Pass the Commods

The iconic cans of commodity food are still in the pantry, but they're now sharing space with traditional foods as Indigenous Nations take control of their own nutrition.

The story of Native food is a journey from federal dependency to Indigenous self-determination, and it’s written in thick black letters on the labels of old commodity food cans. For decades, the U.S. government’s Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR) delivered a message in the form of canned meat and processed cheese: This is your food. It was a system born of the 1970s, but it felt like a modern version of the historical rations used after Native Nations were forced from their lands and stripped of their traditional foodways.

That system is now being rewritten by Nations themselves. The shift began with a simple, radical question: “Why can’t we have fresh foods?” The answer came through advocacy and foundational laws like the Indian Self-Determination Act. A pivotal change was the 2018 Farm Bill, which allowed Indigenous Nations to manage their own food purchasing. For the first time, Nations could use their sovereignty to decide how to feed their people, moving the program from a one-size-fits-all federal model to a Native driven system.

This isn't just a policy shift; it's a cultural revival. The USDA’s Indigenous Food Sovereignty Initiative now partners with groups like North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NÄTIF), creating recipes that combine FDPIR foods with traditional ingredients like wild rice and bison. Simultaneously, a network of Regional Indigenous Seed Saving Hubs is working to preserve the hardiest varieties of traditional plants, controlling the food chain from seed to plate.

But the path forward is not without obstacles. A Government Accountability Office report confirms food insecurity in Native households remains far higher than the national average. And just as Indigenous Nations build new systems, federal funding cuts create new disruptions. Recent cuts to local food purchase programs have forced Nations to scramble, diverting energy from food distribution to emergency fundraising.

The question is no longer if Native Nations can manage their own food systems. They are already proving they can. The real question is whether federal policy will provide stable support or continue to be a journey of two steps forward, one step back. The future of Native food is not in a can. It’s in the seeds being saved and the knowledge being reclaimed, a future Indigenous people are building for themselves.