As food insecurity rises across the country, groups fighting hunger are highlighting the need for food that is not only nutritious, but culturally relevant.

Isobel Charle has more.

Leialoha Kaula is executive director of the nonprofit Ka ʻAha Lāhui O ʻOlekona – Hawaiian Civic Club of Oregon & SW Washington (KALO HCC), which serves Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities.

The organization started distributing food boxes during the pandemic and Kaula said the food didn’t always meet people’s needs because it wasn’t familiar, or they didn’t know how to use it.

In response, she said, KALO HCC started including traditional foods in the boxes like taro root and coconut.

“We saw that it was not just hunger for food, it was that hunger for culture. It was that hunger for home, that’s what was filled.”

Visits to food banks in the state have risen sharply in the last year and data shows Pacific Islander Oregonians are twice as likely to experience hunger than their white neighbors.

Kaula said KALO HCC has also started cultivating taro, a Native Hawaiian staple, and encouraging people to get involved in the project.

“Even though we’re here in Oregon, that’s still a connection to home. It’s about how we as Indigenous people are caring for the land.”

Amid federal cuts to food programs, Kaula said she wants to see Oregon focus more on providing culturally relevant foods, so all communities in the state can thrive.

“To really, truly have a healthy Oregon. We have to make sure that we’re serving all the communities in a way that makes them feel seen, heard, and feed them in that way.”

A woman in a fur coat looks at the photographer, while a boy smiles at her. (Courtesy Cyril George Photo Collection)

In the basement of Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) in Juneau, Alaska sit thousands and thousands of photographs.

They were taken by a Lingít elder who has since passed on, but for decades he documented important events and everyday life.

And as KTOO’s Yvonne Krumrey reports, the organization wants help identifying people and places in the photos.

Ḵaalḵáawu Cyril George Sr.’s family unearthed his photo collection in the wake of his death 11 years ago.

His granddaughter Lillian Woobury says she was astounded at the volume of photos he kept in his small Juneau condo.

“That tiny little room had been harboring all of these memories he captured in photo. I mean, every time we thought we’ve got them all, we pulled out another box or another container, and I’m like, ‘Oh my god, Mom, it’s another box of photos.’”

A family friend suggested they donate the photographs to Sealaska Heritage Institute to preserve and store them.

Emily Galgano is one of the archivists who’s been combing through the photographs for the last several years.

“There’s so much just joy in these photos. It’s one of my favorite things, looking through them and seeing people just having a good time, people dancing, people talking to each other, cooking out on the beach.”

Some of the photos are online now and printed in books that are available in Juneau and Angoon for elders to look through.

A boy jumps over a bar as his peers look on. (Courtesy Cyril George Photo Collection)

SHI hopes people will recognize some of the faces.

The photos are full of life. Most are of people: dancers in full regalia, fishing trips with strung up halibut, graduations, and meetings.

They show Lingít people living, working, teaching, and making art. They show elders, and babies, and elders with babies. And those babies may be elders now themselves.

Lingít photographer Brian Wallace helped SHI scan the photos.

He knew George growing up, and looking through the photos, he says the photos show how Southeast Alaska Native cultures have endured.

“They’re thriving when he took the photos, and still thriving.”

And some of the photos were deeply personal for Wallace.

“And then I loved finding the photographs that he had of my parents.”

Woodbury, George’s granddaughter, says it was hard to part with the collection, but she hopes that others, like Wallace, will look through the collection and find photos of loved ones who have passed on.

“I think if people walk away seeing these photos and they feel like he gave them that one moment in time back, that makes me happy. And that will be a small part, a small part of this legacy.”

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