231691 "Good meat" for the health of Native Americans

Monday, November 8, 2010 : 4:30 PM - 4:50 PM

Sam Hurst , Dakota Day, Rapid City, SD
For six months during the winter and spring of 2007, a documentary video crew intimately followed a middle-aged Lakota traditionalist and Sun Dancer as he attempted to improve his health by rediscovering the traditional low carbohydrate, grass-fed free range buffalo diet of his ancestors. The project was basely loosely on the research of Dr. Kevin Weiland in Rapid City, South Dakota, Indian Health Service nutritionist Kibbe Conti, who serves the Lakota population in western South Dakota, and Professor Gary Paul Nabhan at Northern Arizona University. The project also explored family, cultural and economic issues at the heart of an exploding obesity and diabetes epidemic on the Pine Ridge Reservation. This session reports on the complicated personal and social results.

Learning Areas:
Public health or related public policy

Learning Objectives:
Discuss how a Lakota man's effort to return to the ancient buffalo diet of his ancestors can have public health, community health, and economic implications.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have spent sixteen years as a journalist in Lakota Country, made four documentary movies about the Lakota, including GOOD MEAT, a documentary about one Lakota man's effort to return to the ancient buffalo diet of his ancestors. I have also written for Gourmet magazine about the food economy of Pine Ridge.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

Back to: 3394.0: Rebuilding indigenous food systems