Oneida Nation Councilman Marlon Skenandore:
From year one, I think we had 20-something Indigenous producers. Now we're up to like 40 or 50 Indigenous producers. I don't know the exact number, but we're also assisting them as well. So, whenever we can look around here, I can think of 10 different places that I could get 10 different items and pull 'em together and make my own box. That's just Oneida, and other reservations and around the state of Wisconsin — it helps keep that money local. The economy, everything comes here and stays here, and I think whenever things work locally like that, like regional food-based systems, I think we're going to be able to thrive a little more. We're going to be able to help the whole state of Wisconsin a little more, 'cause we're creating a model for success of how you build up your local economies. And then a little bit about food sovereignty, is we have a lot of people on this reservation, and everybody has a little bit different thought about what food sovereignty is, but to me it would be all your people are not hungry at all — there is no food insecurity. It'd be difficult for us to produce all that food like they did back in the day and then sustain their own communities, but if we can help build up our local systems — such as things like the Tribal Elder Food Box, plus corporate America — we have to find that fine balance of how we feed our people so we don't have kids, adults, elders in our communities that are hungry, and they can choose what they want to eat as well. That's a choice of freedom, and I think it's important that we continue to do the things we're doing now to build up our food systems, to try to get as close as we can get to food sovereignty.