The erosion of Indigenous food systems as part of European and Euroamerican colonization has resulted in a parallel erosion of Indigenous health, lands, and cultural knowledge. In rural southeastern North Carolina, residents of Robeson County are primarily Lumbee Indians who have been impacted by economic, ecological, and health concerns resulting from colonialism’s historical legacy, even as many have worked to safeguard select traditional ecological knowledge. To highlight sustaining community health as fundamental to Native sovereignty, I include service-learning in the Introduction to American Indian Studies (AIS Intro) course I team-teach at The University of North Carolina at
Pembroke. Service-learning activities at Hawkeye Indian Cultural Center – the only organic farm in our region – strive to underscore to students, service-learning’s potential to foster university-community partnerships, to recuperate and sustain local ecological knowledge and Indigenous food traditions, and to enhance the health of our students and community members.
A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric