TheNativeAmerican Organic Garden: Using Service Learning as a Site of Resistance

As educators, we owe it to our students to enable them to transgress structural impediments and to create sustainable alternatives from the margins of the industrial agro‐food system. Policies of assimilation, allotment, and enclosure of the N ative A merican commons and ecosystems brought devastation to N ative cultures. Dependence on government commodities replaced N ative food sovereignty and contributed to malnutrition, obesity, and diabetes as diets responded to corporately produced and processed foods. Young people often feel disempowered and ask how they might confront such formidable forces as corporate control of our agro‐food system, destruction of natural resources, and threats to human health. Service learning at a former N ative A merican boarding school, now a university campus, empowered students to create a community of learning and practice that resulted in a N ative A merican O rganic G arden. Based on N ative values, the garden serves the community's needs for healthy, locally produced food.