4 BIPOC Foragers You Should Know
Foraging currants on a summer evening. Photo by Bailey Batchelor.
Most of my foraging experiences have taken place in the Greater Yellowstone area on the occupied lands of the Crow, Bannock, Tukudeka, Blackfeet, Eastern and Northern Shoshone tribes and many others.
Foraging has taught me so much about abundance. It has also taught me about gatekeeping and the hoarding of resources, which is what happens when we apply a lens of scarcity to nature. I have found a general sense of animosity and gatekeeping throughout my experiences—some more violent than others. I have also found a sense of joy and deep connection. For me, foraging represents this duality.
When I forage, I am honoring my ancestors and reconnecting with ancestral traditions. I am also holding grief for Indigenous and Black communities. It's important for me to do both, especially as a mixed Colombiana.
When we forage, we are tapping into the ancestral knowledge that Black and Indigenous communities have carried for generations. When we forage we are using our privilege of being able to move freely through stolen land. One of the past and current strategies of genocide is to remove people from their ancestral foods and medicines. It happened in the 19th century with the mass slaughter of bison and it is happening now through redlining and improper management of natural resources.
Finding morels in the springtime cottonwoods is directly tied to Indigenous peoples who are purposefully starved of healthy food and medicine on reservations. Volunteering at your local farm, or visiting your farmer’s market are directly tied to the farms and lands that were stolen from Black people during the Reconstruction Era. Going on a fishing trip to Alaska is directly tied to elder Natives who no longer have fish to live off of in the winter. When we celebrate Indigenous foodways but erase Indigenous people, we are gentrifying foraging.
Everyone should have access to wild foods and medicines, but not at the expense of Black, Indigenous people of color (BIPOC). So how can we uplift these communities instead of erasing them? I’ll start by sharing the stories of four foragers of color!
1. Haliehana Alaĝum Ayagaa Stepetin
Haliehana Alaĝum Ayagaa Stepetin is an Unangax̂ woman who was born and raised in her village, Akutan, in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. She currently resides on occupied Dena'ina lands in Anchorage. She is a PhD candidate in Native American studies at UC Davis and a professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Haliehana is passionate about centering Indigenous knowledge systems in limiting spaces of knowledge production that have historically and continue to leave out Indigenous ways of knowing and doing. Her work is centered around subsistence, which includes foraging, hunting, fishing, dancing, sharing, and abundance.
Haliehana’s culture operates from a model of abundance, not the scarcity model common to Western thinking. A major problem that Haliehana identifies with today’s food systems is our alienation from the food we consume. Think about the food you purchase from the grocery store; do you know anything about how it got there?
On the other hand, living off of the land and the water is a balance of reciprocity, stewardship, and sustainability that Indigenous peoples have maintained since time immemorial. These practices are still maintained today, and they are practiced year round. “Western culture tends to think that subsistence is an event—the foraging, the hunt—but there is so much respect and reciprocity leading up to that every year,” Haliehana explained. “In Alaska, we rely on the return of salmon, halibut, seals, whales each year. We believe that humans must do things in order to maintain those returns and migrations. It is so much more than a singular event, and it is disrespectful to me when it is reduced to that by colonialism.”
Simply put, subsistence is the center of Unangax̂ society. It also fulfills the practical act of maintaining communities through health and nutrition.
While foraging can be practiced by non-Native people, it’s important to acknowledge that “Native peoples are experiencing inequities of access to places they have always been in relationship with for food and medicine, while white people have access that allows them to go to those places when Native people can’t,” said Haliehana. “That being said, having a local diet is the most sustainable and respectful way of existing in this globalized world.”
2. Hannah Vega
Hannah Vega is a forager with ten years of experience who resides on occupied Piscataway lands in Maryland. She learned about foraging by tapping into her history and that of her ancestors. Hannah comes from a family that has maintained a close relationship with the land to include growing food for nourishment and for medicine. She has also supplemented the knowledge passed down to her by participating in local foraging groups on Facebook and reading books.
Hannah started her Instagram page with the hope of eventually connecting with other Black foragers in person.
“Foraging has awakened this child-like curiosity and wonder that I think we should all have for nature,” said Hannah, who also acknowledges the need for BIPOC folks to offset, balance, and heal from racism and generational trauma. She believes that time in nature enables us to do this healing while empowering our own communities. “I haven’t been sick in six years,” she added. “Food is medicine. I use plants to stop fevers, heal wounds, and strengthen my immune system.”
Hannah is passing down her knowledge to her two-year-old son, who frequently accompanies her on walks and is able to identify plants on his own. She believes that trauma can also be passed down; causing us to suffer the effects of what happened to our ancestors in the past. Hannah views her lifestyle as a form of resistance and healing against intergenerational trauma. “Growing your own food, foraging your own food, and knowing how to heal yourself are huge ways to disrupt oppressive systems,” she explained.
Access is an issue that deters BIPOC from foraging, including having access to land that is not polluted. We all have a lot of unlearning to do, specifically with the narrative that foraging is a White activity. If anything, foraging was learned from BIPOC ancestors and we need to reclaim that. Folks of color need to unlearn this narrative and reclaim our heritage.
Hannah also acknowledges that access is a major issue in the community. It is legal to forage on some public lands and not on others. Meanwhile, National Parks often perpetuate the idea that in order to preserve the land there must be no people on it. This notion has received public backlash, notably from Native and Indigenous communities.
It’s simply not true—the original preservers of the land are Indigenous people who foraged food and medicine. When foraging (or hunting) is painted as the enemy of conservation, we are ignoring the fact that Indigenous people have done both, for millennia, while carefully stewarding their ancestral lands.
Hannah encourages foragers to continue sharing their knowledge with others. She also believes in the importance of speaking up about the barriers that people of color face. For new foragers she suggests starting with five plants and getting to know them well.
3. Dani Reyes-Acosta
Dani Reyes-Acosta is a Mestiza woman who resides on occupied Ute and Pueblo lands in Southwest Colorado. She focuses on connecting herself and others to nature through storytelling. Dani is an experienced food processor, both on her homestead with her partner and in the mountains. Its her belief that food connects people to places, and foraging enables that to occur at a deeper level. Foraging represents her passion for sharing food with others. It has also enabled her to connect with her cultural heritage, and her grandmother.
Then there’s the importance of properly preserving what we forage: “At a time when our forests are really feeling the stress of wildfire, increased human impact in the form of outdoor recreation, and human created climate change, it's really critical that we pause and question if we have the need to take what’s there,” she emphasized.
If we do have the need and desire, do we have the motivation to follow through? Dani believes that respecting the food we forage means having realistic expectations about how much we need and how often. After all, plants are a food source that other animals depend upon. “All plants are connected, all ecosystems are connected” said Dani. “Our decisions to take or not take are inextricably linked to the impacts we have on our environments. You taking more than you can handle is pouring salt in the wound of an earth that is crying.”
Dani also believes in uplifting BIPOC voices in foraging and food systems because these individuals are of, for, and by the land. “We are the people that are—historically and present day—closest to the land,” Dani added. “We need to uplift BIPOC foragers because we need to highlight BIPOC joy and knowledge.” She invites others to find healing and inspiration in the practice along with their own connection to the land.
“There are many conversations happening in the BIPOC community that are at the forefront of creating communion with the Earth rather than separation from it. It is our responsibility to share these stories.”
4. Chrisha Favors
Chrisha Favors is an environmental educator and forager who resides on occupied Chelamela and Chemapho lands in Oregon. She forages and grows her own food in order to connect to the land and live a more sustainable life. Her introduction to foraging started in the Georgia countryside with her grandfather, a homesteader and an Indigenous man whose relationship with the land left an impact on Chrisha from a young age. She grew up foraging blackberries and honeysuckle.
Despite growing up in rural Georgia, Chrisha felt like an impostor in environmental circles. She loved the outdoors, but never quite in the same ways as the people around her. She did not fit in the narrow view of what we qualify as “outdoorsy”, and therefore did not always feel safe.
In her adulthood, she slowly began spending more time outdoors and growing her own food again. Chrisha has taken courses to increase her knowledge of local plants and also enjoys foraging on her own land where she finds chanterelles, boletes, and much more. Chrisha still struggles to cultivate a community of color as an Afro-Indigenous woman living in white rural areas, but she now feels the need to create those spaces for others.
While the whitewashing of conservation and outdoor cultures has taken brown and Black people out of foraging spaces, Chrisha remains focused on reclaiming that space.“We are the originators of foraging,” said Chrisha. “It was a means of necessity. My ancestors braided seeds into their hair.” Enslaved West African people who survived the trans-Atlantic slave route, notably women farmers, used this practice to bring rice from West Africa to the Americas. “I feel that innate value that we have as human beings of being hunter-gatherers,” said Chrisha. “We already have that knowledge inside of us.”
Chrisha now finds strength by tapping into her ancestral power and knowledge. “We still exist in these foodways and we are absolutely the originators,” she added. “We are still here”.
Chrisha continues to carry on her ancestral traditions, both for her personal healing and for her future generations. She hopes other folks of color feel seen and inspired by her work. If you are Black or Brown, her message is to keep showing up in food producing and foraging spaces.
Hello Reader! Laws for foraging on public land can be complex. They also vary from state to state, city to city and park to park. Make sure you do your research ahead of time!
In a perfect world, access to affordable, healthy food would be a basic human right. Unfortunately, across America, food security depends on your zip code. Not all of us live in leafy suburbs close to big-box retailers and grocery stores. Some of us live in food deserts.