The Nutritional Impacts of European Contact on the Omaha: A Continuing Legacy

For the majority of Native American tribes on the Great Plains, contact with Euro-Americans resulted in a number of changes in their lifeways. For the Omaha tribe, the introduction of both the horse and firearms meant a diversification in nutritional strategies and a florescence in their culture. After being confined to their reservation in 1855, the Omaha continued to remain largely self-sufficient in food production. During the early years of the reservation until the turn of the century, the Omaha were highly successful farmers, producing surpluses of cash• and garden variety crops. In this paper I argue that today the situation is quite different. Few Omaha are able to produce their own food as most of their land has either been sold or leased. The tribe s dependency on processed, store-bought foods and government commodities has increased dramatically in the last fifty years. From an analysis of changing foodways over the past 200 years I conclude that, associated with this dependency, is a marked increase in chronic dietary diseases such as diabetes and obesity

Food Security and Housing in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside

The purpose of this report is to document the housing and food security needs of the hard to house population in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and to provide population‐specific suggestions for policies to address these needs. The intersection between food security and housing has seen an increasing amount of activity in terms of programming but little in the way of research or policy. The report provides three categories of evidence: 1) academic research findings regarding the relationship between food security and health among vulnerable populations, 2) interviews with residents of the DTES regarding the food security issues they face and 3) focus groups and interviews with food and housing providers in the DTES on what types of infrastructure, programming and building contexts are most critical for enhancing food security and housing in the neighbourhood.Non UBCUnreviewedFacult

Assessing the Pocket Market Model for Growing the Local Food Movement: A Case Study of Metropolitan Vancouver

In this study we explore the pocket market model, an emergent alternative retail marketing arrange­ment for connecting urban consumers with local food producers. In this model, community-based organizations act as local food brokers, purchasing fresh, healthful food from area farmers and food producers, and selling it to urban consumers in small-scale, portable, local food markets. The benefits of pocket markets are numerous. They include the provision of additional and more local­ized marketing outlets for local food producers; increased opportunities to educate consumers about local food and sustainable food systems; the convenience for consumers of having additional venues where local food is available for purchase; and an ability to increase access to fresh produce in areas with poor or limited retail food options. Despite these advantages, pocket market organiz­ers face many challenges in implementing this model successfully. These include a lack of public familiarity with the pocket market concept, an inability to address issues of food access in a way that is financially sustainable, and issues related to logistics, site selection, and regulatory requirements. In this paper, we will explore the pocket market model using those operating in metropolitan Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada) as an example, and assess the degree to which it addresses some of the current gaps in bringing local food to urban communities

Gender struggle, scale, and the production of place in the Appalachian coalfields

Recent changes in the coal mining industry of Appalachian Kentucky have entailed a widespread economic restructuring with profound effects on the character of the social relations that constitute place. As the traditionally male-dominated mining industry has seen a reduction in employment, there has been a parallel rise in service sector employment, in which women dominate many jobs. Drawing on in-depth interviews with fourteen women living in one coalfield community, we discuss how this economic restructuring has produced a series of struggles between men and women over appropriate gender roles relating to waged work and household work. We also show how these gender struggles -- which we suggest are most evident in the microsites of the body and the household -- influence the character of networks of social relations at the scale of the locality and, therefore, have an important impact on the production of place and scale. This case study contributes to ongoing discussions of the social production of place and the politics that surround this process. It draws on a feminist theoretical framework to argue that understandings of the production of place cannot disregard the role social relations shaped at the microscale play in shaping place and that our understandings of the politics of place and scale must include the gendered struggles of everyday life.

Trade, Contact, and Female Health in Northeast Nebraska

Most scholars are understandably preoccupied with the impact of Europeans on native peoples who were passive, unwilling, or resistant participants in that contact. We present in this chapter a different case. The Missouri River tribes, including the Omaha and Ponca, willingly engaged in relations with Euramericans, especially in the fur trade that dominated interaction in this region. The time frame for this study is 1780- 1820, a period when interaction between individual traders and Native Americans was replaced by the dominance of the American Fur Company in organized exploitation of the Missouri River lands and peoples. This involvement later contributed to the well-documented environmental destruction of Plains river systems with dire consequence to Native American subsistence in the late 1800s. The years between 1780 and 1820 saw commerce contribute to the emergence of the Omaha tribe as a major political, economic, military, and cultural force in the area of modern Nebraska. It is thought that lifestyles changed during these dealings with Euramericans to the simultaneous benefit and peril of tribal members. Omaha population decreased during the late 1700s and early 1800s. Epidemics (Trimble, 1989) and trade in toxic lead (Reinhard and Ghazi, 1992) contributed to this decline. Beyond these factors, female health and reproductive success must have played a role in the decline and eventual recovery of the Omaha population. It appears that several factors related to the fur trade resulted in changes in ways of life that adversely affected female health. Trade exposed the Omaha to Euramericans and their diseases. The need to produce furs resulted in greater physical demands on an already heavily taxed population. We suspect that the vitality of Omaha women was compromised, resulting in a decrease in life expectancy and reproductive success