf in Reno, Nevada, telling the police force, eat your butter. Figures such as Rob Wolf have recently begun to try and move ancestral principles into public communities, a bit like we saw with the native paleo movement in the previous presentation. Rob did this with his paleo diet risk assessment in the Nevada police force, whom he said were literally dying of metabolic syndrome. But what I want to talk about today is how can ancestral principles be promoted from within, really, what are the largest public institutions in this country, public research institutions, such as the UM system, with its many different branch campuses. And particularly, in my case, a university system with two populations that are particularly amenable to ancestral health principles. Number one, Scandinavian Americans, who I'll get onto at the very end of my talk, Minnesota being more Norwegian and Swedish than Sweden and Norway, as many people know, as well as Indian communities. And I'm using the word Indian because that's the preferred use of the term amongst the indigenous communities of Minnesota. I know in other states, the preferred term is Native Americans or American Indians, but I'll use the word Indian and Indian studies. And so what I particularly want to show is how, as a professor of history, I'm not a scientist, never have been, never will be, how, but a professor in the humanities of history, somebody who has to teach about Thomas Jefferson and the founding and the Puritans and the witches in Salem, how it's actually within a US history course that ancestral health principles might actually be promoted. Particularly a course which would be open to bio majors, engineers, historians, English literature students, pre-med, whatever, but a course in which we would look at the early survey of US history, but within that course, particularly focus on Indian studies and the Indian encounter. But we would not only be looking at history, we would be, and what I think is unique about the course and what I would hope to roll out in the next few years, we'd be also looking at the latest scientific, peer-reviewed medical literature, peer-reviewed scientific literature, and so how some of the hot button issues in ancestral health might speak to the study of early US history, but also how the study of early US history might speak to some of those hot button issues whether it's resistant starch, safe starch, ketogenic diets, insulin, all that kind of stuff. And so that's what I'd like to outline now, how such a course would work. We would, with the students, we'd focus on what I would call the old thesis, in which we would partly discredit, and it's being partly discredited among scholars anyway, which is what we call the biological exchange thesis, which in a nutshell is Europeans come over to the US, to what was then continental North America after Columbus, and through the 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, Native American communities, Indian communities, are decimated, we used to say just as a result of a lack of immunity to infectious diseases from Europe. But this kind of gets Europeans off the hook in a way, because we're talking about abstract diseases here, which kind of just are there, and then unfortunately indigenous peoples die. What we're now increasingly saying, is that it's not just a biological exchange model where abstract infectious diseases are somehow just transported, unfortunately. What's now coming into scholarship is colonization. It's the effects of colonization alongside the biological exchange of pathogens, which Indian communities were unable to withstand. Because we know that in fact studies of the black death in medieval Europe and various other plagues across the world, medieval China for example, populations can actually, according to historians, bioanthropologists, recover from near destructive epidemics. Within a hundred years it is possible and has been possible through history to recover from widespread epidemics. We're starting to realize that you need something else alongside those epidemics, and that something else is interventions, interventions from peoples, and from what we'd see in the North American context, interventions from European colonizers. And particularly what we can see is forced changes in diet and agriculture. Number one, the first example that we can see there and we can talk about is the problem of domesticated agriculture. How European agriculture moves a hunter gathering system among Indians towards one in which cattle and new forms of cattle are concentrated in small pens. We in a class, this class that I'm trying to show the model for, we would look at for example, the ways in which Indian communities often, after they had been attacked or subjected to colonization, they would attack European livestock before they were attacked or retaliated against actual European settlers. So from the 1500 through to the 19th century, we see livestock being attacked, often before we see humans being attacked. Why attack livestock? Firstly, as we discuss in any class, livestock concentrated into pens. As we know from modern ecology, modern agriculture, work by Joel Salaton and many other people in the ancestral health movement, concentrated livestock has a propensity to create all sorts of infectious diseases that people might not have noted before. And there are many original sources and we don't have time to go into this now, but we suggest that Indians knew this very well. They knew this wasn't just about pathogens coming from Europe, but they knew that somehow it was this concentrated cattle that and within close proximity to concentrated cattle that infectious diseases can move across the barrier. And so they attack that cattle because that's a way of getting rid of what they see as a key factor in the promotion of infectious diseases. We also, aside from the issue of infectious diseases and cattle, cattle gets in the way of traditional diets. It gets in the way of Indian communities whether in California, New England, parts of Florida, whichever case study we'd look at in any class. The new forms of European enclosures and domesticated agriculture will literally provide a physical barrier that stops hunting and gathering of fatty meats, but also stops Indian communities from gathering what we would call, I guess, or at least some people in this community would call safe starches, acorns, tubers, those kind of things. And when you lose your ability to harvest those, we can see from bioanthropological literature, historical literature, your health, your fertility goes down. We saw that in the previous talk, but we can see historical evidence of this from the 1500s onwards. And so here are some of the examples of just some of the native foods that various Indian communities, in particular case studies, would have had access to. And then after colonization, you lose access to those. Different types of berries, lower glycemic starches, fish, particularly in the Great Lakes region and all the way up to Alaska, fatty fishes. And of course, you've got the bison and many other things, which the fattiest cuts and the organs would have been prized. And again, we have many sources from this, going back to the 1500s, all the way through to the 20th century. But what we see is a loss of access to hunting and gathering those meats and a loss of culture, a culture which would prize the fattiest parts, the organs, all the stuff that we don't need to be told about here, that we know about that Western A price has shown over the last decades. And so an aspect of colonization leads to a lack of an ability to access these fat soluble minerals and a lack of an ability to access the kind of meats that you would have already gotten to before. In any class, we could even look at peer-reviewed literature on what Western A price called Activator X, Vitamin K2 and how we would have to hypothesize at this point that colonization decreases the ability of Indian communities to access K2 from things like oligon grease and from fatty parts of fish eggs and many other types of foods. So here are some examples of the previous high-fat consumption, which colonization reduces access to from Northern Canada all the way down to the Southwest. But I also mentioned starch and acorns and tubers. Many, we now know that many of the starches that Indians got less access to after European colonization tended to be lower glycemic, mesquite pods in the Southwest, a cereal known as psyllium or plantargo consumed by Pima Indians in the Southwest. Those same substances in peer-reviewed scientific literature more recently have been shown actually to lower insulin-like properties in their consumption or even when they're consumed alongside other starches. And so again, we would see a lack, a loss of access to these leads to a decline in health really. And so we'd be looking at the historical case studies for this alongside more modern literature, which I think is really important. And so there's Paul Jaminé might be happy, might not be so happy with the maze in the corner, but the rest he might be happy with in such a course. We'd look at, for example, Minnesota wild rice, which is more lower glycemic and indigenous communities in Minnesota after colonization lost access to that. And so we'd look at the historical case studies of that alongside modern literature. And again, references to acorns raises in my opinion some interesting ideas with regards to resistant starch. We saw in Grace Liu's talk a couple of days ago, parts of acorns, if they're ground up, can be a form of resistant starch. And we know that Indian communities used to ground up acorns and eat them with various kinds of foods, fats and so on, and lost their ability to harvest acorns after European enclosure and after European agriculture moves. So we could hypothesize, and this will just be a hypothesis in a class, that colonization actually literally affects the gut biome of Indian communities, a lack of resistant starch, having potentially all sorts of other kickback issues. And so we'd look into the medical literature there, but we'd also look at the history. So it's not often that acorns get mentioned so much. There'd be another sidebar that we'd look at and which I was going to talk about, but I can't go into now, which is the whole issue of maize, which is very controversial as to whether maize, how maize has changed over the years. But there is evidence that the consumption of maize starts to affect Indian health even before European contact in terms of skeletal and dental evidence. But we'd go into that controversial literature also. Finally, we could talk about, for example, new research on ketosis and seasonal ketosis. How it is that colonization and the reduction of the ability of Indians in various communities to take part in seasonal hunts, how it is that that means that their ability to consume more starches in some communities in summer, from fruits and tubers, what Jan Rene would call safe starches, how that would often diminish once you move into winter, winter hunts. What we're seeing is during winter, the consumption of fat would be a lot higher. And so again, you'd have to hypothesize that there could be a keto-adapted state during winter when Indians would be more likely to go on long hunts. And these are the kind of hunts that our friend Ben Greenfield's triathlon experiment has sort of simulated, i.e., cardiovascular exercise, sort of slow burn, many, many hours, but how a keto-adapted state may benefit that. And there's Ben trying to chase a deer there. But whether or not it's keto clarity is up for debate, but we would see that Jimmy might be happy with the suggestion that we could see an example of a move towards a seasonal approach to ketosis. Summer starches, winter ketosis. And there is literature and there are studies that show the ways in which summer might be a greater time for starch and winter maybe for fat. But again, there's all sorts of controversies there and we would discuss that, but we would do it in conjunction with trying to understand the food ways, the seasonal food ways of Indian communities and how they were disrupted by colonization. And we'd look at, therefore, the seasonality of eating and the fractal nature of early human existence, as Mark Sisson likes to say. We would look at how that fractal nature was ruined by European colonization. So how the seasonality of hunting that moved from starches in summer towards keto adaptation in winter was potentially ruptured. So again, we're looking at history, but alongside other evidence. And so finally, in the last 30 seconds or so, we know as we saw in the previous talk that there are very important contemporary dimensions to this. We know about the high instances of diabetes and other forms of metabolic syndrome in Indian communities, who when they return to ancestral health paradigms, health often greatly improves. So we try and understand how, how is it that particular susceptibility to diabetes might be understood in terms of the previous ancestral diets that were then ruptured by colonization. There are all sorts of other case studies that we go into, but I don't have time to now. The Pima Indians in the Southwest, a lot has been done in that respect. Again, the advantage of the traditional diet don't need to go into that. We've heard it in the previous talk. But there is a movement in conjunction, in addition to native paleo, there's the decolonizing the diet movement in the Great Lakes, particularly Michigan and Michigan State, where college students, particularly with Indian ancestry, have been moving back to their ancestral diet, learning about it in class, but then teaching other people within their class who don't have Indian ancestry, why it is that they're doing so. So you're learning about history, but you're also learning about contemporary health. And these communities are actually significantly finding benefits and health markers. And it's not just in things like diabetes, but it's also in, for example, instances of depression and stuff like that has been improving. And this is all being pioneered in Michigan, but I'd like to see it roll out into Minnesota, the Great Lakes, and then further onwards to the rest of America. And why is Andreas Enfeld, who was here last year but isn't here this year, I don't think, why is he here? Well, of course, he's a Swede and he's a big low-carb, high-fat kind of guy. And he is very excited how in Sweden, public policy is now getting on board with a more of a high-fat, low-carb lifestyle, albeit he might not place such of an emphasis on safe starches that I might do, for example. But he might be excited by this contemporary initiative, particularly in a state like Minnesota, where Scandinavian Americans who came over in the 19th century haven't always had the best, have always had a tricky relationship with Indians, just like all European colonizers have. It's sometimes tense, but we can see in the classroom how in Indians are learning about ancestral health principles in the conjunction of studying their own history, how Scandinavian Americans could also learn from their own students, their own compatriots alongside them. And of course, don't forget, many Scandinavian Americans take a lot of note of what's going on in their old country, and I've had many conversations, many know about the Swedish, what some call the Swedish craze for ancestral health principles. So this is a community that's particularly amenable to this message alongside Indians. And so in conjunction, come to Minnesota. Thank you. So we have time for maybe about two questions. I see one right here. Hi, thank you, great talk. I wanted to just first say thank you for doing original artwork. It's a very, very rare thing to not be using clip art from the web and that kind of thing. I wanted to ask if you had a recommendation for a single resource or book to learn about all the bad things that happen to native peoples upon colonization. Is 1491 a good book? So if someone wanted to kind of learn the big picture of what really happened, is there a good resource? Yeah, the work by just Google Russell Thornton. He's a Cherokee American anthropologist and professor. He's actually at UCLA, and I've learned a lot from reading him. I am by no means an expert in Indian studies. I come from early American intellectual history. So this has been a journey for me as much as anyone else. So I'd recommend Russell Thornton. He's actually got a really important article, Health, Disease and Demography. It's actually in a book called A Companion to American Indian History, very simple. I can give it to you after. But Russell Thornton, he's quite controversial because he's actually used the word Holocaust, which personally I wouldn't, but you can see where he's coming from. So yeah, go for him. And there are various other indigenous health practitioners as well who are also cultural historians and community historians as well. And I can put you on to some of those too. Can I just add to that? I'd like to add Vine DeLoria to that book. Do you have any Vine DeLoria? Would be a good author as well. One more question. Thank you, Gideon. My question is, in your research, what specific things have maybe you found for indigenous peoples concentrating on the procreation years of people who are having children and producing the next generation? I feel like a lot of my research has been, indigenous peoples put a lot of concentration on the health of new moms, dads and children. Well, I guess, again, I'm no expert on breastfeeding and where all the health benefits of that, but we know that the ability to transmit nutrition through breast milk, the kind of nutrition that you're transmitting is lessened by the move towards some of the diets post-contact. And so Indians do realize this. And there is a, we see, for example, in Indians, in Indian communities, in Great Lakes area and in Alaska, expectant mothers, or even when you're trying to conceive, there is a Ulegan grease I mentioned and fish eggs are often highly prized for expectant mothers. And so we, from now we say this is because of omega-3 and all that kind of stuff. So I've seen that, I've seen that a lot particularly focus on fish eggs in the Great Lakes. And also after colonization, a desire to try and get to those fish eggs because you know you're not gonna get stuff from other animals, such as the various mammals that you're unable to hunt or get the organs that you would be before when you're having to rely on other cattle. And often the cuts of meat that Indians get are the worst cuts, they're the muscle meats that we all eat now, which we know aren't the good ones. And we can see them trying to mitigate that, but particularly for fertility issues. Thank you everybody. Thank you. Thank you.