Indigenous People and Modern Sustainability/ The Iroquois

Exploring what native people in one's area did to help insure their own tribe's sustainability might be an avenue that some might want to think about when considering modern or local sustainability issues. I used the book Iroquois Uses of Maize and Other Food Plants to try and see if some of their ideas could be used today. Credits for the book are given below.

  I found out through reading about the native people of my area, the Iroquois, what they grew and gathered for food and I was interested in learning more about some of the ways that indigenous people helped their tribes to survive through hard times.  The Iroquois nation for example, grew and  collected a variety of food items some of which they preserved through low tech methods that could be used today. They helped each other out through hospitality rules. No one ever went hungry because they had others to depend on. The sick and the elderly all were allowed "community food". People shared and helped each other. Hospitality was encouraged even among strangers and many early colonist and  early explorers attest to the generosity of many different native tribes for helping them through hard times.

  All manner of different types of corn which could be cooked in different ways to make hominy, puddings and breads. They grew string beans, bush beans, two kinds of kidney beans, and collected wild peas as well as some wild rice. There were many different squashes like crookneck, hubbard squash, scalloped, and winter squash. There were pumpkins, cucumbers and musk melons. For sweeteners they had maple sugar,and corn sugar. All different types of nuts like beechnuts, black walnuts, butternuts, hickory and hazel nuts could be gathered. They could find and dry  blueberries, huckleberries, cranberries, mulberries, strawberries, currants, pears and apples and more. They had a pretty good supply of gathered and grown food stuffs to last them through the year and the book explored ways food was stored, cooked and used.

 It was very interesting to see how a peoples philosophy helped them in cultivating and sharing their natural environment. I was also interested in learning what they did grow and gathered in my area, how food was preserved. The book stimulated a lot of thoughts in my mind as to different avenues we can explore when thinking about modern sustainability issues. Perhaps a greater variety of natural produce that has been shown to have done well in this area, could be offered  in our local grocery stores.

Iroquois Uses of Maize and other food plants by Arthur Parker 1910. Reprint in 1983. Albany State of New York. Education Department. New York State Museum.