The government froze food aid. Tribes are thawing old traditions.

On Nov. 1, when the Trump administration announced it would not provide benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, due to the ongoing government shutdown, tribal governments began to scramble. About 25 percent of Native households are considered food insecure and rely on SNAP as well as the Federal Indian Reservation Distribution Program, or FDPIR, a monthly food package program.

“Usually when it comes to feeding low-income people or the poor, Congress has always found a way to do it,” said OJ Semans, a member of the Rosebud Sioux and director of the Coalition of Large Tribes, an advocacy group representing nations with large territories. “Now that’s no longer the case.”

A federal judge has ordered the administration to make SNAP payments to states by tomorrow. But it is not clear when households will have access to these benefits. Meanwhile, dozens of tribes have relied on food sovereignty initiatives established over the past 40 years to supplement their food supplies. From coastal tribes engaged in salmon restoration to Plains Nations reintroducing bison to the landscape, Indigenous food sovereignty increases tribal food security and self-sufficiency.

“It doesn’t always take a crisis to realize that having a food source and being able to feed your own people is a great idea,” said Kelli Case, senior attorney for the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative.

But many of these programs have been hit hard by climate change over the past decade. Today, the disappearance of federal food assistance programs and the decline in indigenous food sovereignty and food security initiatives caused by climate change place tribal nations in vulnerable, if not downright dangerous, positions. Last week, a handful of tribal nations declared a state of emergency due to the administration’s freezing of SNAP benefits. Most of the latest emergency declarations came at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Semans, SNAP is administered by the states, but tribal leaders have advocated for restoring funding to tribes by citing federal trust and treaty responsibilities — the federal government’s legal responsibility to fund and provide land exchange services. When it comes to federal funds and tribes, “anything that happens in the United States should be recognized through treaty obligation,” Semans said.

But without action from the Trump administration, nations have no choice but to rely on themselves. At a Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing last week, Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, said more than half of her constituents — the Shoshone-Paiute members of the Duck Valley Reservation — would lose access to critical food assistance because of the shutdown. “In response, the tribe is preparing to rely on traditional practices such as elk hunting to feed its members,” she said. Later this month, the Shoshone-Paiute Tribe will host a workshop for its members to learn how to process wild game as part of their food sovereignty and self-sufficiency initiative.

But even with nascent and established food programs, tribes still face problems. In March, the Trump administration eliminated the USDA’s Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement program, a Biden-era plan that included $100 million to help tribes purchase traditional foods from local farmers and growers and distribute them.

Earl Heavyrunner, a member of the Blackfeet tribe who manages his nation’s food distribution program, said that on his reservation, about 20 percent of households receive SNAP benefits, while 40 percent participate in the federal distribution program on Indian reservations, which provides a monthly food package to families and individuals.

“I’ve been working for the show for 24 years now and this is the first time I’ve seen it like this,” Heavyrunner said. As the freeze continues, Heavyrunner and other members of the tribe hunt elk and slaughter bison to feed households. “There are other reserves that are doing pretty much the same thing as us.”

Tribal nations have always practiced hunting and agriculture, but as the United States moved west into “Indian Territory,” extermination policies wiped out bison herds on the Plains, livestock in the Southwest, and nearly destroyed habitats for salmon and other fish along the Pacific Coast by damming rivers for hydroelectric power. The displacement of nations from their traditional lands and the creation of reservations nearly destroyed the tribes’ ability to feed themselves.

“When they were confined to their reservation and could not [hunt] more… what should they do then? said Michael Kotutwa Johnson, a member of the Hopi tribe who assists the University of Arizona Center for Indigenous Resilience. “You started introducing all these staple foods. »

Johnson is involved in dry farming, a Hopi technique used to grow crops in a desert and used for millennia by the Hopi and other tribes. However, increasing droughts and extreme weather events are disrupting harvests and causing tribal members to continue to rely on programs like SNAP. “We’ve probably had more periods without harvests, and we haven’t [been] grow crops due to climate change.

Johnson nevertheless said he would continue farming in order to preserve the region’s biodiversity and restore the Hopi’s diet.

“What we need are models to get us away from the SNAP thing,” he said. “That’s the beauty I hope comes out of this.”