Being in rural southeast Alaska, fresh produce isn't always available and has to be trucked and barged to our remote area. Establishing a food forest for the community and the future generations of Metlakatla will benefit this community for many generations. In these times, the future is very uncertain and living in southeast Alaska our livelihood has become very uncertain depending who is in our leadership, oil prices and climate change, the abundant life we live is drastically about to change. Slowly we are losing many of our traditional foods our Tsimshian ancestors used to eat. We can no longer harvest our shell fish due to PSP levels being high and climate change warming up our waters, we are now seeing less and less fish in our waters so sustaining our traditional foods now is a must and creating a indigenous food forest is our first step in saving our traditional foods for our future generations. We will be using any funds received to purchase items needed for community food forest and we will use volunteers to transport and transplant fruit trees, berry bushes and plant produce, once everything is planted in the ground, it will all be pretty much self sustaining which is the goal we are striving for. This is only the beginning of helping our community move towards sustainability but our community can be a beckon of what a community can do when we come together for positive change for our future. We have many plans to restore our old traditions and traditional foods. We must start where we are, with what we have.
To plant a seed is to believe in tomorrow and i believe in a tomorrow, a better tomorrow.