Fort Peck Community College Wins Cultural Foodways Award
Fort Peck Community College was recently selected as a recipient of Sovereign Equity Fund’s 2023 Cultural Foodways award. SEF partners with the Native American Agriculture Fund and the Mellon Foundation to administer the Cultural Foodways Fund, a funding opportunity for tribal colleges and universities that provides capital and capacity building to expand knowledge of the arts and humanities of Native food systems.
The mission of the Cultural Foodways Fund is to promote the study, practice and recognition of Indigenous food and agriculture knowledge at TCUs and create platforms that celebrate community-led, culturally appropriate ways of sharing that knowledge with community members and other constituencies.
The Land-Based Knowledge project at FPCC is a two-year award with a total budget of $200,000. The project starts on Sept. 1 and concludes Aug. 30, 2025.
The Land-Based Knowledge project will highlight a series of land-based learning workshops, events, and people- centric connections open to all ages that focus on both the historical and modern importance of fishing, hunting/ gathering, and agriculture. The project supports family participation in the Assiniboine and Sioux traditions, ceremonies, cuisines, language, art, storytelling, cosmologies, belief systems, customs and ways of being intertwined with Indigenous foodways.
Each of the project activities seek to leverage the strengths of traditional cultural knowledge with tangible, hands-on learning experiences for all ages to participate; thus, supporting the intergenerational transmission of knowledge. The vision of the Land-based Knowledge project seeks to position cultural foodways as a central aspect of community wellness for the constituents of the Fort Peck Community College service area by learning from the land itself.
The project incorporates cultural literacy by integrating cultural values of prayer, health, relationships, and cleansing in each of the events and activities.
The project seeks to narrate a story of the traditional relationships with food, culture, and values found within the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation; seeking to not only revitalize but to also synthesize traditional and contemporary practices.
The project lead is Elijah Hopkins. For more information about the project, email ehopkins@fpcc.edu or call 406-768 6371.
FPCC serves the people of the Fort Peck Reservation and northeast Montana by providing quality academic, vocational and community based programs, empowering the next generation of workers, leaders and citizens while being entrusted with the preservation and promotion of Assiniboine and Sioux Culture.
For more information about Fort Peck Community College, visit fpcc.edu.
