The story of the prevalence of diabetes in Native American communities is a personal one for Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians tribal member and documentary filmmaker, Ruth-Ann Thorn.
“My dad is a diabetic. He almost died during COVID. He’s a pretty strong guy. … He nearly lost his life and he has not recovered 100 percent,” she says. “We lost many of our elders during COVID because they were diabetic. They were compromised.”
As a first-round grant recipient for the “Far South/Border North: Artists and Cultural Practitioners in Community” — a two-year regional program providing financial support toward work increasing public awareness about public health, environmental conservation, civic engagement, and social justice — Thorn set her sights on addressing the high rate of Type 2 diabetes in Native communities. Her short documentary, “Roots of Resilience: Confronting Diabetes in Native American Communities” highlights the impact of the illness, and the cultural, historical, and systemic issues that contribute to its prevalence. (She’s currently in the final stretch of completing the film and scheduling screenings.)
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Unlike Type 1 diabetes, in which the body makes little to no insulin and the immune system attacks the pancreatic cells that make insulin, Type 2 diabetes is more common and more likely to result from lifestyle choices revolving around diet and exercise. The displacement and dispossession of colonialism in the Americas forced Indigenous people into ways of eating and living that were simply unhealthy, Thorn says. In reclaiming traditional foods and approaches to food systems, that health can be restored.
In addition to making documentary films, Thorn is also a television show host, gallerist, and runs her N8iV Beauty skincare line. She took some time to talk about her film, the role of food in various indigenous cultures, and her hope that people will begin to think differently about its connection to culture, history, and health. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity. )
Q: As a first-round grant recipient of the Far South/Border North arts program to use arts and culture to amplify various community issues, your project hinges on health with “Roots of Resilience: Confronting Diabetes in Native American Communities.” The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health reports that Native American adults are almost three times more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes than non-Hispanic White adults. How did you first learn about the prevalence of this illness in Native American communities?
A: It was called “the White man’s disease” on the reservation when it first came about. There was never a documented case in the history of any Native tribe until we started getting commodity boxes and our traditional, Indigenous diet as hunter-gatherers was taken from us. We were put into boarding schools and we were told to reform. Part of that reformation not only was a religious one, but it was also one that the way that we ate our food was considered “heathen.” Within that, our food structure completely changed. Besides the fact that we were hunter-gatherers, most tribes moved every two to three months because they moved with the seasons. Whatever was growing here or there, they would actually conform themselves to nature. Then, when we were forced onto the reservations and we couldn’t leave the reservations, that changed the whole ecosystem in our ability to eat food.
I’m telling the story of the beginning of when this disease started, how it really came about, and where we are now and what we can do about it. The beauty of Type 2 diabetes is that it’s not an inherited, genetic trait; we have really adopted a colonial food method. Even worse than that, because we didn’t have any resources, we were given some of the worst food on the planet — canned, commodity food. And, we’re not alone. There are other people who were enslaved, the African community, they were also given “commods,” as we call them. This is food that has absolutely no nutritional value. It’s very high in carbohydrates, and not the good ones: white flour, white rice, canned foods. All of those things have really no nutritional value, everything’s been stripped from them. What happened over time was that people’s taste buds started changing, especially for Native people or people who have come from indigenous communities, like African-Americans, who are probably not more than 250 years removed from their tribal culture where they ate off of the land. Native Americans, we’re not that far removed from our indigenous ways. You’re not talking about thousands of years, so our bodies have not evolved to adapt to a European way [of eating]. In Europe, they have utilized things like cow meat and milk; we didn’t have cows here on this land. Or, corn. White corn or yellow corn is not indigenous to the Americas, nor is wheat. Things like that, those things turn into sugar and when you have a group of people who don’t have the system to metabolize that type of sugar, they’re going to have bigger problems than your general community.
Q: What are some of the ways in which the impact of diabetes is worse for Native American communities than other groups?
A: It’s mainly because it’s controlled by diet and we have been poverty stricken up until [more recently] when there’s been some form of economic development in the tribes, in various ways. The commods are alive and well in most communities, although they’ve tried to change them. You can change and reverse this horrible disease, but it has to be changed through food choices. When you don’t have the money to go to Whole Foods and you’re an underserved community, it’s going to be highly unlikely that you’re going to have access. Beyond that, even when you do have access, the brain has become addicted to sugar, so changing the ability for someone to access the food and then to make those decisions that start to retrain their tastebuds and basically detox from the sugar? You’ve got an uphill battle. It’s resulted in people having limbs cut off, or becoming blind, becoming very sick because this disease affects the entire body.
Q: Can you talk about some of the historical and cultural factors that contribute to this higher prevalence among Native American communities?
A: There’s a whole lot you can go into, but the history is just unbelievable. It’s really interesting that, a lot of times, when people think of sovereignty or of the ability for any particular group of people to choose the foods they want to eat, is really a very important part of somebody’s culture. When you strip away the food, you strip away more than just the nutrients — you’re stripping the history of those people, the community, all of the things that brought this…Food is a community, it’s a unity. When we’re at the table, we’re all one because we’re partaking in something that nourishes us. So, when you strip that away, it does irreparable damage and results in this disease and it’s not just our culture.
Q: In your film, there’s an emphasis on understanding cultural context, in relationship to this issue; what does this mean, exactly? What does this look like in practice?
A: Cultural context means that, along with our land and our language, one of the things that has been stripped away from us as Indigenous people is our food. A lot of people think, ‘Oh, the poor Indians. Everybody took their land,’ but it was far greater than that. One of the biggest, lasting impacts we have today for those people who are the survivors of this genocide, is the fact that our food has been changed so radically that we’ve lost that culture. Now, we’re going back to understand, what did we eat?
[For the Luiseño] as hunter-gatherers, our primary food was acorns. People think they’re a nut, but they’re actually a fruit. It has everything you could possibly need. It’s a superfood, so that was our primary food source. Beyond that, the plants. Whatever was growing naturally in California, from the mountain range to the desert, all the way down to the ocean. We would follow an eight-season calendar, so we would move nomadically every two months. We hunted game, so that would have been, primarily, rabbit. Probably some venison, deer; but Native people ate very little meat. And, fish. We were ocean-dwellers. Here, in Southern California, this coast was all Native Americans. This is where all Native people lived. We were trading with people all over the world, so we had a diet high in seafood. So, seafood, plant life, but Indigenous people of this land were not farmers. Farming came over with the colonists. The idea of farming is you take a seed and you put it in the ground, and you make it do something, a lot of times, where that seed is not from. You’re making that seed do something that’s not natural. It didn’t come from here, it never grew here. We do it, but from an Indigenous perspective, it’s like forcing nature to do something that wouldn’t have happened and then it throws everything off.
You’ve probably heard of elderberry. Elderberry is super high in vitamin C and not something that we’ve only used to eat, but also as plant medicine. It grows all over. You’ve got all kinds of things that are all California-based. The Manzanita tree makes an incredible berry. It has a pinkish color, that you can eat. Also, Manzanita is really good for using the roots. As hunter-gatherers there was a laundry list of things, but you’re eating what’s in season and you’re eating off of the land within season. Food that grows seasonally is growing so that we can eat it because within that season, that’s what our bodies need. Everything is supposed to work together in harmony.
Q: What are some steps that people can take to address this issue, particularly in ways that support Native American communities?
A: I don’t know if I have the answer to that, but I think, in general, really putting pressure on our food system and how we look at food. That’s everything from how we process animals to how we force food to grow unnaturally. Trying to reach people to understand how to get back in rhythm and harmony with the living planet that we live on. How do you explain to somebody that water has life, it has memory? It’s alive, it’s actually a living being. How do we deal with that? It really comes down to science and education, of knowing what food really does to the body. I think it’s about really questioning food, where it comes from, how it’s being grown. People need to really educate themselves for their own wellbeing and how they’re interacting with food because it’s not just something that sustains us.
