Tara Roberts-Turner:
Outside of the tribal nations, we treat food as a commodity, right? So, we're buying in a truckload of corn and there it goes, right? We don't think about how it's connected to the community. The Tribal Elder Food Box was ahead of what we're doing with Tend and Table, in that they're already thinking about community. They are passionate about their food making an impact where they live. So really, for me, they have provided an important message, an important lesson that we all need to follow every day, which is that food is the most critical resource that we have. And if we can't supply ourselves with enough food in our individual communities, or have the ability to be in control of that food, then really we've lost our stability. This is what we figured out during COVID, is that individual communities do not have that control, and they rely too much on national relationships to get the food that they need. The Indigenous tribes are, in particular, very susceptible. I mean, they have less resources and they need a lot of support. They have a number of health crises going on. So, it's just important that their community be able to continue to do what they need to solve those problems. And to see all of the tribes coming together, that's another thing that's really important to take from this. When I go and meet with them, they have leaders from all of the tribal nations together at the table to solve the problem. They don't wait. They're not like, "Oh, this is going to take six months," you know? I'll quote Dan Cornelius on a call a couple weeks ago when we were talking about maybe setting up a new box, and he's like, "We can put a box together in a month." You know, they don't wait and have these long, drawn out deadlines. It's we have this problem, we're going to tackle it, and we're going to get it done. I think we all have a lot to learn from the way that they have reacted to their problems and the way that they're solving them.