In late July, Unicorn Riot interviewed three members of Zintkala Luta: a Minneapolis-based educational non-profit, dedicated to offering youth and activists access to nutritional foods and programs which teach native traditions, L/Dakota and Ojibwe language and local organic food cultivation.

They are among a growing movement of others working to create autonomous food systems within their neighborhoods. This movement utilizes urban farming to break away from modern industrial agri-business by creating food sovereignty within local communities.

“Their health is revitalized through organic high-nutrition.” – Anita

Zintkala Luta, which means “Red Bird”, looks forward to the Fall harvest where they will host the local community for dinner and teach simple recipes made with regionally native vegetable species. They will also be teaching medicinal plant gathering traditions.

“We’ll talk about methods of gathering medicines and how things used to be in the past.” – Anita

Zintkala Luta works tirelessly to bring together youth and elders so that they may preserve Native American traditions of the land. By their efforts and the efforts of like-minded organizations, the unique and significant knowledge of the Native American people will never be lost to time and no neighborhood where people live can be called a “food desert”.

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