 We have these different initiatives happening in the Fargo-Moorhead area where we want to make sure that we are protecting one another and that everybody is safe and that we prevent further tragedies from happening and so the Indigenous Community Circle is kind of all-encompassing independent entity that wanted to help focus on different areas and so one of the areas also was food and nutrition and fitness and the youth and so it kind of morphed into the Indigenous food ecology and what was the other one on that, it's kind of a different youth food ecology, yeah so like we're always for every evolving but just thankful to have good-hearted people like Rick that you know will continue to stand with us and we it's a mutual respect and understanding that we have within the community and definitely a great model I would say for others to replicate and so. So at the Indigenous Association we have we had a traditional ecological knowledge series where we had youth come in and learn about different things around like food, medicine, plants and you'll see some of the things that actually came from that series and for one of those those projects that we did we had the youth come out and they and you know going out to the Gladys Varey Garden and Rick picked all kinds of different beautiful flowers and plants and we used that pigmentation for that one right there the seal on with the cloth all those colors are from plants and so what we did is we visited the garden Rick told us he's really like he's not Native American but he's worked with a lot of different communities and he knows a lot about a lot of things and so he was telling us about a little bit about the names and like I think he knew the names you know jibway of some of these the scientific names that like the uses for these different plants like that just really taught these kids just and me like I didn't know this stuff either taught me and the adults that were helping out about all these things and then so we ended up having a big like a whole table full of plants as you can see there on up there and we took these plants and we had someone come in and they were giving us words in Ojibwe and then we kind of did the outline of the the plant or the design that we did we used Ojibwe words to kind of circle or encircle that that flower some people made flowers some people made designs some people made like bears those are really cool we use little teeny hammers and we used the plants to kind of knock the pigment out of them and help color the the anchor tree and through that it was it was so cool because through that one project the youth got outside the youth learned more about the the world around them the the plants the the garden they none of them knew that that garden existed they didn't know that was it like something that they could access and they learned a little bit more about a lot of folks from Ojibwe and so they learned more about their language and if it wasn't their language they learned about another language which maybe could help spark some interest in wherever they're from to kind of go back and learn some of that and so to me it was it was a really powerful like really dynamic project that we did with you know the help of Rick and having the garden there as a resource for our community and you we see a couple other projects there if you get a chance to just a plug for Dana Tricky over there with her quillwork stuff she's actually the one that helped us do those quillwork work pieces that was part of that same series and you know she taught us how to use quills and how to dye quills and how to put it on birch bark and all that stuff so I feel like I'm gonna step on a soapbox real quick I feel like we're as a society we're getting less and less connected and warm and less and less outdoors and so like part of what I really want to do with the Indigenous Association and how we're connected to this project the multicultural youth food youth and ecology project is getting you connected to the community getting them connected to like where does your food come from what is like traditional medicine like how can we use this how did our grandmothers and and grandfathers and relatives and ancestors use these things that were around us all the time to make our lives better and to help people around us and so we do a lot of talking about like how how can we really integrate some of these things in our life and understand some of these ways that were connected to the water to the earth to the to all this to really make an impact in the way they see the world so you know if you know where things are coming from and you know what scarcity is and you know what natural medicine is like you're more likely to respect it and really try to seek that out and conserve and be mindful of what you're doing as a as a person as an individual and as a community and so hopefully through this this partnership with the food youth and ecology project at rick we will give youth the opportunity to learn that and also maybe get them interested in being like create pathways into like agriculture or other fields that are connected to like the earth and the plants and the food and all that because I think sometimes our kids like they're looking for a direction and through these programs we can help connect them to their culture and maybe even help them find pathways to the future yeah I know when I was a kid I grew up in the twin cities my family's from white earth and I grew up in the twin cities and I wasn't very connected to my culture and it always felt like something that was as I lost my grandma died you know from cirrhosis when I was really young like I remember her when I was really young like for like I couldn't say thank you I had to say me which right like that was my grandma she she made sure that she was instilling some of that stuff into me and then I lost that and I didn't have anyone else I was connected to that was teaching those things to me and so as I was growing up you know I got into trouble like I you know I did my you know I was a kind of a crazy teenager like a lot of us are but when I got older and I started working with youth and I you know went to school and I had a degree in social work and I wanted to help people but one thing that I always thought was missing was that connection to culture and like if we can connect people to culture connect people to food connect them to productive things give them pathways to see a future that they want to be a part of and not necessarily just say that well your dad was this or your grandma was this or you know and a lot of times in a negative context like your your dad was an alcoholic so you're gonna be an alcoholic your mom was a drug addict you're gonna be a drug addict like like no like that that happened that's true that's not the only thing they were by the way and also like you don't have to go down that path too like there's there's some options for you to kind of um to do something else and we believe in you and here are some ways that you could do that it's attainable like you don't need to worry about like like um yeah you don't have to you don't have to think that you can't do these things because we believe in you and we're adults in your life and we really care about you and we'll help you figure out those pathways um so I just get really excited about this because I think I think um I know the youth are our future and um youth are really dynamic and smart and if you give them the opportunity to to really like dig into a problem and be part of the solution they'll take it and they'll come up and then they'll do that in ways that you don't really think because maybe you have a certain idea of how things are going to go um but like sometimes they just think outside of the box and they know kind of what's going on in different ways so I think having youth and adults work together on problems um and look towards pathways for the future I think we we have a dynamic world and if we overlook that and we overlook the youth perspective and we overlook the the ability for youth to be active contributors to the good in our world um then we miss out on something very very dynamic and very great so I get really excited about that and so I'm always excited to work with Rick I I heard about him like I've been working in the Fargo-Moorhead community for like four or five years and since I came into this community everyone's like oh you should meet Rick you should meet Rick you should meet Rick um and finally a couple years ago I did meet Rick and I was like yeah I probably should have met him earlier um so he's working really hard to help make those things happen in the indigenous community um also a new american community um and uh there's a church also that has a pollinator garden is getting rid of some some parking lot to build like a larger pollinator garden in Moorhead um there's all kinds of things that he's connected to to help make our community a better place we wanted to you know make sure that we amplify and uplift our youth um because this past summer Maya took more of a leadership role with the garden um in finding a day of the week that worked for our different individuals to come in so hard with scheduling you know but um she was able to keep leading the way and we showed up as her family to support her um but you know just continuing to to show up rain or shine even you know working into uh the night some nights you know if we knew the following day was going to be really really warm weather um and so she she kept the torch going for the garden and um really learned a lot from Rick and so we're really thankful for her to have this experience sort of in an urban area you know not not being on that home on the rest where we're from um because growing up you know as she mentioned like mom had a huge garden and I grew up with that experience as a kid and all of our surplus produce we always gave way to the community you know first to the elders and then to the community members and we'd go you know door to door um and knock on the door and um you know we would ride along in the the trunk of my mom's old car that was this big long steel type of a car you know but the the chunks were very deep so we had all of the produce bagged up in round bags and um that was kind of my first door knocking experience but it just um really built our instilled in us a sense of community to make sure that we look out for one another so I feel like that's kind of a common theme throughout the garden experience and the the healing garden even though we're in a urban setting such as part of how we provide a sense of belonging my experience with the garden has been really good I like working at the garden my grandma used to have a garden when I was younger and she would do fruits and vegetables every summer and I kind of just started helping her with that and it kind of became an ongoing thing and I really enjoyed it and so I was excited like they asked me to come help with the garden more because we were helping making new friends yeah this is all of us at the garden um and we ended up planting we had to use some of these big pots and we ended up planting um like sage and sweet grass and the big pot so that didn't spread all over um any other parts of the garden in our fruit spots um we had we've had a few um trials I guess you could say learning experiences um one uh was we're in a city space so the space that we were in was there was a house used to be there and so it was removed and so the space was just sitting there and that's when like ICC was like we'll look at this space because we're we're looking around like where could we put community gardens around in Fargo and then that's when that space was kind of um you know uh space that we were talking about but one of the one of the things that we went through was at one area it's was not level so it would get flooded and so we um we had to bring you know in more soil and um and you know fill that area but when we were when we were filling it and digging we realized that about like six feet under or maybe there was um a sidewalk so then we ended up having to dig all that up to get out that sidewalk because then because of it we wouldn't get the roots growing under there if we didn't remove that so then that was another um trial and then um we'd get a lot of resident help and then COVID hit and the shelter was moved from where it was to downtown so then we didn't have any of the resident help every day that we were getting and it was COVID and then it was a drought so I don't know if you guys remember that so we had a drought too and so then and we had just planted the orchard trees and so you had to water them for like five minutes each and so and we just we just had some some trials and then it would be usually one of us because we didn't want to bring a whole bunch of people out there because it was COVID even though we were outside you know we there you just didn't know all the all the you know how easy it was to transmit or transfer so um we wanted to be safe too so it would be a lot of us you know spending a couple hours out there on a day but um and so that's the normal because we ended up having the city mowed one day when um and so the kids made the normal signs and they're just adorable there's probably a couple more of those in here um so we this kind of goes through some of these and it's um and so in our first year because it takes a couple years to get apples we got apples last year but we got two so we were like really proud of those two apples and these are our beds were made out of cedar so they tried to be as you know as traditional to everything that we could with what resources that we had and this is another family that comes out to the garden and so we added this other this other bed we added last year too and we're trying to get one on the other side so we can have more space for food and then this was before we put we did a three sisters in the middle like where that launcher is we ended up or is that a launcher I can't see very well bucket but we ended up um and I we can talk more about that when we get up there but these are just some other slides this is Ruth then and Maya and watering and so you see in the back there that is um that is more like prairie and then over here there's also a pollinator garden and we saw um there was like we had like tons of leaves of butterflies and everything was beautiful and you can kind of see like the shape of the the raised beds um we had a really cool shot of it it looks almost as though like a star you know from a star quilt which was intentional but it's beautiful to see when you actually take a step back but there's more and then this past summer to nick uh nick sorry rick would have um educational sessions even with the with the youth you know they do some planting and then they would end the session with some educational like programming and things so a lot of knowledge sharing was was happening and it was really rich and really amazing to see this is one of the twins watering they were active participants and you know watering the garden of course we're aware of like child labor laws so no worries there and this is um this is uh this is me and rick and we go over and we get from Toby at legendary gardens she plants her and her husband plant from their home and um we um they they donate plants to us every year and rick gives out plants to like every single person his whole yard is filled and then like people just come and grab them so that she's she's her and her husband are wonderful and this just appeared there so sometimes that happens too where people will just put something in the garden and we don't know where it came from but it's just like a beautiful little gift this is another family that comes in we we ended up blocking out these so it'd be easier when the um when we have all the kids out to plant if they know like going this square this square my apple and grass okay having fun this is my mama and rick and then this is that we um so then this is so you saw the back of the garden now we put in the front of the garden this is the sidewalk runs right here in gladus ray shelters right next to us and this is um we um it did a medicine wheel can you get so you see it and so in by design each of those little quadrants um were a specific color and plant you know like similar to our traditional medicine will with um white yellow black and red and so we tried to improvise the best we could with the different traditional plants and to to match the colors of each of the different quadrants including sage and cedar and sweet grass even more families in the garden no more of our normal signs it was cute to see the normal the action taken because you know she meant as amanda mentioned it's city land but the city kept mowing or mowing our traditional um plants or you know and so they kept they thought they were the city thought they were doing a good thing by mowing the grass but we're like no those are you know we want to know and so the youth even got involved in we're making these little no more signs you know so it was kind of turned a positive a negative into a positive this is another photo from uh partnerships within the fargo morehead metro area where there's so many different community gardens in the fargo morehead area and so rick have built this partnership the network to uh partner with other community gardens and to have activities with the youth which was really fun to see and and to very inspiring just to see other community garden networks connect um this was an event me and rick went to i can't remember what it was for but msgm it was at msgm and we just it's an event where we go to places and we talk about the garden and yeah a lot of people came over we talked about it what we do and it was a fun experience yeah is there a certain amount of yield that you're trying to get to for the community and i guess how did you uh as a young person um we get interested in so that if i was to go back to my community and say hey we want all these young people to be a part of this most likely but i want your pay what keeps you voluntary um i just love nature and planting plants and it's just a fun experience because you're doing it with family and friends so that middle areas of this past summer we broke up broke the ground up there um to plant three sisters you know corn beans and squash um and it was a process too because it was grass you know we had to go through and use the old style method of breaking up the soil and planting another um um little bit of a problem that happened as we got to the garden and i'm like oh a tree fell right on our stuff and so um but you know he just worked through it like rick it literally a tree just smashed the berries but the gnome didn't get smashed you can see that middle areas who wasn't broken up yet with soil i mean you know how we were able to plant the three sisters in the middle yeah the trees really came a long way from the from start to finish you know it was pretty cool to see um the trees you know be strong and vibrant to where they are today or it was a process for sure but i'm sure we're preaching to the choir the question i got kind of going back to what you kind of first introduced the idea of like of the youth okay so we have um this idea of the youth uh being equal into this um to this whole idea of the american dream right and so we're always asking our youth to be going to these higher standards of what it should be outside of our communities and then um then they don't perform to those levels and i think you're kind of getting to the edge of it where you were saying that there's always this discrepancy of why are they in these jails and then why are they kind of sidelined in the schools and and this industrialization is not really performing to the level that we think that our kind of people should go to at these levels right and so the american dream isn't there and so um what is it that uh we should be working towards i guess in terms of our youth because i think as a person who went through you know school and whatnot i'm looking back and i'm going should i have spent my time more within the context of of a living organism uh of our community rather than trying to always go get the car go get the apartment go get the watch macaw that go get the all of these ideals outside of our community and whether that we need to kind of focus on within regards that because it seemed like if i was to you know be the non-native educator i'd be going oh my gosh all of our kids are challenged in one way or another could be labeled disabled is our whole community disabled in some sort of way does that grant us extra dollars to to apply for these different things or is it just a different intelligence that we need to exercise in terms of what's local to our communities so we're not putting these stresses on that we need to meet you know the the um what do you call it the the commodification process or the assimilation process to be able to handle what's going on and i was just wondering if dapple kind of helped with that within those locations i'm i'm sorry just crazy talk right now no i guess i just wanted in those areas is the are the youth are you still expecting them to be in the schools and then learning all of these non-native things that are the ideals and then come back to home and go like oh did you get your thermos from walmart so that you can do these things and that is the participation of the youth are they actually making their own community so that those are lifelong kind of things like yo bro what's happening man you know i have some thoughts about that and i think it comes back to like when we're working in the traditional ecological knowledge piece with the youth it's like bringing the elders in and like really having them teach about like the the stories the history the the real history right the real history and the real stories that you know a lot of times our youth don't get in schools or they don't necessarily have access to and letting that guide where they want to go let the elders come in and let them be connected and let them give them opportunity to teach the youth and then let the youth say we've heard all these stories and we know all these things and we know this about about our world here like um because my my grandma told me but i also know about this and they're living in two worlds and they can use that knowledge from both worlds maybe to make the world a better place but getting like informed through some of the traditional knowledge holders and the things in the stories and the the practices of our elders like i feel like i missed out a lot of that when i was younger and i i like as whenever i have the opportunity i try to take that in because i i miss that piece and if we can get opportunities for youth to get that that sort of knowledge and that sort of mentoring and uh attention or or you know things and then give them the the microphone i guess like i'm really about like getting youth to like be direct what's happening instead of it being from the top down but uh like once they have that wow once they have that once they have that knowledge and that information and they had that guidance yes and then letting youth direct kind of the adults around them like i really think that's important and you know and having those those elders around all the time to really give that feedback and like say like oh yeah you're doing good my boy you know like like we eat that yeah i mean i can add like i think being in an urban setting um there are a lot of interesting factions to staying true to your values and who you are um and coming from matriarchal matrilineal people and then learning to develop trust with a non-native person you know um so where we are with rick today is beautiful but you know it took some time it took some effort it took some uncomfortable conversations to be had on being a a strong native woman you know who comes from a matriarchal matrilineal people where um you know back down you know and so i mean just sharing like that we had to we had to have compromise but because oftentimes no offense but i think the patriarchy is different in different groups of people um older white men you know it's even i'm a farmer state legislator from north dakota where the majority is older white men and there there are still the mindset there there is still that mindset of women are less and especially native women are even lesser than white women so not to kind of go off in a different tangent but you know when we talk about the american dream yeah it would be great if everybody had equal access to the american dream but i think what i'm hearing is that definitely what i agree with is that native youth should have their voice front and center of these efforts um because they know what's best and they they not to put pressure on them but they are going to be leading us you know they are um they are right now already leading us and their voice is important um not everybody has to do the cookie cutter you know path of high school college or you know like she's a she's an artist and loves to draw um and and then we have other children who are you know science and math you know so i don't think we can you know judge everybody um the same or in one one particular box or category i don't know if i'm helping answer your question but um that's just my perspective that it is really important to be grounded in who you are first and foremost um because if you have a strong sense of self that in of itself is a protective factor um i spent some time in minneapolis when i was a young adult single with no dependence and actually tutored and mentored native youth in minneapolis at the division of indian work and it was a eye-opener you know you get to see the files of kids registration forms and see you know their tribal affiliation and i would always be excited to see some from mha you're from mha but they had no connection you know no connection at all which was amazing for me to see um back in like 1998-99 you know and so i know that there are great strides being made for people to connect to who they are no matter if it's later in life or early in life but we know it is a protective factor across the board whether you're native or non-native to have a strong sense of self so thank you i think we've gone over our time so i'm not sure that we'll be able to finish all of rick's slides here so but i just want to say thank you for coming to our presentation and hope that we have helped in some way and anybody else wants to add closing thoughts so it works all right lots of good thoughts thank you