(Photo courtesy Center Pole / Facebook)

Food banks are trying to adjust after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) cut $500 million from a nationwide emergency food assistance program.

One of those impacted organizations meets a pressing need for food access within the Crow and Northern Cheyenne Tribes of southeastern Montana.

Yellowstone Public Radio’s Kayla Desroches reports from Crow Agency, on a recent day in April.

It’s late Tuesday morning in a gas station parking lot off interstate 90, and Center Pole founder Peggy Wellknown Buffalo directs the set up of a table, soon to be stacked with boxes of canned salmon, loose potatoes, and meat.

Cars are already lining up to pick up food.

“We try to be in a location where it’s easier for them to come from the housing projects and around town.”

With only a few small grocery stores and gas stations located across the large swath of southeast Montana, the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations are considered food deserts.

The grassroots non-profit Center Pole tries to fill that gap with help from the Montana Food Bank Network, and Wellknown Buffalo says the need is high.

“Sometimes we stay until three, but today, a lot of people have been calling.”

Wellknown Buffalo talks about her concerns going forward.

Montana Food Bank Network recently learned about cuts slated for more than 70 food banks across the state, Center Pole included.

Montana Food Bank Network distributes food through the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), a USDA program that directs food to low income areas at no cost.

Montana Food Bank Network Program Manager Jesse Schraufnagel says they had committed to delivering food through the end of the year when they learned that one of TEFAP’s primary funding streams had been eliminated. 

“And as of the beginning of this month, all of those truck loads have been cancelled, so what that amounts to is 40% of our total TEFAP allocation that we’re anticipating not receiving through the end of the year.”

According to records through the Montana Food Bank Network, the cuts account for more than a quarter of the total food Center Pole estimates it distributes in a year. 

Wellknown Buffalo says Center Pole plans to navigate the cuts to their pantry by establishing public gardens to grow food and Indigenous plants they source from the hills in the region. 

“We’re gonna get hit with the craziness of what our government is doing, but the ones who are gonna suffer is my people. Us. Natives.”

Assemblymember James Ramos (Serrano/Cahuilla/D-CA), chair of the Native American Caucus, is insisting on a hearing to address the state auditor’s newest findings dealing with the University of California (UC) system in returning Native American remains and cultural items to tribes.

A third report from the state auditor was issued this week.

Asm. Ramos says the audit shows UC lacks accountability and urgency in returning remains and cultural items required by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) and its state counterpart, Cal-NAGPRA.

According to the report, UC continues to hold the human remains of thousands of individuals and hundreds of thousands of potential cultural items.

Ramos says it’s very disturbing to him as a Serrano/Cahuilla person, who still conducts reburials of his people, that a law implemented 35 years ago is still being discussed today, and says he will insist on a hearing.

The report finds the university has not ensured the proper care and security of potential cultural items, and at the current pace, it will likely take more than a decade to repatriate all of the collections.

Ramos says the ancestors of tribal Californians deserve to be interred respectfully and in the traditions of their people, and he says lawmakers need to assess or create penalties for noncompliance with the laws.

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