Bishop Paiute Tribe

This project will enhance the Tribe’s food sovereignty program by growing its composting initiatives, strengthening food and garden education, including training in drip irrigation, pruning, and seed saving, while advancing traditional food stewardship and intergenerational knowledge sharing.

Our project goal is to support and increase appreciation of diverse Nüümü cultural plants. We will gather ethnobotanical knowledge and create an internal database and GIS maps to retain documentary information. We will leverage this knowledge to train and build specialized capacity for cultural plant monitoring, utilization, and homeland stewardship.

This project will increase the Tribe’s capacity to protect, enhance communication, and provide public awareness for the cultural program’s staff, tribal participants, and cultural center patrons as we continue to recover from COVID19. It will create outlets that will advocate for behavioral change utilizing culture and community post Covid19.

This project will be a continuation of a multi-faceted effort to increase access to high-speed internet at the lowest possible cost to tribal members no matter their location on the reservation and it's surrounding area.

This project will increase the Cultural Center organizational capacity by generating a museum website. During the pandemic, an online and virtual presence is needed to advocate, protect and promote the Cultural heritage and Lifeways of the indigenous people; this includes Indigenous food systems, water, languages, traditional ecological knowledge, and land.

This project will be a vital part of a multi-faceted effort to increase access to high-speed internet at the lowest possible cost to tribal members no matter their location on the reservation and it's surrounding area.

The ultimate purpose is to: 1) expand current garden-based nutrition education projects to encourage healthy food and lifestyle choices 2) to create and expand partnerships with other local food initiatives such as the Bishop Elementary School garden-based education, the Bishop Indian Head Start program, and the Bishop Paiute Tribe Firstbloom Program to support a school-wide culture of health 3) increase multi-generational knowledge sharing regarding culturally appropriate food choices and preparation of cultural foods and medicines 4) Leverage tribal funded part-time Community Market Manager position to contribute to garden-based nutrition education and help sustain Program staff and initiatives.

The ultimate purpose is to 1) create an independent food system in which affordable and nutritious food is available to the Tribal community and, 2) to increase community resiliency through creating economic opportunities for small-scale food producers and non-food vendors to sell directly to consumers at a Community Market. On-the-job training will inspire the next generation of food activists and promote sharing through workshops that encourage cross-generational dialogue. 3) Outreach will increase environmentally responsible growing practices, stewardship of traditional, open-pollinated food varieties, seed saving and will re-vitalize traditional knowledge regarding harvesting and land care.