TRIBAL HEMP INITIATIVE
Winona delivered Hemp Seeds to Cherilyn is Project Coordinator for Red Lake Nation Economic Development and Planning, of the Red Lake Nation, Summer 2020
It’s said that a hundred years ago we had a choice between a hydrocarbon economy and a carbohydrate economy. The carbohydrate economy was hemp. We made the wrong choice. This is about returning to hemp as a critical piece of physical and materials economy and infrastructure.
The so called “Green Revolution” was born at the University of Minnesota with Norman Borlaugh, the “father of the Green Revolution.” That’s industrialized GMO, CAFO agriculture. It’s fossil fuel dependent and unstable. We need a New Green Revolution, which deconstructs industrial agriculture and rebuilds soil and community. At the center of that revolution in this region is industrial hemp, which can transform the materials economy from fossil fuel dependence to an organic economy. The scale required in a future hemp economy is large. And this is the region for it. In 2020, we provided hemp seeds to farmers from five tribes in our region, all of them interested in the hemp materials economy. Tribal farmers from the Rosebud, Cheyenne River, Navajo, Red Lake, and Oneida nation all were given seeds from our stocks.
We are working to restore food ways, rematriate seeds, and make a new economy; one based on local food, energy and fiber.
Our interest is in building the next economy, we refer to this as Lighting the Eighth Fire, or the Green New Deal. That transition needs to be organic, innovative and equitable. In northern Minnesota, we are working on Winona LaDuke International Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture. An integrated strategy of renewable energy, local foods and hemp. We know that this is a time of transition or as Arundhati Roy refers to this, Pandemic as Portal. Everything we have known in recent years has changed, and crisis is opportunity, indeed.