NextGenRadio

Spring Alaska Schreiner spends her days on Sakari Farms tending to the Indigenous plants and foods she grows. The farm rests on a six-acre plot in the Oregon high desert where the Three Sisters volcanic peaks jut out of the landscape and into view.  

As the owner and principal ecologist at Sakari Farms, Schreiner (Chugach Alaska Corporation and the Valdez Native Tribe) grows ancestral tribal seed for tribal food production, hosts educational tribal food events and cooking classes, and tends to her other business, Sakari Botanicals which incorporates plant material from the farm into hot sauces and teas. Although the pandemic has forced Schreiner to stop or curtail most of that, she found a way to stay in business and support her community.

Tending to and gathering traditional Indigenous foods is nothing new to Schreiner. Her childhood in Alaska was enriched with knowledge of food. Now, she’s using that know-how to put together food boxes filled with nutritional Indigenous foods, which they deliver to tribal communities across the Pacific Northwest region.

When Schreiner moved to Bend, Oregon in 2006, she started to notice there wasn’t a source for local Indigenous foods for tribal members within town. The closest reservation and potential access for traditional foods was more than an hour’s drive north to the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs reservation in Warm Springs, Ore. 

Schreiner sought to fill the niche desire for Indigenous foods in Central Oregon and in 2012, created Sakari Botanicals, the tribal food business which creates syrups, teas and salts. She operated out of a small site in the heart of downtown Bend, and grew all the plant materials necessary on her previous property, which was about a quarter acre plot of land. 

“We were kind of forced to move with the market out here,” Schreiner said. “We ended up buying farmland and then it became Sakari Farms, and that gave us the ability to grow more food, host educational events. That’s when we knew it was time to really pick it up.”

On the new property, which houses four, 100-foot greenhouses, Schreiner started teaching gardening and cooking, and hosting tribal education classes. She wanted Sakari Farms to be a local Indigenous hub for farming and food production. However, the pandemic forced Schreiner to put a stop to all tribal classes and gatherings.

As the pandemic continued and laid bare social inequities like access to local and fresh foods, Schreiner knew access to locals foods would be difficult for many communities.  On her own and partnering with The Wave Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on access to food, Schreiner began putting together tribal food boxes filled with foods from her own farm, as well as foods from Indigenous owned farms or producers across the country. 

A tribal food box can vary depending on which other farms choose to participate each round of distribution, but a typical box might include smoked salmon from the Columbia river, Tanka bars (buffalo meat mixed with dried berries), wild rice, smoked cedar salt, beans, elderberry tea and syrup. Also included in each tribal food box are sweetgrass braids or cedar bundles for ceremonial purposes.