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From Darryl Madden, Director of FEMA Ready Campaign
For many, the New Year is a time for setting goals and making new resolutions for the year to come. If you are anything like me, each year you find yourself resolving to achieve a healthier lifestyle – eating right, exercising more, losing a few pounds.
Setting personal health goals in the New Year is great, but improving overall well-being involves taking actions to be prepared. Knowing what to do in an emergency is vital to the health and safety of you and your loved ones.
This year, the Ready Campaign is challenging you to be Prepared in 2014. Start the New Year by connecting with family and friends on the importance of preparedness. Not only can the information shared potentially save a life, connecting with those you love has an added benefit. People who have strong social connections tend to be healthier and more resilient.
I know the hardest part of keeping a resolution is sustaining it after those first few weeks of the year, but you don’t have to do it all at once.
First, start by simply having the conversation: who to call, where to meet and what to pack in an emergency.
Build your family’s emergency supply kit by picking up recommended emergency items over the first month or two of the year.
Create a preparedness checklist. This should include things such as emergency phone numbers and copies of important documents, and information on how to register for programs such as the American Red Cross Safe and Well website.
Set reminders throughout the year to talk about and update your family emergency communication plan. If you have children, include them in conversations and planning activities. The Ready Campaign has age-appropriate tools and resources you can use to introduce disaster preparedness to them. And you can learn more about talking with kids after disasters so you’re ready to help them through tough situations.
Have pets? Make sure they are a part of your planning process. Create a pet go-bag to help keep them safe during an emergency. Find helpful tips from FEMA on how to plan for your furry friends
Older adults often have special needs in a disaster and may depend on medications or other special requirements. If older adults are a part of your social connection, be sure to include them in your preparedness planning efforts.
Emergencies can and will happen, but being ready can minimize the impact they have on the overall well-being of you and your family.
This year, make disaster preparedness part of your New Year’s resolution. On January 1st 2014, join the Resolve To Be Ready Thunderclap to promote a message of preparedness to your social connections on New Year’s Day. Don’t forget to use the hashtag #Prepared2014 whenever you discuss family preparedness on Twitter.
Hans Tammemagh, ICTMN
Long before the “100-mile diet” became the trendy new way to eat, Native American people of the Pacific Northwest were immersed in this way of eating. And little wonder, for they lived in an environment that was astonishingly bountiful. Forests overflowed with deer, elk, berries, flowers, seeds and greens. Seas and rivers teemed with salmon, prawn, crab and other nourishing plant and animal life. Shorelines were rich with clams, oysters and seaweed.
Food was central to traditional life and was especially enjoyed at feasts and potlatches, where platters boasted salmon, oolichan (a small, oily member of the smelt family), venison, bannock, wild berry jams and much more. For Native people, food is what connected them to family, community and even the afterlife.
Then came the white man, and everything changed. In today’s era, food, generally processed, is purchased at supermarkets or fast-food outlets. Nutrition is too often replaced by sugar, salt and glitzy packaging. And, as is well documented, the health of Native peoples has slowly spiralled downward.
But there is good news: traditional foods are making a comeback. Even better, the old dishes are being infused with modern culinary innovations to make tasty, attractive, and of course, healthy cuisine.
I was in the Salmon n’ Bannock Bistro in Vancouver, British Columbia with a Haida canoe suspended from the ceiling and Native art adorning the deep red walls. The server placed an attractive appetizer platter from the ‘Land and Sea Feast’ menu on the table. I popped a spicy game chorizo sausage into my mouth … wonderful! Then I savored Indian candy — smoked salmon covered with a maple syrup glaze. I spread barbequed salmon mousse on bannock and ladled blueberry chutney onto a piece of bison carpaccio.
With my mouth full, it was hard to speak, so I listened to Inez Cook, Nuxalk Nation, the co-owner and manager of this fine-dining restaurant, which is winning accolades on the hotly competitive Vancouver cuisine scene. “My bistro is unique. It’s the only restaurant in Vancouver that offers 100 percent First Nations’ food, and it’s staffed entirely by Native people,” she said. “I’m very proud of First Nations’ food,” she continued. “It’s great. I want to shout out: ‘Try it! Eat it!’” I acquiesced and speared a piece of musk ox prosciutto. Delightful!
The bistro opened in 2010 and has slowly gained a following. “None of our food contains preservatives or additives,” Cook said. “Nothing is raised in factory farms or is genetically modified. We source all fresh and wild foods so it’s very healthy.”
“The most popular dishes are salmon, barbequed or smoked, and deer shank with red wine gravy,” Cook said. These are paired with wines from Nk’Mip Cellars, a Native-owned and -operated winery in the Okanagan Valley, central British Columbia.”
When I remarked that the menu featured mostly fish and meat, Cook answered with a laugh, “Yes, Natives think that vegetarians are just lousy hunters.”
At present, unfortunately, eating establishments offering traditional Native food are rare. The Blackfish Salmon Grill at Tulalip Casino & Resort, north of Seattle, Washington, is one of the exceptions. “We are not a strictly Native cuisine restaurant,” explained Chef David Buchanan, “but rather, our style is innovative Pacific Northwest influenced by traditional tribal culture and cuisine.”
Wild salmon cooked on Tulalip hand-carved, ironwood sticks over an alderwood fire is very popular. Other menu items include an appetizer of clam fritters (from a Tulalip tribal elder recipe), local root vegetables, corn cakes and fresh berry soufflé. Typical ingredients include local clams, Alaskan prawns, many varieties of oysters, Alaskan halibut, wild Steelhead, blueberries, blackberries, hazelnuts, wild chanterelle and morel mushrooms.
“We strive to put a little twist on every dish, to make it our own. For instance, our crab cakes have roasted fresh sweet corn and apple-smoked bacon in them and are served with three sauces and an apple-watercress salad,” Buchanan explained.
The Blackfish Salmon Grill is like a Longhouse with large beams accenting the ceiling and a long, beautiful natural wood community table in the center of the room. The focal piece is an open fire pit on which on which the Salmon on a Stick is prepared.
Buchanan said “I am especially intrigued by how in Native culture the entire process of a meal is so holistic. Thanks is given for the return of the salmon each year and for the sustenance it gives. Thanks and a prayer are also given for the wood when it is harvested to carve the Ironwood sticks used for roasting the salmon. Those who prepare the meal should do so with good intent in their hearts. The meal is a time for sharing with friends and family, and being thankful for those who helped catch and prepare the food.”
But those living in the Seattle area don’t need to go to a fancy restaurant to enjoy Native food. Instead, they can use Facebook to track down the current location of Off the Rez, the first Native American food truck in the country. Pale blue in color, the truck serves up a variety of Native fry breads of which the three-taco combo with pork, beef and chicken fillings is reputed to be outstanding.
There are two smaller but notable Native eateries. The Riverwalk Café at the Quw’utsun Cultural Centre in Duncan, BC, on Vancouver Island. Situated on the banks of the Cowichan River, a heritage river with three salmon runs each year, the Café features such delicacies as smoked and candied salmon, clams and octopus. The Riverwalk Café is open only for lunch from June to September.
The Thunderbird Café is part of the Squamish Lilwat Cultural Centre in Whistler, BC. It is open year-round but only to 5 p.m. Its Indian Taco with venison chilli and bannock is reputed to be truly man-size. Other favorites are salmon chowder and smokies made of wild boar and bison. They also make a venison pemmican with local berries and nuts.
While waiting for more restaurants to offer traditional Native cuisine, you may decide to cook at home with friends. Thanks to Dolly and Annie Watts, a mother and daughter team, you can do just that, guided by their book, Where People Feast – An Indigenous People’s Cookbook. The cookbook, one of the few that focuses on west coast Native cuisine, appeared in 2007 and was an instant hit, winning rave reviews and the Gourmand Award for best local cuisine book in Canada. Where People Feast is crammed with easy-to-follow traditional and modern aboriginal recipes, from hot buttered halibut to juniper berry sauce to bannock and also includes methods for smoking and drying wild game, preparing seafood and preserving berries.
A champion of traditional Native food is Chef Ben Genaille, a Cree, who moved from Manitoba to the west coast about 20 years ago where he has worked at several top restaurants. He’s passionate about Native dishes, preparing them using contemporary methods and presenting them with modern flair. He established an Aboriginal Culinary Program at Thompson River University, Kamloops, British Columbia, the only one in North America.
In 2012, Genaille led a team of five young west-coast Native chefs to the World Culinary Olympics in Germany. “I’m very proud of them. They worked hard and trained for five years for the competition,” he said. “We focussed on Pacific Northwest ingredients and showed the world that First Nations cuisine is at the cutting edge of local food.” Dishes that caught the judges’ eyes included oolichan oil in dessert, herring eggs in soup and a platter with five types of salmon, each prepared a different way.
Chef Genaille is an unabashed supporter of Native cuisine. “It all hinges on getting talented young chefs,” he stresses. “We must strive to give them pride and passion. And that’s happening. As these young chefs develop, traditional Native food will grow in popularity.”
Where People Feast – An Indigenous Peoples’ Cookbook
Published by Arsenal Pulp Press, Vancouver (www.arsenalpulp.com)
Venison Roast with Juniper Berry Rub
Juniper berries have a bittersweet pine flavor with a peppery aftertaste.
1 tbsp dried juniper berries
1 clove garlic
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp onion flakes
1 lb (445 g) venison rump roast
1 tbsp grapeseed oil
1 cup boiling water
Preheat oven to 350°F (180° C). Crush the berries, garlic, cayenne pepper, cumin seeds, and onion flakes in a mortar. Rub the crushed spices onto the roast and then pan-sear the roast in a hot frying pan with the oil to lock in the juices. Put roast in a roasting pan and add the boiling water, then roast for 1 hour, basting at least 4 times. Makes 3 servings.
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/12/30/traditional-food-makes-comeback-pacific-northwest-152903
By Bonny Wolf, NPR
At the beginning of every year, we read the tea leaves to see what new food trends we’ll be tasting in the coming months. This year, the tea itself is the trend.
Tea leaves will be big in entrees, desserts and, of course, cocktails. Starbucks has opened its first tea shop.
We won’t be just drinking tea; Artisan distilling keeps on growing. This could be the year of gin, made with local botanicals as well as the traditional juniper berry.
New — but still ancient — grains will join the now-common spelt and quinoa. Teff and freekeh may be as familiar to us by the end of next year.
Nuts aren’t new either, but a Harvard study shows that nut eaters live longer and lose weight. Tada: next year’s favorite snack food.
Another study finds we threw out 40 percent of our food last year. Now grocery auctions offer unsold food, and even the former president of Trader Joe’s will open a market selling perfectly good food that’s just past its sell-by date.
Vegetarianism is no longer just for vegetarians. While most Americans still eat meat, 47 percent of the country eats at least one vegetarian meal a week.
Cauliflower, by the way, is the new Brussels sprout.
Eating local is going into overdrive. Restaurants and markets have planted gardens and built farms — on the ground and on the roof.
And if you can’t grow it, you can buy it from professional foragers, who will bring chickweed and chanterelles to chefs and consumers.
Small-scale meat producers will be available as we continue to fret about industrial farming. Expect more goat, rabbit and pigeon — or squab, if that makes you feel better.
The meats may be flavored with za’atar or sumac, which should easier to find as we dig deeper into the foods of the Mideast.
From the Middle East we go to the Middle West for simple, hearty cooking. The Food Network names the Midwestern food movement as the No. 1 trend for 2014. You betcha.
Dessert? Ice cream sandwiches. Probably made with tea leaves.
Bonny Wolf is managing editor of americanfoodroots.com and editor of NPR’s Kitchen Window.
Flu and Whooping Cough Shots for Adults
Who: Free Public Skate and Vaccination Clinic
When: Saturday, January 11
· 2:30 – 5:30 pm free skating for clinic clients and their kids
· 3:30 – 5:30 pm adult-only shots for flu and whooping cough
What: The Everett Public Facilities District and Global Spectrum are putting flu season on ice again in 2014!
On Saturday, January 11, Comcast Arena and the Comcast Community Ice Rink will host a free public skate and vaccination clinic to serve uninsured and lowincome adults in the Snohomish County area. Volunteers and staff from the Snohomish Health District, Mukilteo-South Everett Rotary, and Walgreens will provide adults with flu shots and whooping cough vaccinat ions from 3:30 pm to 5:30 pm.
Guests of the event will skate on the Comcast Arena’s main ice rink where the Everett Silvertips play their home games. Skating is from 2:30 to 5:30 pm. Guests are asked to enter through the Comcast Community Ice Rink entrance (Broadway).
Flu season has begun in Snohomish County. Getting a flu shot every year is the best way to prevent infection. Vaccination is also the best protection against whooping cough. Whooping cough, also known as pertussis, is no longer at epidemic levels in Snohomish County, but cases of it are still being confirmed and it can be deadly to babies. It is especially important that all pregnant women and people who are around newborns – including teens, grandparents, and childcare workers – get the booster shot to protect the infant.
Download vaccine information sheets at http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/vis/index.html
Visit www.flu.gov for more
A member of the Muckleshoot tribe, Valerie Segrest knew something was missing from her diet, but she wasn’t expecting the change it would bring.
By Valerie Segrest, Crosscut.com
Four years ago, when I was studying nutrition at Bastyr University in Seattle, I came to class to find a cup of tea waiting for me. My instructor said we would be doing a meditation: We would sit in silence for three minutes and drink tea. She instructed us to pay attention to how this warm beverage made us feel.
I was already immersed in an environment that preached the benefits of a good diet. My diet was pristine. On certain days, I was obsessed with eating the right things, like leafy greens and organic, whole carrots, which I cut myself rather than risk buying the baby-cut varieties that are washed in chlorinated water. But I was still sick quite often and couldn’t put my finger on what was lacking.
I am a Muckleshoot Indian, but other than the occasional seafood dish, little of what I ate then bore much connection with the landscape I lived in, which had fed my ancestors for many generations.
My body immediately responded to this tea. It was as if I were remembering what it was like to feel well. I was rooted and energized. When our three-minute silence ended, the instructor circled around the room and asked us to describe how we felt. Some people said they felt calmed, some said comforted.
Still stunned, I continued to sit in silence. The teacher announced we had just experienced wild stinging nettle tea.
I proceeded to drink nettle tea instead of water every day. I walked around with jars of nettle-tea infusions and talked to anyone who asked about how amazing this plant was. I began to visit patches of nettles in the woods near my house and everywhere else I could find the plants.
I read everything I could on the nettle. I drew it. I sat with it. I stung myself with it. I harvested and ate it. I bathed in its beautiful, rich juice. I had never felt so strong, energized, and healthy.
I call nettle my first plant teacher. From the moment I drank the juices of this plant, I became an advocate, passionate about the native foods of the Pacific Northwest. Currently, my work as a nutrition educator takes me to tribal communities throughout Washington state. Everywhere I go, I hear stories about the ways native foods heal people. Elders remind me that problems like diabetes and heart disease were almost nonexistent in our communities until we began to lose access to foods like salmon, huckleberries, elk and wild greens. These foods are nutrient-dense, and they bless us with a true sense of place.
From Muckleshoot oral traditions, I have learned that plants and animals teach us how to live. How can we be like salmon, who return each year to their ancestral rivers and give their lives in order to feed the land, plants, animals and humans? How can we transform our behaviors and habits to fit our natural surroundings, like the 20 different varieties of huckleberries that grow wild from the seashore to the mountaintops?
Since that moment with the cup of nettle tea, I have become committed to sharing the abundance of wild foods, praying for their return and celebrating their presence in the world.
Source: NWIFC
Shannon Miller and John Hagan keep a close eye on the phases of the moon so they can determine the best time of the month to collect samples of pinhead-sized translucent forage fish eggs.
“We found that the moon phases may be a potential spawning cue,” Miller said. “There are more eggs around the new moon and full moon phases during the fall and winter months, so we schedule our surveys around that and the tides. That makes for an interesting work schedule.”
Miller and Hagan are Point No Point Treaty Council (PNPTC) biologists who are studying the spawning rates of surf smelt and pacific sand lance, both important food sources for salmon. The PNPTC is a natural resources management agency for the Port Gamble and Jamestown S’Klallam tribes.
Past studies have focused on the presence or absence of eggs in the intertidal zone but have not necessarily tracked egg densities,” Miller said. “We’re trying to build a better quantitative data set to see if they’re reproducing enough offspring for salmon to eat. They’re an important part of the food chain and an indicator of the health of the sound’s ecosystem.”
Since 2011, they have been collecting bags of sand from beaches on Indian Island, in areas with prime forage fish habitat, which includes sandy gravel shores. The bags are taken back to the PNPTC lab, where the eggs are separated from the sand and then individually counted. In the 2011-2012 sampling period, more than 450,000 eggs were sampled.
“We’re finding many more eggs than in past studies, but we are also sampling more intensively,” Miller said.
This five-year project will also look at the timing of incubation and emergence of forage fish embryos, as well as the environmental conditions for spawning, such as water temperature, that determine successful spawning rates.
Partners in the project include the U.S. Navy, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Puget Sound Partnership and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Monday was a key deadline for the Affordable Care Act. In order to begin insurance coverage on January 1, 2014, people were supposed to sign up by December 23, 2013, for that shiny new policy.
(On Monday the White House announced the deadline is extended a stay. That’s a good thing for people trying to navigate the web site at the last minute.)
How many American Indians and Alaska Natives signed up for this new program? Who knows? But you’d think that something this important would have so much information posted about it that it would almost be annoying. There should be posters, flyers, signup fairs, reminders and banners. This should be a big deal.
Instead this deadline whizzed by, hardly making a sound in Indian country.
But this is why the deadline – and health insurance matters. From this point forward every American Indian and Alaska Native who signs up for some form of insurance, through a tribe or an employer, via Medicaid, or through these new Marketplace Exchanges, adds real money to the Indian health system.
How much funding? Healthcare reform expert Ed Fox estimates the total could exceed $2 billion. But what makes that $2 billion even more important is that it does not need to be appropriated by Congress.
Most of that funding stream will come from the expansion of Medicaid, the primary mechanism for expanding coverage under the Affordable Care Act. This is a particularly thorny problem for Indian country because only about half of the states with significant American Indian and Alaska Native populations have expanded Medicaid. That’s why it so important for Indian country to keep pressing for this critical funding source.
But even without the Medicaid expansion, many in Indian country are eligible for special considerations through the Marketplace exchanges. Most people won’t have to pay out-of-pocket costs like deductibles, copayments, and coinsurance depending on income. And American Indians and Alaska Natives have a sort of permanent open enrollment period, so the signup can occur anytime.
But, as Dr. Fox writes, “Unfortunately, fewer than 10 percent of those American Indians/Alaska Natives eligible for subsidies will purchase qualified health plans, even fewer American Indians/Alaska Natives likely if they currently receive services at an IHS-funded health program.”
So the problem remains that as long as one-in-three (non-elderly) American Indians and Alaska Natives are uninsured, there will not be enough money to pay for quality healthcare.
But the Affordable Care Act is an alternative. This is the deal: The Indian health system has never been fully funded. And that is not likely to change in our lifetime. No Congress or president in the history of this country has ever presented a budget that meets the health care needs of Indian country.
But the Affordable Care Act opens up a new way of tapping money, exchanging complexity and paperwork for more money that does not have to go through Congress. Money that can go directly and automatically into the Indian health system. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, nine in ten American Indians and Alaska Natives qualify for some sort of assistance to get coverage.
The Affordable Care Act’s potential revenue stream is particularly important right now because the appropriations process in Congress is so completely broken.
But. Wait! American Indians and Alaska Natives have a treaty right to health care. There is no need to do anything, right?
Then I was re-reading my tribe’s treaty with the United States, the Fort Bridger Treaty of 1868. Article 10 says: “The United States hereby agrees to furnish annually to the Indians the physician, teachers, carpenter, miller, engineer, farmer, and blacksmith, as herein contemplated, and that such appropriations shall be made, from time to time, on the estimates of the Secretary of the Interior, as will be sufficient to employ such persons.”
And there is that word: “appropriations.” The process that Congress uses to spend money; a framework that has never even once considered full funding for Indian health.
I hear from many folks who say this is all too much. Let’s repeal the law and start over. Ok, then what? Repealing the law is not going to change the dismal funding of the Indian health system. Congress cannot even agree on regular spending, let alone something like that. But for all the complications, for all the confusion about web sites and paperwork, the Affordable Care Act opens up a check book with a couple billion dollars. We can watch deadlines whiz by. Or, we can say, there it is. Take it.
Mark Trahant is the 20th Atwood Chair at the University of Alaska Anchorage. He is a journalist, speaker and Twitter poet and is a member of The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes. Join the discussion about austerity. Comment on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/TrahantReports.
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/12/23/deadline-whizzes-and-indian-health-money-left-behind-152843
