This interview originally aired on "In the Moment" on SDPB Radio.
South Dakota is a state that shares geography, history and culture with sovereign Native nations.
The state, federal and tribal governments work together in various ways to represent and serve the people who live here through policies and strategic initiatives.
Ultimately, it's the people who make those partnerships and relationships work, even when responding to complex challenges. Especially with limited resources.
We meet two of those people today.
Nikki Gronli is the state director for USDA rural development.
Nick Hernandez is president and CEO of Makoce Agriculture Development.
We discuss food that connects us and food systems that sustain us all.
The following transcript was auto generated.
Nick Hernandez:
[Lakota introduction].
Hello everybody, hello relatives, my name's Nick Hernandez. I am president and CEO of Makoce Agriculture Development based here on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the southwest corner of the State of South Dakota. That is me. I'm a tribal member of the Oglala Tribe, a father of two boys, Kai and Haley, and then a partner to Liz Welch. And we live here and reside here on the Pine Ridge Reservation in the district of Porcupine.
Lori Walsh:
Nikki, tell us a little bit about yourself and the work that you're doing for USDA.
Nikki Gronli:
Hi, I am Nikki Gronli. I'm the state director for the US Department of AG Rural Development. My duty station is here on South Dakota. I have been in this role a little over two years now, and I'm just really blessed to be able to get out in South Dakota on a regular basis and visit the sovereign nations that are within South Dakota's boundaries. And out on the road is how I met Nick.
Lori Walsh:
Tell me a little bit about the partnership between USDA Rural and Makoce. Nikki, you go first.
Nikki Gronli:
That sounds good. So Nick and his team at Makoce have been doing some really outstanding work prior to us partnering. And the thing that they've been doing is teaching tribal members about raising chickens, chickens to produce and be able to have in their homes to take care of a food source for the year. And so, he's been doing that incredible work for a long time. Nick came to USDA Rural Development for our Rural Business Development grant. And in the spring of '23, my specialist, Clark Guthmiller, he said, "Hey, there's this great project that's out on Pine Ridge. They'd like to apply for our grant. The timeline's really tight. I need to go and meet with them." And so, I sent him there. He actually had to miss part of our all-staff training for it, but it was important and it was a great project. So, we sent Clark there, and maybe we'll have Nick tell you a little bit about what he is doing, and what we are investing in.
Lori Walsh:
Yes. Nick, tell us a little bit more about how you came to this kind of work, and then let's get down to this particular project, because you have so many different initiatives going. But give us the big picture and then narrow it down to this one, please.
Nick Hernandez:
Yeah. Well, I've been roughly in this work around agriculture and food systems development for about 15 years. But I mean, the big picture looking down is I was founding initiative director for Thunder Valley CDC's Food Sovereignty Initiative. And then, I did a number of years in building up that program or that initiative, but through a larger lens of surveying community members, and visiting other communities and cities, and seeing other systems across the nation brought the ideas, the solutions, the grass roots movement of basically rebuilding our local food system. And so, that is kind of the bigger lens where we're at today.
And so Makoce is turning four years old on June 17th as basically a nonprofit organization, but as an idea and solution-based organization focused on creating systemic change within our community. And so, we do that in a number of strategic initiatives. And so, yeah, the organization is roughly four years old, but in the last four years we've been able to grow dramatically, but also create projects, develop systems, create networks and partnerships that are not only locally derived and locally focused, but also to create networks that expand beyond our community, beyond our reservations, and start to think about nation building within our United Nation of the Oceti Sakowin. And so, that's mainly reconnecting back to the 47 sub-band communities of the Oceti Sakowin through connectivity and through understanding around food systems development.
Lori Walsh:
Nick, why food for you? Why ag?
Nick Hernandez:
Well, I mean, ag is more of the Western concept. And so, well, food to humans is basically ... It's your life way. It's how you live. But to Lakota, Dakota and Nakota culture and life ways, food is the foundation of making relationships. It's the foundation of culture, it's the foundation of language, but also it's the foundation of our connectivity to Mother Earth, to Unci Maka, what we call it. And so, food is that connectivity to all existence within ecosystems, and I mean, that of western lifestyle. I mean, food is what creates memories, creates relationships, but it also is a foundation of a lot of our culture and our life.
Lori Walsh:
So, when you're finding responses and solutions to the rebuilding of local food systems, that seems to me, but I don't want to put words in your mouth, an incredibly nourishing and hopeful activity. I mean, you have to feel a sense of purpose when it's working and a sense of frustration when you reach an obstacle. Tell me a little bit about what you bring emotionally to your work.
Nick Hernandez:
Well, a lot of my work stems from my relationships with my grandparents. That's where a lot of our nurturing and our teaching stem from is our relationship that we have, not only with our parents, but also our grandparents. And so, coming back home after graduating from undergrad, I was this energized, ready to make change, graduate coming back home, but also seeing also during that time, seeing a lot of movement hasn't taken place within my communities that brought us up into, at the time, the 21st century basically.
And so, I really saw, well, the light bulb. The light bulb went off whenever I was having a conversation with my grandmother about making change. And I saw the change that I wanted to make within the conversation I had with my grandmother in her garden. And the light bulb went off when I was holding foods that we were raising, that we cut up, that we shared a meal with. And within that light bulb going off, that's where my connectivity stemmed from was being able to see and feel what we could create, but that it could have a lasting relationship, not only within our families, but it could be able to be a fiber of a community that we could rebuild, that ideally is historical.
But doing a lot of this work within our reservation, there is some tapes. There is some obstacles that we have to understand and that we have to plan to overcome and change. And so doing this work, I've been able to learn a lot about the development of systems, but also the understanding of acts or policies that have been historically put in place to limit our connectivity back to our environment, back to our cultures, back to our life ways. And so within a lot of the work that we are doing, it's being able to create a pathway towards rebuilding ourselves as a community, but being able to create systemic solutions that not only benefit our community in collective change, but also an idea, a solution that we could share out with other communities who are looking for change within their communities too.
And we're doing that by many examples, by many opportunities that we create by doing hands-on activities, educating program, creating materials, but also going out and visiting other communities who want to share in the work that we are doing. And so, obstacles are always there, but we always try to look for ways of overcoming those obstacles, but also working to understand them and collectively to change them, that they actually benefit a future pathway that we need even within my community.
Lori Walsh:
I'm going to jump in and ask you about the chickens in a minute, but first, Nikki, when I think of the work that USDA Rural does, everything that Nick is saying, there's a whole lot of commonality in that throughout the rural and tribal communities of the state. What would you add to that sense of food, and the connectivity, and the nourishment, and how that can create the fiber of a community?
Nikki Gronli:
The thing that I'm seeing, and this is in, I'd say, all of our tribal nations here in South Dakota, there is a movement towards making sure that food production is happening locally, and those healthy foods are staying right there. Nick has started with chickens, and that was kind of the work he's been doing. But what we're going to be able to do through that partnership is actually move him to the next level where they're going to do a food hub, where people are going to be able to grow healthy vegetables, where he's going to be able to teach people about those healthy foods. And they're talking about a commercial kitchen there to be able to cook and make healthy meals.
And when we think about the health of rural Americans and the health of our tribal members, we know that we've got a long ways to go because of these food deserts out there, to get people that resource right there. And at the same time, for Nick, I mean, he is an economic driver by doing this work, because he's employing several people who are also doing this work. They plan to do a farmer's market in the long run. And he's just doing a tremendous service to the folks there at Pine Ridge and to his community of Porcupine to bring them that healthy food. And it just aligns perfectly with what we do at Rural Development. It checks all the boxes. It's good for economic development, and it is good for repopulating and creating strong community.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. How do you measure success at USDA? That's always tricky to get your mind around, because there's a financial exchange and therefore in the federal government, you're going to have to justify that there was some sort of impact. How do you measure impact, Nikki?
Nikki Gronli:
For us, we made the investment to help Nick get his business plan together, a feasibility study, and also he's working on the marketing pieces for this. So our investment is helping him do the work to make sure it is successful in the long run. And that's the work he's doing. We're so excited that we get to be part of that and help him go into it with the tools to show him the roadmap. And he's worked with his team on this and a consultant. They're going to have the roadmap for success. But what are we going to be looking for down the road? We are going to be looking for that food hub to be able to serve multitudes of people. We're going to be looking for activity there. We're going to be looking for them to carry out the things they want to do when they're having a farmer's market, when they're growing crops right there, having people in and they're teaching them to create healthy meals. That's what we're looking for.
Lori Walsh:
Nick, when we think of the word success, there are more than one ways to unpack that. Is there a way that you think about that word that maybe a lot of people haven't considered yet?
Nick Hernandez:
Yeah, I mean, just to touch on the initiatives, what we're creating is an ecosystem, right? An ecosystem of development, design, implementation. And so, we have five initiatives, and what we're addressing basically is the food hub initiative. So, we're talking about creating a place and space that relatively doesn't exist probably on most reservations. So, developing a multi-purpose community food hub that we can have access to retail, to cafe, to office space, to training center and event center, so then that we can be able to implement and bring in education trainings, but also hold them on the reservation relatively, where there's not a space to able to do that. And so, being able to create place and space within a facility that is designed to educate around agriculture and food systems development. And so, our first initiative is the food hub initiative.
Our second one is the production farm. So you can talk about how to grow things and learn about how to grow things. But for a production farm, we're talking about regenerative principles by actually implementing them and talk about eco-restoration, talking about animal production, talking about composting, things that we want to put into play that relatively are relevant to the community. And so, the production farm will also be not only a production farm, but also a training center for the communities, but also a visual space that community members can see, they can visit, and they can that relationship to. Because the big thing is that with food, we don't have a relationship to it, because we don't know where it comes from. We don't know how far it travels. So, in creating a space where we can be able to do that is huge.
The third initiative is the Food Systems Institute, and the institute is the foundation of education, both community towards entrepreneurship, so then that we can ready on both fronts, starting from the community, being able to educate, be hands-on, and then potentially be able to create the viable businesses that we need for supply chain development.
The fourth one is basically an initiative, because it's one of the things I'm passionate about is the Hemp Development initiative. That one is still in its infancy. I'm just going to be hiring a director to lead that, but that one would be able to use the crop for its multiple uses, so that we can use it for oil, protein, insulating and heating of our homes, our new construction. And then, so yeah, that's what the hemp.
And then the last initiative that we have is the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ Food Systems Alliance. And with that one, I want to say that that one is about networking. It is about making relationships or revitalizing relationships of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ. And the foundation of that work is on policy development and policy development advocacy. Because as we deal with food, and especially with the USDA, we got to understand that there's code and we want to be able to make our own codes, our own local food codes that are relevant to our cultural foods and to the environments that we interact with.
And so those are the five initiatives. And so when we talk about success, I mean, we're creating innovative ways that relatively are not new, that are historical and traditional in their concepts. But what we've been able to create in less than four years has been huge. And the one thing that we want to be transparent on is that we want to create these shared concepts that we've also adopted from other communities and be able to create models so that we can share out, so then that everybody understands that everybody can be able to take a piece, a piece of these ideas, these systems, and these solutions, and integrate them into their community, even from a small square foot of understanding and being able to build through some form of growth development.
And so, I mean, success is from having four families to 28 families producing and processing chicken. It's gaining access to farmland and building a farm, right? It's planting a thousand trees last week. It's interacting with over 150 students at a youth conference. It's hosting the only conference on the entire reservation focused on agriculture and food systems that the platform is for local community stakeholders to engage and understand what we are doing and for our successes in everything that we do. And we strive. We strive to not only create success, but to have fun. Because in doing this work, it's about passion. It's about passion for everything that needs to take place.
Because food is a medicine, it's a medicine that is not understood that it takes a lot of effort, understanding, and building that relationship, and sharing that with multiple peoples and communities. And so, we have to understand that by doing it, by interacting with it. And as humans, we are totally disconnected from food, because we look at other food products as food when they relatively are not. And so, we have to come back to educating on a community level of what new food is, and then those expanding concepts that we use in USDA in our nutrition classes, and stuff. And so, we have to get back to what food is and where that energy actually derives from, and what it's meant to be used for.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Well, I'm going to be thinking all weekend long about food and what I think food is. That's really inspiring. Nikki, final thoughts on these kind of partnerships and how more people can connect with USDA Rural?
Nikki Gronli:
I would just say the work that Nick and his team are doing, these are exactly the type of projects that the Biden-Harris administration has asked us to look for. Let's revitalize and take care of the health of rural Americans. And so, we've got programs that can help with that, and Nick and his team are doing it. And if we can find more of these and help more of them expand and get going, we know that we're going to just help with that health of rural South Dakotans, and we love it.
Lori Walsh:
We will leave it there. Thank you so much, Nikki Gronli for joining us here today in the studio.
Nikki Gronli:
Thanks for having me.
Lori Walsh:
Nick Hernandez, thank you so much. I'm inspired by all of the work that you're doing and the way you talk about it. Thank you.
Nick Hernandez:
I appreciate it. Thank you, guys.
