Roxanne Swentzell
+Matriarch Monday+
Roxanne Swentzell
She is a Kha-'Po Owingeh (Santa Clara Pueblo) matriarch, potter, sculptor and has helped paved the way for the reclaiming of Permaculture
This week's #matriarchmonday publication is by the inspiring Roxanne Swentzell. In 1989 she helped start the Permaculture Flowering Institute in Santa Clara Pueblo. Permaculture is the study of patterns in nature that create healthy ecosystems. By recreating these design patterns in our own lives, we help to create sustainable lifestyles. The Pueblo Food Experience grew out of Swentzell’s work with the Flowering Tree Permaculture Institute, a nonprofit she co-founded at Santa Clara Pueblo in 1987. Roxanne's food and permaculture work have inspired so many indigenous communities to reclaim their ancestral food systems. As she puts it, "We are not only what and where we eat, we are also what and where our ancestors ate. In 2013 the "Pueblo Food Experience " was launched. 14 volunteers of Pueblo descent agreed to eat, for three months, only the foods available to their ancestors before the first Native contact with the Spanish in 1540.
The experiment proved, beyond a doubt, that returning to a pre-contact diet — free of dairy products, refined sugar and carbohydrates, and other highly processed foods — had a positive effect on all the volunteers. Before they started the new diets, all the volunteers (who ranged from six to sixty-five years old) were weighed and given blood tests that measured their blood sugar, cholesterol, triglycerides, and liver function. When they were retested after the three-month trial period, the doctor who conducted the exams reported that the group had an average weight loss of 35 to 40 pounds and significant decreases in triglyceride, cholesterol, and blood sugar levels. Volunteers also reported less depression and more energy and mental clarity.
“Granted, we were all suffering from some kind of health issues, but because the diet was based on a cultural identity — this is the food our people used to eat — there was also a reconnecting that none of us realized would happen. It was so strong. It’s hard to even put words to it because it was something we all felt, a connection to something that was very, very old in ourselves, like we went home in a deep, deep sense. It was not a fad or a diet,” she said. “This was a belonging. This was an empowerment event.” From this experience the Roxanne Created a cookbook for her Pueblo, The Pueblo Food Experience Cookbook: Whole Food of Our Ancestors.
We love & celebrate the work of Roxanne & her family!!!
Below is her publication from the book, A Question Of Balance: Artists and Writers on Motherhood
By: Judith Pierce Rosenberg
Papier Mache Press Watsonville, CA 1995
Pages 81-88
