Since the beginning of the project 4 years ago, x̣x̣súl̓eʔxʷ has grown as a demonstration garden, Tribal Food Sovereignty site, and a place for the community to gather and connect with food and culture.
Overlooking a bend in the Spokane River the Spokane Tribal Network’s (STN) food sovereignty demonstration site, x̣x̣súl̓eʔxʷ , which translates to “a nice little piece of good ground,” is a place for people to learn, share and grow together. Under the hot July sun, Lynette Pflueger, a chef by trade who works on the food sovereignty and Indigenous birth justice initiatives with STN, described the layout of the circular garden plot.
The garden follows the lifecycle of the Upper Columbia Plateau Interior Salish speaking peoples, with two main walkways dissecting the garden into four slices and a center circle with medicinal plants. Each slice has multiple concentric rows and faces in a cardinal direction. Three inner rows contain familiar garden fare, like lettuce, peas and tomatoes, while the outermost row is reserved for culturally significant plants. The native plants represent the seasons and stages of life, creating a walking calendar with plants like black cottonwoods, whose leaf buds are harvested in February, growing in the northern section that symbolizes winter.
Since the beginning of the project 4 years ago, x̣x̣súl̓eʔxʷ has grown as a demonstration garden, Tribal Food Sovereignty site, and a place for the community to gather and connect with food and culture.
Pflueger returns aromatherapy bottles to the herb storage area in the newly renovated pole barn.
At x̣x̣súl̓eʔxʷ a pole barn previously used for storage has been refurbished to provide space for year-round activities centered around healthy food and medicinal plants. The space features a large open gathering area, offices and rooms for meetings and instruction, a commercial kitchen area and a storage room where a braid of recently picked garlic was hung up to cure alongside jars of dried herbs and berries. On the walls, vegetables and fruits drawn by local elementary school kids hang next to pieces of green tape that keep a running list of future building and supply needs the project is raising money to meet.
At a folding table, Pflueger prepared a rose aromatherapy spray and peppermint lavender roll on oil for attendees at an upcoming Washington State Tribal Opioid Fentanyl Summit. Pflueger’s mother, Melodi Wynne, who facilitates STN’s food sovereignty work, shared the meaning of the food sovereignty project.
“The Spokane tribe has been food sovereign since time immemorial,” Wynne said. “We went through some rough decades and centuries because of the policies and relationships with newcomers, so now we're getting back to feeding ourselves, our families, and community.”
Food sovereignty, which is rooted in La Via Campesina social and agricultural movement, is “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods and their right to define their food and agriculture systems.”
“There's a lot of different ways that that's done among different tribes,” said Wynne. “The way that we're trying to do it is to teach people how to have their own hands in their own food, all the way from planting the seed, to cleaning up after a community meal.”
While x̣x̣súl̓eʔxʷ is a central hub to bring people together around traditional foods and plant medicine, the work extends throughout the community, including in local schools and across the traditional homeland of the Spokane tribe. William Dennison, an administrative assistant for STN, said that when he walks around the halls of the middle school and high school, students know him as “the plant guy” or “rock guy” through his TikTok videos and work leading gathering parties to collect traditional plants like wild rose and arnica.
Pflueger and Dennison enter the demonstration garden on a hot July day.
For Dennison, getting involved with this project has been part of a healing journey. “As I got more involved with the food sovereignty aspect of STN’s work, I started becoming more and more centered in who I was and I started feeling more like myself,” he said. “I used to be really depressed, but after working with the land and learning about the plants, the teachings that they have, and how to respect them, and how they can help you and respect you, has been really healing and helped me.”
“So, I like to share it with other people and kind of show them there's other ways to heal. I was an addict for about four years on opioids, and that was really hard, and probably one of the hardest things I'd ever been through is kind of coming down from that and getting sober,” Dennison said. “Working with these plants and all these wonderful people has just really made me feel human again, so I just like to share that with everybody.”
That sharing happens through community activities like gathering parties where traditional foods are harvested and seed planting and transplanting for the demonstration and community gardens. “Interest is growing, and, I think, most importantly it's growing in the youth, which is where it needs to happen,” Dennison said. “If they're interested, it's just going to continue and grow even better than what we've established.”
Penny Spencer, the director of STN, said that building this kind of knowledge in the youth and creating a space for people of any age to engage with traditional connections to the land and food is vital. “People just assume because ‘oh you're native or you live on the rez,’ you know all about (local plants or traditional medicines),” Spencer said. “So, it can be intimidating to even try and get to know about things, to put yourself out there and say, ‘oh yeah, I don't know anything or I know just a little bit.’”
To combat any sense of expectation and create a comfortable learning atmosphere, the project fosters a space where knowledge is shared, not assumed or expected. “We teach whoever is willing to learn and then also learn from people who are willing to teach us about the traditional foods and medicines,” said Wynne.
As the project nurtures a virtuous cycle of co-learning and growth, there’s an ongoing need for community support. If you’re interested in learning more about the project or making a donation to support the Spokane Tribal Food Sovereignty site, please visit: https://spokanetribalnetwork.org/tfs/.