💀 Colonial Hunger Games: How Trump's Food Program Cuts To Tribes Continue America's Legacy of Nutritional Violence

🔥 When "Make America Healthy Again" Means Starving Our People: The Cruel Irony of Trump's War on Indigenous Food Sovereignty How the administration's rhetoric about health collides with their attacks

Jun 02, 2025

😽 Keepin’ It Simple Summary for Younger Readers
👧🏾✊🏾👦🏾

The U.S. government just canceled a program that helped Native American tribes buy healthy, traditional foods for their communities. Instead of letting tribes choose foods that fit their culture and health needs, the government wants to go back to giving them pre-packaged processed foods that make people sick. This is happening even though government officials claim they want to make America healthier. Many tribal communities now face increased hunger and have to find other ways to feed their people, but they're fighting back by creating their own food programs and asking others for support.

🗝️ Takeaways

🔪 The Trump administration cut the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program despite RFK Jr.'s rhetoric about improving Indigenous health
🌾 This program allowed 90 tribal communities to buy fresh, local, traditional foods instead of processed commodities
💔 The cuts affect hundreds of thousands of Native Americans who rely on culturally appropriate food assistance
🏛️ The decision represents colonial-era thinking disguised as modern policy—controlling Indigenous communities through food dependency
🌱 Despite setbacks, tribal communities are building grassroots food sovereignty initiatives to heal from nutritional colonialism
✊ Non-Indigenous allies can support by donating to tribal food programs, buying from Indigenous producers, and advocating for policy change

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When "Make America Healthy Again" Means Starving Our People: The Cruel Irony of Trump's War on Indigenous Food Sovereignty

By Three Sonorans

Here in the borderlands of Southern Arizona, where the Sonoran Desert stretches across artificial boundaries and where Indigenous peoples have cultivated the land for millennia, we're witnessing yet another chapter in America's long history of colonial violence disguised as policy.

The Trump administration's recent decision to gut the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA) isn't just bureaucratic housekeeping—it's a deliberate attack on Indigenous food sovereignty wrapped in the cynical rhetoric of "Making America Healthy Again."

Qué ironía, right? Let me paint you a picture of this absurd theater we're living through.

The Beautiful Lie of "Healthy America"

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now Secretary of Health and Human Services, has made quite the show of condemning ultra-processed foods in Native communities. He's used words like "genocide" and "mass poisoning" to describe the federal government's historical distribution of commodity foods to reservations. Strong words from a man whose administration just stripped away one of the most effective tools tribes had to actually address this very problem.

According to ProPublica's recent investigation, Kennedy has repeatedly testified before Congress about the devastating health impacts of processed foods on Native American communities, calling the situation an urgent crisis requiring immediate action.

Yet when it came time to actually support programs that empowered tribes to purchase fresh, local, traditional foods, his administration's Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins dismissed the LFPA as merely a "remnant of the COVID era" not aligned with current priorities.

Translation: We'll talk a big game about caring for Indigenous health, but we won't actually fund the solutions.

What We're Really Losing

The Local Food Purchase Assistance Program wasn't just another government handout—it was a rare example of federal policy that actually respected tribal sovereignty and cultural knowledge. Launched under the Biden administration in 2021, this program provided about $500 million nationwide to help food banks, including 90 serving tribal communities, purchase fresh, local, and traditional foods directly from nearby farmers and ranchers.

For tribes like the Chippewa-Cree in Montana and the Walker River Paiute in Nevada, this meant the difference between another shipment of government commodity cheese and being able to source local beef, fresh produce, and even bison for their communities. It meant supporting Indigenous food entrepreneurs and revitalizing traditional foodways that had been systematically disrupted by centuries of federal policies.

Here in Southern Arizona, our Pascua Yaqui hermanos and the Tohono O'odham Nation were among the communities that benefited from this flexible, culturally responsive approach to food assistance. The Pascua Yaqui's Tu'i Bwa'ame (Good Food) Pantry, a collaboration between tribal social services, the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, and Yaqui Charity, has been feeding hundreds of community members monthly while working toward the broader goal of food sovereignty—the right of peoples to control their own food systems and access healthy, culturally appropriate foods.

But now? Now we're back to the old colonial playbook: one-size-fits-all commodity distributions that ignore cultural preferences, nutritional needs, and community self-determination.

The Poisonous Legacy We're Fighting

Let's be clear about what we're talking about here. For generations, the federal government has systematically destroyed Indigenous food systems through policies of forced relocation, land theft, and cultural suppression.

Traditional foods like tepary beans, cholla buds, amaranth, and native varieties of corn, squash, and beans were replaced with commodity distributions of white flour, processed meat, and government cheese.

The health consequences have been catastrophic. Native American communities experience some of the highest rates of diabetes, heart disease, and obesity in the country, direct results of this nutritional colonialism.

Food deserts are common on reservations, where tribal members may drive hours to reach the nearest grocery store, only to find shelves stocked with the same processed foods that have been slowly killing our communities for decades.

The LFPA represented a different approach—one that trusted tribes to know what their communities needed and gave them the resources to source those foods locally. It supported not just nutrition but cultural revival, economic development, and community healing.

The Reality on the Ground

The impact of this program's termination is already being felt across Indian Country. Tribal leaders from coast to coast have expressed their frustration and disappointment, emphasizing that the program was "overwhelmingly successful" and uniquely responsive to the needs of their tribes.

What remains is the USDA's Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), which offers a fixed list of foods with far less flexibility for local sourcing. There are barriers, too—households can't receive both FDPIR and SNAP benefits, creating gaps in assistance. Some reservations have even lost access to the commodity program entirely due to infrastructure challenges.

Meanwhile, programs like those supported by Tohono O'odham Community Action (TOCA) have been working to revitalize traditional food systems, support school nutrition programs that source from local Indigenous farmers, and strengthen the Indigenous food economy. The loss of LFPA funding threatens to reverse years of progress in these efforts.

For our Pascua Yaqui neighbors, whose Tu'i Bwa'ame Pantry serves low-income residents with household incomes below 150% of the federal poverty level, the program cuts mean increased reliance on donations and local support to maintain the variety and nutritional quality of foods they can offer.

The goal of food sovereignty—ensuring everyone has access to healthy, culturally meaningful foods—faces new and significant challenges.

The Hypocrisy is Stunning

What makes this particularly galling is the administration's simultaneous rhetoric about health and their actions that directly undermine Indigenous health and self-determination. Kennedy can stand before Congress and declare war on ultra-processed foods while his administration cuts programs that actually provided alternatives.

It's colonial gaslighting at its finest.

This is the same pattern we've seen throughout American history: grand proclamations about caring for Indigenous peoples followed by policies that strip away resources, autonomy, and dignity. It's the boarding school mentality dressed up in 21st-century policy language—"we know what's best for you, and what's best is whatever serves our political agenda, not your actual needs."

Where Do We Go From Here?

Here's what I know: our communities have survived 500 years of attempted genocide, forced assimilation, and systematic oppression. We've survived commodity foods, boarding schools, and termination policies. We'll survive this, too, but not by waiting for the federal government to suddenly develop a conscience.

The path forward lies in what we've always done best—taking care of each other and building our own solutions. It means supporting organizations like Yaqui Charity and TOCA that are working to strengthen Indigenous food systems from the ground up. It means donating to tribal food pantries, buying from Indigenous food producers, and advocating for policies that actually respect tribal sovereignty.

For those of us who aren't tribal members but live in these borderlands, it means being better allies. It means understanding that Indigenous food sovereignty isn't just about nutrition—it's about healing from historical trauma, revitalizing cultural practices, and asserting the right to self-determination.

It also means holding our elected officials accountable when they talk out of both sides of their mouths. Kennedy and the Trump administration can't simultaneously claim to care about Indigenous health while gutting the very programs that empower tribes to address their own nutritional needs.

The Seeds of Resistance

Despite the setbacks, there's reason for hope.

Across Indian Country, communities are developing innovative solutions to food insecurity and cultural food revival. Urban Indigenous communities are creating food sovereignty programs, such as those at the Mochik Garden, TOCA, or the Mission Garden. Tribal farmers are expanding traditional crop production. Young Indigenous people are learning traditional foodways from their elders and adapting them for contemporary challenges.

Here in the Sonoran Desert, where my own Chicano ancestors learned to survive in a harsh but beautiful landscape, I'm reminded that resistance has always been about more than opposing bad policies—it's about creating the world we want to see. It's about planting seeds, literally and figuratively, that will feed future generations.

And speaking of literal seeds—¿sabías que?—you can get free seeds right here in Pima County through our public library system! That's right, while the feds are cutting food programs, our local libraries are quietly revolutionizing food access through seed libraries. You can check out heirloom tomato seeds like you would a book, grow your own quelites, and return with seeds from your harvest to share with the next person. It's mutual aid disguised as library services, and it's beautiful.

Growing your own food isn't just about nutrition—it's an act of resistance against a system that wants to keep us dependent on whatever scraps they decide to throw our way.

Every backyard garden, every pot of herbs on a windowsill, every community plot where neighbors share knowledge and harvests is a small declaration of independence from industrial food systems that have poisoned our bodies and communities.

The Trump administration may have cut funding for Indigenous food programs, but they can't cut our determination to feed our communities with dignity and cultural integrity. They can eliminate federal programs, but they can't eliminate the knowledge, resilience, and solidarity that have sustained our people for generations.

Taking Action

So what can you do right now?

Support local Indigenous food initiatives: Donate to organizations like Yaqui Charity's food security programs and other tribal food pantries in your area.
Support Indigenous producers: Look for Indigenous-owned farms, food businesses, and restaurants. Support the Indigenous food economy.
Start growing your own food: Visit your local Pima County library and check out free seeds from their seed library program. Plant some quelites, herbs, or heirloom tomatoes. Growing your own food is an act of resistance against corporate control of our food systems. Share your harvest and save seeds to pass on—that's how food sovereignty really works, one garden at a time.
Advocate for policy change: Contact your representatives and demand they support legislation that respects tribal food sovereignty and funds culturally appropriate nutrition programs.
Educate yourself and others: Learn about the history of federal food policies in Indian Country and share that knowledge. Understanding the colonial roots of current health disparities is crucial for building support for real solutions.
Build solidarity: If you're not Indigenous, be a genuine ally. Listen to Indigenous voices, support Indigenous-led organizations, and use whatever privilege you have to amplify calls for food justice.

The fight for Indigenous food sovereignty is part of a larger struggle for justice, self-determination, and healing from historical trauma. It's connected to environmental justice, climate change, immigration rights, and all the other issues we face here in the borderlands and beyond.

No nos van a parar. They're not going to stop us. Not now, not ever.

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What are your thoughts on the federal government's approach to Indigenous food sovereignty? And how can non-Indigenous allies better support tribal food justice efforts? Share your thoughts in the comments below.