This land and this river have been home to the Mashkiigong-ziibiing and their ancestors, the Chippewa, Ojibwe, and Anishinabe, for more than 500 years. The wild rice (manoomin in Ojibwe) that grows near where Lake Superior meets the land is a sacred dietary staple. And it’s why the Chippewa settled near Lake Superior; their ancestors foretold to go west until they found food that grows on water. 

Today, the Mashkiigong-ziibiing, or the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians, is up against the odds to defend its land rights, sovereignty, and healthy water. 

The small 8,000-person Bad River Tribe has taken on a billion-dollar Canadian oil pipeline company to demand the removal of an illegal oil pipeline. 

“Most communities can not afford those legal battles,” says documentary filmmaker and producer Mary Mazzio, who has been filming the land rights battle at Bad River since 2022. “This is not a wealthy community, but this is a priority for them because of what’s at stake for them: Lake Superior and fresh water for the country.” 

Currently, more than 30 million people rely on fresh water from Lake Superior, according to the .  

Mazzio released her documentary in November 2024. It was awarded the best documentary film from the Environmental Media Association as well as being nominated for the Critics Choice best historic documentary and the best political documentary. The film has elevated the Tribe’s efforts and broadcast them across the country—even getting shared on social media by Leonardo DiCaprio with support from Mark Ruffalo, Edward Norton, Channing Tatum, and Jason Momoa.

“This is about a very small group of people fighting so hard for one of the world’s most precious resources, doing it at risk, at their own cost, for all of us Americans,” Mazzio says. It’s about redefining the American myth of conquest and Manifest Destiny. 

As the case makes its way through the courts and environmental agencies, the Bad River Tribe is in a defining moment in its history, as members hold strong in their defense of manoomin and the fresh waters that sustain it—and sustain us all.  

Treaties and a Sovereign Framework 

The Bad River Tribe’s fight for sovereign autonomy is an all-too-familiar battle across North America. Since the 19th century, treaties, legal acts, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs have attempted to eliminate and control Native Americans. For example, the 1887 Dawes Act, also known as the Allotment Act, illegally broke up reservation land into parcels, which could then be purchased by private outside groups like timber companies. 

“The Dawes Act intent was to assimilate people,” says Patty Loew, Bad River Tribal member and retired Northwestern University journalism professor. “We lost 98% of our land within 25 years.”

The Bad River Tribe’s 124,655-acre reservation—and tribal members’ right to fish, hunt, and gather on ceded territory as well as have a tribal government—still remains thanks to the seventh-generation mentality, says Edith Leoso, the Bad River Tribe’s former tribal historic preservation officer. Leoso says this framework is how the Ojibwe people made decisions during the time of the treaty signings as well as today: “How is what we’re doing now going to affect us seven generations from now?” 

Despite the protections the Tribe had put in place through treaties and their own government, the Bureau of Indian Affairs allowed a Canadian oil company called Lakehead Pipeline, now Enbridge Energy Partnership, to build part of its 645-mile pipeline through the Bad River Reservation in the early 1950s. 

And they did so without any tribal input. 

from Superior, Minnesota, through Wisconsin and Michigan until it reaches Sarnia, Canada. Every day, it transports 540,000 barrels (23 million gallons) of crude oil through this landscape, threatening the beings who depend on this land and water.

Erosion Exposing the Pipeline

In the early years, the 12-mile segment of pipeline that sliced through the Bad River Reservation was overlooked.  “The priorities were to buy back land that was originally in reservation borders,” Loew says. Thanks to the income from its casino, which opened in the 1980s, the Tribe has managed to buy back about 70% of that land, says Tribal Chairman Robert Blanchard.

This is no small feat for a community of this size. “The average income of the people living on the reservation is $8,000 annually,” Leoso says. Their progress has taken decades of commitment and investment, using the casino income, which brings in about $40 million a year. 

When a number of easements granted to Enbridge expired in 2013, the Bad River Tribal Council voted against renewing pipeline access. The council was motivated by a spill a few years earlier, when another Enbridge pipeline burst and poured more than 800,000 gallons of oil into the Kalamazoo River in neighboring Michigan. Leoso says this influenced the Bad River Tribe’s decision to vote no.

“It was unanimous,” she says. “No one abstained. I was surprised because we’re so conditioned to just go along with everything. I was like, ‘Oh, OK. We’re starting to play ball now? Let’s do this thing.’”

In the 12 years since then, the pipeline has still been illegally operating on Bad River tribal land. 

Because of climate change, the risks are getting closer to home. When the pipeline was originally installed, it was approximately 350 feet from the Bad River, but erosion and two catastrophic shifted the river’s course, so the pipeline is now just 12 feet from the river. 

While Bad River has been fortunate to have not yet experienced a spill or rupture, the risk is ever present. In 2017, the that 29 other spills have occurred on the Enbridge Line 5 between 1968 and 2017, totaling 1.1 million gallons of oil. 

Still the pipeline remains on the Tribe’s land.

In 2017 the Tribe doubled down, insisting the pipeline be decommissioned and removed from the reservation. And in 2019, the Bad River Tribal Council sued Enbridge for violating its treaty rights.

Enbridge to settle the lawsuit. The Bad River Tribal Council declined to settle and persisted with legal action. When I asked then-Tribal Chairman Mike Wiggins in 2023 what this money could do for the Tribe, Wiggins replied with a question of his own: “How much is your water worth?”

The pipeline, should it leak, threatens the very thing that brought the Tribe to this land and allowed its members to thrive. 

“We’re facing a threat to wild rice from Enbridge,” Loew says.

Manoomin, or Northern wild rice, is particularly sensitive to pollution and flooding, according to a 2023 climate vulnerability assessment conducted by the Great Lake Fish and Wildlife Indian Commission, an intertribal agency of the Lake Superior Chippewa Tribes. Pollutants from industrial runoff, like sulphate, are linked to the . 

Kathleen Smith works for the commission as the Genawendang Manoomin, which translates to “she or he who takes care of the wild rice.” Smith spends time surveying and collecting data in her canoe or via aerial surveys. She says that rain events can uproot the manoomin: “The 2016 flood prevented rice for a few years.” 

For the people who depend on wild rice for physical and cultural sustenance, this loss is existential. 

Defying the Odds

Enbridge’s proposed workaround is to reroute the pipeline to avoid crossing the Bad River Tribe’s land. The new segment of pipeline would be 41 miles long and would cost the company $450 million. Though the reroute wouldn’t cross the reservation, it would still cut through the Lake Superior watershed that fills the Bad River.

“We remain committed to finding an amicable solution that recognizes the sovereignty of the Bad River Band, protects the environment, and secures essential energy infrastructure that millions of people on both sides of the border rely on,” Juli Kellner, a communications spokesperson for Enbridge, said in an email in March.

The Line 5 Wisconsin Segment Relocation Project permit is the most-studied pipeline project in state history, she added, and called the pipeline an “energy lifeline, feeding a network of refineries that produce critical transportation fuels, propane, and thousands of everyday consumer goods.”

In September 2022, Judge William Conley of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin. But he did not issue an injunction that would have shut down the pipeline immediately, citing “significant public and foreign policy implications.”

In his ruling in , Judge Conley by 2026. Enbridge would also need to pay the Tribe $5.1 million and a portion of their profits.

“It was good news,” current Tribal Chairman Blanchard says with trepidation. “At the same time, we’ve got to expect what has happened. They appealed it, and they have the money to appeal and appeal and appeal. We don’t.”

And so, the 12 miles of pipeline still cut across the Tribe’s land. As the community continues to wait for the pipeline’s removal, Leoso says they’re “on edge.”  

“It was a victory,” Leoso says. “But a small victory. We know it’s never going to stop. They have acquired most of the land around the reservation for that reroute.”

Never Give Up, Prioritize Land

In March 2024, Enbridge offered the Tribe

The Tribe refused the money. 

In April 2024, the Biden Department of Justice issued an amicus brief in the case, stating that Enbridge “lacks any legal rights to remain on those lands.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit heard arguments in the case in 2024 but has not yet issued a ruling.

As of May 2025, the Tribe still has not seen a decommission and removal plan. And Leoso hinted that she is fearful of what the Trump administration will try to come in and change.

“The Bad River Band is not looking for monetary damages. They want [Line 5] out of the watershed,” explains Mazzio, the filmmaker.

“We’ve been sending that message ever since Europeans touched foot over here,” Leoso says. “We keep telling the federal government they shouldn’t approve these things, they shouldn’t allow these things to happen, because it will impact the environment so much that it will kill us.” 

As the oil continues to flow through the Line 5 pipeline and fossil-fueled climate disasters rage around it, Leoso says succinctly, “And now those things are killing us.”

In the fall of 2024, Enbridge was by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to build the new 41-mile pipeline. The Bad River Tribe and environmental groups are now suing the department.

Enbridge is still awaiting federal permits, and Kellner says the company will not begin construction until all necessary permits are in hand.ÌęThe U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has listed the project as eligible for emergency fast-tracking under . After releasing a draft environmental assessment, the agency has .Ìę

Blanchard says the rerouted pipeline could still harm the Tribe’s ceded territory. “We do want it removed from the reservation, but we don’t want it within the Bad River watershed.”

Since the rerouted pipeline would be upstream from the Bad River, if there were to be a spill or leak, it could affect the Tribe’s ability to hunt, fish, and gather on the reservation, which he believes still violates the treaties.Ìę

“We are looking after our land, water, and harvest,” Blanchard says. “I do harvesting of wild rice and traditional medicine, all to feed my family, and I want my great-great grandkids to have what I have and to be able to do what I have done. Money is nice, but is it worth giving up land?”

CORRECTIONS: This article was updated at 10:28 a.m. PT on May 15, 2025, and at 1:20 p.m. PT on May 13, 2025.
The piece originally stated that the 70% of land bought back by the Bad River Tribe was within its ceded territory. This land was within its reservation.

The piece originally stated that the reservation size was 125,000 acres. The reservation is 124,655 acres.

The piece originally stated that “Genawendang Manoomin” translates to “she who takes care of the wild rice.” The language is generally not gender-specific, so a more accurate translation is “she or he who takes care of the wild rice.”

The piece originally stated that Bad River Tribal Chairman Mike Wiggins, who was tribal chair from 2017 to 2023, declined to settle and persisted with legal action. This decision was made by a vote of the entire Tribal Council. 

The piece originally stated that the Great Lake Fish and Wildlife Indian Commission is an intertribal agency that represents Bad River and 10 other Ojibwe Tribes. The Commission is an intertribal agency of the Lake Superior Chippewa Tribes.

The piece originally stated that the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin ruled in favor of the Bad River Tribe. While the judge ordered Enbridge to remove the portion of Line 5 that runs through the Bad River Tribe’s reservation by 2026 and pay the Tribe $5.1 million and a portion of their profits, the judge also ruled in favor of Enbridge on some claims.

The piece originally stated that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit sided with the Bad River Tribe, saying Enbridge “lacks any legal right to remain” on the Ojibwe land in Wisconsin. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit has heard arguments but not yet issued its decision. The quote is from an amicus brief written in April 2024 by the Department of Justice under the Biden Administration.Ìę

The piece has been updated to include several events that have transpired after the date of publication:  The Army Corps of Engineers listed the project as eligible for emergency fast-tracking, the agency, and the Tribe and environmental groups sued Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources for approving the project.

Read our corrections policy here.

The mangrove seed is born suspended in the air and attached to its mother plant. When it matures, it separates and falls into the water where it rides the tide until it finds a place in the ocean depths where it can take root—until it is ready to reach toward the air again.

Mangroves remind me of social justice movements in Puerto Rico, serving as a symbol of our histories and our interconnection. The history of Puerto Rico—and the Caribbean overall—is marked by the violence of colonialism, neoliberal capitalism, and more recently, the climate crisis. An archipelago that floods will always have to be evacuated. A people that loses its history does not survive. 

Creating new memories in this region is a complex process full of opacity and without guarantees. However, much like the mangrove, some of us in Puerto Rico weave the stories that situate us in time, shed light, and sustain us. This is how many of our stories are born. 

Strengthening Our Roots in the Face of Disasters 

are in danger of disappearing. Ensuring their survival is crucial for the survival of Caribbean resistance movements because mangroves are our first line of defense against hurricanes and coastal erosion. Fighting for the future of mangroves teaches us how to regenerate ourselves.

Mangroves cover only 0.1% of the Earth’s surface. Curiously, the Puerto Rican population also represents 0.1% of the world’s population. Most mangroves are found in tropical and subtropical areas. The Puerto Rican archipelago has many of these forests. Mangroves help absorb CO2, and their resilient ecosystem reduces the effects of coastal erosion, hurricanes, and tsunamis. Afro-descendant and Indigenous communities have always understood the . 

For centuries, mangroves have protected the Caribbean from storms while also providing food, wood, habitat, and water filtration. Our coastal towns, particularly LoĂ­za and Salinas, have been our greatest teachers, continuing with of their importance in the face of their imminent destruction. The Caribbean, one of the regions that emits the least greenhouse gases, receives the strongest attacks from the climate crisis. Recent studies show that nearly are affected by coastal erosion.

The supremacist capitalist crisis also threatens us with extractivist and harmful constructions on our ecosystems for the of foreign investors that and displace us. It’s tempting to want to skip this moment. But it’s also powerful to remember that we are privileged to have in moments of fear. 

The Land Continues to Be Named

Puerto Rico was a colony of Spain for more than four centuries and is now a U.S. colony. In the mid-19th century—the last decade of Spanish rule—a group of young working-class intellectuals formed (the Society for the Collection of Historical Documents of the Island of San Juan Bautista, Puerto Rico) to recover a sense of national identity. 

and other young prominent figures with a profound love for art and culture led these efforts. La Sociedad sought to preserve Puerto Rico’s robust and autonomous culture in the face of the of the Spanish authority. Spain perceived Puerto Rico as a colony of inferior subjects to be extracted from rather than a community of dignified people whose culture and history deserved to be preserved. 

the histories of an emerging people and an archipelago-wide cultural identity that was not being centrally preserved. This project had elite colonial nuances, since it wanted to gain acceptance from Spanish rule, and lacked our aboriginal and Afro-descendant stories. 

While the project was imperfect, it still inspired major political figures, including , an advocate for the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico.ÌęMost importantly, La Sociedad inspired national independence hero , who in 1868 led , the most successful insurrection during his time.Ìę

Puerto Rico had a brief period of autonomy and self-government until the U.S. military arrived in 1898 and our lands from the Spanish. The usurping U.S. government further and liberation and began instilling obedience to Americanization. Despite this, there was resistance against coloniality. The was founded in 1919. By our histories and traditions from our ancestors, a national sentiment of Puerto Rico can begin to be researched, understood, and remembered.Ìę 

For decades now, our local communities have been rescuing the stories of our recent freedom fighters to preserve their memory and their dignity: , , , , , , , , , , and among others. 

Many grassroots archiving projects such as , , and are continuing to germinate the seeds of that mangrove in ways that expand the lands of our archipelago. But the people of Puerto Rico and their diaspora are tired of being resilient. Survival is not the only thing that defines us. And yet, our history shows that we prevail under circumstances that seek to erase our trajectory. 

We have experienced the whitening of our identity, the usurpation of our lands by foreigners, and our forced displacement—and we are still growing, still fighting, and are even more alert and enraged. 

Mangroves Rooted

The efforts of telling our stories and sharing our knowledge helps others to be inspired by it. We gain access to further freedom and power. To some outsiders, Puerto Ricans can seem submissive, obedient, and grateful for Americanization. Global coverage of recent events, including on May 1, 2017, the mutual aid and , and have helped shed light on a more complex sentiment for Boricuas, one that reflects a shift in national consciousness. 

Right now, we are facing two parallel political hurricanes: Puerto Rico’s recently elected and . Both ran fear campaigns that have resulted in deep human rights violations. Despite this, the Puerto Rican community has strengthened its memory of resistance. 

During the 2024 election, there was mass popularity toward a government candidate for the first time since the U.S. began occupying the archipelago. The candidate, , obtained 33% of the votes compared to the statehood candidate, Jennifer González-Colón, who reached 39%. With each event lived—earthquakes, Hurricane María, Trump, pandemic, genocides, wars, González-Colón—we continue to forge common narratives, a history that interweaves our roots. Our resistance is rooted and reaching for air. The recovered ground continues to regenerate.

The mangrove has thus become a metaphor. Like roots, memories ground our collective experience and strengthen our ties to our land. The strength of our collective power lies in recovering our lost, forgotten, invisibilized, or untold stories as a way of resisting. In the face of disasters, we use our creativity to face the coming changes. 

We are Caribbean beings, surrounded by water and at the mercy of its tempest. With strong roots, mangroves protect our coasts, preventing the tempest of wind and sea to drag us away. No hurricane will sweep us out. We are rooted and dispersing our seeds. Colonialism will be swept away by coastal erosion while we recover our land in dignity and community. Our stories will be told, treasured, and celebrated.

The mangrove interweaves its roots between water and land to protect the soil from storms; we play with the elements to strengthen our communities. Let us not forget that before these hurricanes, we were already mangroves.

“It’s so sad. I just feel heartbreak, like a piece of me just went down the mountain,” said Ryan, whose traditional name is Sm’hayetsk, as the logging truck roared past her. “The ancestors are there. We actually used to put our people in the trees,” she said, speaking of traditional burial practices of the Gitlan of the Tsimshian Nation.

Ryan explained that her ancestors put the remains of their people in bentwood boxes and hoisted them into trees, into the life of the forest. So when she said the ancestors were in those trees, just cut from the mountain where they had lived for centuries, she meant it literally.

Ryan is an Indigenous knowledge and natural science lecturer in the Department of Forest & Conservation Sciences at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver. I had joined her and Suzanne Simard, an eminent forest ecologist and professor in the same department at UBC, in these woods for a week of fieldwork.

Ryan and Simard had gone out on this logging road to find their crew. But right now, that was out the window. They had to go see the clear-cut those logs had come from. Ryan jumped in Simard’s battered field truck, and I squeezed into the back seat with their clipboards, batteries, and gear for sampling and measuring trees. Simard bucked the truck up steep, rugged slopes to reach the top of the cut and killed the engine. We got out and looked around at the cutover land, bare and baking in the July sun. A grapple skidder awaited the next day’s haul of logs, and sawdust lay fresh over the ground.

“This kind of machinery is devastating to the forest floor,” Simard said, eyeing the carved-up ground, rutted and scraped to mineral soil. “And we are left with that. There is no carbon left, it’s gone, and it’s never coming back. It took 12,000 years to make this, and we have lost it in a snap of a finger.” The air smelled sharply of ground-up fir needles.

“You can’t stop it, these trees are already down,” Ryan said, assessing the stumps, slash, and logging debris. “It was coming straight at me,” she said of the logging truck. “All I could see was big logs. They were so huge.” This cut was not exceptional; as we walked to the top of the cutover hilltop and took in the landscape around us, we saw logging roads tracing through a maimed landscape into the far distance, mangy with clear-cuts so large they covered entire mountainsides.

“It’s a tree hearse,” Simard said of the logging truck, as we walked back to her truck. “We are down to the last drops. It’s a fucking graveyard out here. These are some big trees. They were,” she said, correcting herself. “There is nothing we can do. I know we can’t save every tree. But we have to do a better job. We are going to need wood, but it should not be the old-growth. That was all cedar. It just makes me feel sick. And the fact we have seen it, day after day after day, all over the country, I’m sure those trees are a thousand years old. People grow so numb to it, we all are.”

Ryan gathered a scarred piece of wood from the ground as we walked back to the truck. “We’ve got to burn this, to honor the spirits. Honor the ancestors,” she said. As we headed down the mountain, a distant rumble filled the air. “Here comes another,” Simard said, yanking the wheel to pull over to get out of the way of the log truck. After it passed, as we descended the mountain, ravens were circling and calling.

“Stop,” Ryan said. “Stop right now.” Simard jerked the truck to a halt, and the ravens’ calls filled the still air. “They are crying, their home is being taken,” said Ryan, who is of the Raven Clan. “Their nest trees are being destroyed. That is the mom. That is the baby. She’s in shock.”

We just sat for a minute, quiet. Then Simard started back down the logging road, jouncing over the ruts. “It’s so disrespectful to the mountain, it puts the mountain to shame. Our shame,” Simard said, gathering speed past a numbered sign for the logging road. It was riddled with bullet holes. We made the long, bouncing drive down to the valley bottom, where we hoped to rendezvous with their crew, in silence.

Called the Mother Tree crew, this was a team of researchers Simard had assembled in 2015 for a research project creating a time sequence of the amount of carbon stored in these clear-cuts—in the first pass, the second pass, every time the loggers came back. They wanted to learn, through analysis of the soil and its layers, the toll taken by each cut, compared to the original soil baseline condition.

“It shifts down, and down and down, they will come back and plant it, and it will come back to that pale green, impoverished condition, a second-growth stand, with no variety in the canopy,” Simard explained. It was soil that started her career, and now soil that had made her internationally famous, as the author of the bestseller , which tells the story not only of Simard’s scientific work but also her struggle to overcome skepticism of her findings.

Simard’s lab explores the role of mycorrhizal fungi in connecting trees, one to the other, sharing nutrients and communication, all around hubs of the largest trees she dubs “Mother Trees.” When in the journal Nature and popularized by the press as the “Wood Wide Web,” likening the networks to the internet, Simard was suddenly an internationally famous scientist.

Simard, who had labored in obscurity and hostility from industry and even her own colleagues, was a sensation, with millions of views on and a crush of media attention. She bore the attention stoically, doing interview after interview for the sake of the forest—which, even as her notoriety grew, was still being cut down.

Protests during the summer of 2021 against one logging operation, near Fairy Creek at the south end of Vancouver Island, sparked the largest civil disobedience in modern Canadian history, with more than a thousand arrests of protestors trying to blockade the logging roads.

They dug trenches in the dirt logging roads cut into the sides of remote mountains. Locked themselves to concrete blocks, and erected platforms in the middle of logging roads they then locked themselves to. They camped in the canopy of towering firs. They hiked miles to the leading edge of the cut, where the loggers were dropped off by helicopter for their daily work—amid protesters leaping from the understory blowing air horns. They wrote peace signs on the cut stumps with fresh sawdust, scooped from scarred ground next to gas cans left by the loggers for the next day’s cutting.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, backed by the courts, hauled away the protestors. The logging continued—but the provincial government of British Columbia was beginning to talk about deferring logging in some areas, with the effect of spurring even more logging. “They are cutting it faster and faster,” Ryan said. “They’ve got to get it quick before it’s locked up forever, they are cutting hill after hill. It’s apocalyptic.”

Simard bumped over more logging roads until we saw the crew’s work trucks. We parked and headed into the forest. We hopped from piece to piece of downed logs over inky-black mud in a fructifying bog at the edge of the road, following a faint trace of the crew’s path. In here, the light was soft, the ground even softer, and it was cool, even on this blazing July day.

Fallen logs were crumbling back into the earth, where they started as seedlings centuries ago. The logs were soft to the touch and furry with moss. Lush lichen grew over them, leafy as lettuce. The sunlight diffused through needles of hemlock and fir, and long shafts of gold, late-afternoon summer sunlight found canopy gaps and gilded the forest floor. Far above, a breeze was stirring green branches across the blue of the sky. Simard had found her research crew, measuring giants in this old-growth stand. It was day’s end and time to wrap up. When they had gathered their equipment, we headed back to camp.

Mak’wala (the traditional name of Rande Cook) gathered us nightly in a circle after a camp dinner to reflect on the work underway. He is an artist and hereditary chief for the Ma’amtagila, one of the 18 tribes of the Kwakwaka’wakw whose territory reaches from northern Vancouver Island southeast to the middle of the island and includes smaller islands and inlets of Smith Sound, Queen Charlotte Strait, and Johnstone Strait.

In 2022, Cook had invited Simard and other scientists, artists, filmmakers, Indigenous knowledge keepers, and writers including myself to the second annual Tree of Life Project, for a weeklong exploration of the old-growth forests in Kwakwaka’wakw territories. Founded by Cook as the Awi’nakola Tree of Life Foundation, he partnered with Simard from the start. He saw parallels between his people’s understanding of the connections between all living things and her work focusing on healing damaged forests. The goal on this trip was to share both new and ancient ways of understanding the land, and to directly experience together the impact of industrial logging on the land, water, and Native cultures.

“Right now this is really about the next 100 years,” Cook said in camp that first night. “That 100 years doesn’t belong to us. In a very short amount of time, the amount of damage we are doing is irreversible.” It was time, he said, for a societal shift from devastation to regeneration.

Simard’s goals were in alignment with Cook’s: to use Indigenous, scientific, and artistic knowledge to understand and heal the forest. In her Mother Tree Project based at UBC, Simard and her team were assessing the biological and ecological status of clear-cuts, comparing their soils with what they found in intact old-growth forests, to get a sense of a baseline condition. They were like arboreal ambulance chasers, trying to stay one step ahead of the logging crews, searching out the last of the unprotected old-growth in these lush river valley bottoms, hurrying to learn what they could of what intact old-growth forests look like and how they function before they are gone.

“We are trying to find old-growth in these ravaged landscapes; all we find are rare patches, scraps perched on cliffs,” Simard said as we drove to the day’s research site—the places the day-trippers and vacationers to Vancouver Island rarely see. “We will never know what we have lost. We are at a point in history where we can never understand what we once had. But there are still clues—what seeds are buried in the ground, what soils—that is what we are doing, trying to reconstruct what is there, so we can heal these landscapes.”

This is the Vancouver Island off the main highway, with its beauty strip hiding the views of the cutover slopes and valleys. We were in a hub of logging roads, logging signs, clear-cuts, loading areas, and equipment yards. This land is hardly a forest at all anymore; it is a manufacturing plant for timber products, with remnant old-growth stands amid a sea of industrial tree farms on their third cutting.

It is the nature of her work that Simard has to drive through active logging areas to access her research plots. As we drove on, dust boiling behind us, the caravan of research trucks and the Tree of Life crew ground to a halt: There was a chain across the road. “Active Logging Area” read the sign on the chain. We smelled it before we saw it: the unmistakable odor of ground-up, freshly cut trees.

“Those are old-growth trees,” Simard said, glancing at logs piled by the side of the road, on the other side of the chain. She swung out of the truck to talk to the logging crew, to explain she needed them to let her and the rest of the crew pass. After a brief conversation Simard returned, dropped the cable to the ground, and the procession of vehicles drove through. We regrouped by the piles of logs heaped by the road to be taken away for milling. The cuts were fresh, weeping sap. The bark was still fragrant, the wood moist to the touch.

“I’m just numb,” said Cook. Logged on his people’s unceded territory—a 500,000-acre swath of Vancouver Island. This displacement of his people from their lands, of the trees from their land, of the wildlife from their forest, continues the legacy of settler colonialism, Cook said.

“Nothing has changed since the beginning,” he said. “Those policies are designed for these actions to happen, and for us to say something, we are the criminals, we are the disrupters. We are so conditioned by society to say, This is okay, we support this. I need an extension on my nice home. Why do you guys get in the way, why are you so disruptive?”

Cook said he formed the Awi’nakola Tree of Life Foundation out of desperation and as a matter of cultural survival. “We are watching our own traditional territory be wiped out, demolished; we are down to the last 2.7% of old-growth, we have got to get it all, it’s sick to me. I think more and more it’s like a panic, that we are getting closer and closer to having nothing.”

But he wonders, “Who are we without our forests? How can we carry on if we don’t have this connection to this land that’s at my absolute core? It’s severing our tie. Culture is not a performance, it’s connection. That is how it is in our culture. We can’t just sing and live disconnected in order for there to be new songs, for it to be a living culture.”

We kept going, to get into the uncut forest, to lay out some sample plots and dig. Simard led the way, walking right over the ridge on the opposite side of the road from the heaped old-growth logs into the trackless deep forest beyond. The steepness of the slope to the valley floor did not slow her. She was headed with her sampling crew to a place the maps showed should have what she called “the white rhino of the forest”: enormous, untouched old-growth forest, reigning supreme for centuries deep in the heart of the Tsitika valley. Unprotected yet still uncut.

We made our way across downed logs over streams, through bogs, the islands of forest floor in between the muck carpeted with sphagnum moss. The coolness coming off the Tsitika River reached us before we found the trees. Even on this hot mid-July day, it was so cool in the shade of giant hemlocks and Douglas firs we kept our coats on. But the sun found us too, aglow through gaps in the canopy where bigleaf and vine maple surged into the light. A goldfinch spangled in the sun, a brilliant yellow flash amid the river’s sparkling blue.

Excerpted from by Lynda V. Mapes with permission from the University of Washington Press.

But over the years, more frequent and intense rains—linked to —came earlier in the year, disrupting the harvest.

“Before, it rained in March, and we would sow seeds when it happened, but these days the rains can begin in February, and there can be a lot of ice and colder conditions,” said Tomas, 42. “We would have to work so hard, but receive little.”

Indigenous communities around the world are losing the crops their forebears had bred over centuries to a changing climate, deforestation, and industrial farming.

Three-quarters of has been lost over the last century, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, with only 30 plants fueling 95% of the calories that all humans consume globally. Such a homogenized food system raises the risk of , , , and the .

Though it’s difficult to gauge exactly how much the biodiversity crisis is costing farmers, suggests smallholder farmers are spending $368 billion of their own income every year on measures to adapt to climate change, which include pest control, soil improvements, and biodiversity conservation.

Increasingly, farmers like Tomas are turning to seed banks.

These modest, community-run storage hubs—typically located within walking distance of the fields—preserve Indigenous, climate-resilient seeds adept at dealing with harsh conditions, while also providing farmers like Tomas with a free, direct supply of seeds. In turn, proponents say seed banks can help to protect biodiversity.  A by the company Terraformation found more than 400 seed banks operating in 96 countries worldwide.

“There are so many uses of the seed banks,” says , senior technical manager of , a Guatemalan nonprofit that works with 16,000 farmers in the Huehuetenango region where Tomas lives. “They protect biodiversity. They protect incomes. If there’s a disaster or emergency, they are there as a kind of insurance for farmers.”

ASOCUCH launched its seed bank program in 2007, and Tomas joined in 2010. It has provided him with long-term, protective storage for his native seeds, meaning he no longer has to pay for them at the market, and crucially, a kind of insurance for when extreme weather strikes. has also found that cultivating these native seeds in banks has tripled farmers’ yields. “They increase food availability for families and create income from the sale of surpluses,” said Alonzo.

Tomas’ local branch of the seed bank, run by a committee of local farmers of which he is a member, has seen his community through crop-destroying frosts, floods, heatwaves, and a severe seed shortage in 2018. 

“Without the seed banks, it would have been disastrous,” Tomas said. “You save a lot of money not having to buy seeds, too.”

Each storage hub holds hundreds of containers of seeds, divided into sections for each farmer. Seeds shown to be resistant to harsh weather are prioritized. Some farmers visit the bank every month, while others just use it in case of emergencies. 

When Tomas first joined the bank, he was one of only six participating farmers in the community—now there are more than 40 of them.

“They saw the need,” he says. “Many farmers now see the importance of the banks.”

Agricultural experts say that supporting the use of traditional seeds, also known as heirloom varieties, could minimize the likelihood of food shortages, improve diets amid , and bolster the resilience of rural farming communities.

“Farmers have long been conserving seeds—and the banks support them to do this,” said , a genetic resources specialist at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, a nonprofit. “It’s so important because we are losing crop diversity everywhere. We have to take action to protect seeds.”

The emergence of modern seed banks follows in the path of the ancient , which is becoming increasingly important for areas relying on subsistence farming as they are .

“Before, the focus was on national seed banks,” says Vernooy. “They would put seeds in a freezer and store them for as long as possible. But that has its limits. And that’s very far away from the farmers.”

Instead, community seed banks provide a living use of seeds, at once supporting farmers and their families, helping to secure the future of native and climate-resilient seeds, as well as encouraging social cohesion, equality, and knowledge exchange among farmers.

“They become more than a physical area, they increase interchange, sharing of seeds,” said Vernooy.

A 2023 study co-authored by Vernooy focusing on found that 2,630 smallholder farmers protected 72 “unique” crop and tree species, serving as a platform for community action and women’s empowerment. “Women have always played a key role in seed saving and management,” he says. 

Similar projects are sprouting up across Central America, home to who are knowledgeable about seed keeping, yet also . Many of these communities suffer . 

In Nicaragua, a is working with more than 7,000 farmers to identify native breeds of maize, grains, beans, and other legumes and develop new drought-resistant varieties. Mexico’s national , a state-led initiative, works directly with community seed banks and international partners to conserve about 12-13% of the country’s 23,000 plant species. 

In the United States, volunteers to regrow native plants in areas of Southern California devastated by January’s wildfires. Seed Savers Exchange, based in Iowa, is one of the nation’s seed banks, holding some 20,000 species. 

But in order to live up to their potential, which could allow farmers to through sales, advocates say the seed banks need more support from national governments. â€œSupport is improving, but it remains lacking,” Vernooy said.

Alonzo of ASOCUCH agreed that institutional backing would make it easier for farmers to develop and independently maintain their own seed banks while recognizing their crucial role in protecting biodiversity. “Even if the banks are working, climate change still presents challenges,” he says. “If we want to safeguard the needs, we need to recognize the value of these smallholder producers.”

This article appeared in Nexus Media News, an editorially independent publication of .

The good news is that climate justice movement organizers nationwide were prepared for the threats of Trump’s second term and are fighting against his administration’s regressive political agenda and for a greener future.

“We are already seeing our communities on the front lines being responsive [to Trump’s attacks],” says KD Chavez, executive director of (CJA). “They are continuing to provide mutual support, they’re continuing to organize, they’re resisting, and they’re creating regenerative climate solutions that are replicable.”

“When we say front line, we mean the people that are dealing with climate injustice day to day,” explains Chavez. “It’s folks in communities that have been intentionally marginalized and disinvested from for decades, and they’ve been having to come up with inventive solutions with, sometimes, shoestring budgets.” 

Chavez points to the (GASP) as one example of a front-line community tackling environmental injustice. That nonprofit organization has succeeded in in predominantly Black neighborhoods in Birmingham, Alabama, and is now working with the City of Birmingham to create a with climate justice principles at its core.Ìę

“When we aggregate those solutions, a just transition and a future that includes ecological liberation and liberation for the people and land doesn’t seem too far away because we have tangible examples of it happening all over.”

More than work under CJA’s umbrella, each furthering climate justice aims in their communities. Trump’s rapid-fire rollbacks have already impacted the work of many of CJA’s members and other groups like them. 

Some of the most significant disruptions to climate progress nationwide come from the administration’s , enacted on Jan. 27, 2025, and attacks on the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which includes provisions to help fight climate change, promote environmental justice, and transition the United States to . Among Trump’s many Inauguration Day executive orders is one aimed at , including terminating the office established to oversee the IRA’s implementation and halting disbursements of allocated funds. The same executive order also demanded a pause on all “Green New Deal” funding.Ìę

Of $50 billion in grants awarded under the IRA, $32 billion had not yet been disbursed when President Joe Biden left office in early 2025 and is at risk of being clawed back, according to . The EPA is meant to be responsible for disbursing about $20 billion of the unspent funds. On Feb. 12, 2025, the EPA’s new administrator, that the agency would rescind those contracts and the funds.

Even before that announcement, the agency informed some grant recipients their until further notice. The federal funding freeze also disrupted at least to thousands of state and local governments and nonprofit organizations, according to Inside Climate News. 

The effects of these funding disruptions are already being felt. Tens of thousands of nationwide are now threatened or canceled, many of which were meant to benefit underserved communities and those on the front lines of the climate crisis. CJA was among the groups that lost some EPA funding following Zeldin’s announcement.

That funding was part of the EPA’s Environmental Justice Thriving Communities grantmaking program, which would have allowed CJA to seed community-based organizations advancing environmental justice in the western U.S. Chavez called the program’s cancellation one of the White House’s “attacks on working class communities” in a Feb. 13 .

Funding disruptions have also hit individuals and families as federally funded programs that help families save money on energy costs—such as and —are now in limbo.Ìę

Meech Carter, clean energy campaigns director at the , helps state residents access funding through programs like these. She says her organization has received little guidance on which programs will continue when the federal funding freeze is lifted. “When I talk to residents now, I have to tell them, ‘This is a very changing landscape, we appreciate your patience, and we are trying our best to get you the assistance that you need.’”

She adds, “We don’t want people to have unreasonable expectations, and we know there’s a possibility that these programs will be impacted.”

A group of nonprofit organizations and Democratic attorneys general in 22 states and Washington, D.C. have already challenged the Trump administration’s federal funding freeze in court. Two federal courts in early February 2025 to stop the freeze. On Feb. 25, 2025, a federal judge in one of these cases agreed to grant the plaintiffs’ request for while the case moves through the court. However, grantees have continued to report they awarded for climate projects. 

Meanwhile, environmental law organizations are gearing up to . It’s too soon to know how those legal fights will play out and whether the Trump administration will heed court decisions. But the litigation itself serves an important purpose. “The way that we’re thinking about it right now is ‘How do you grind down and bog down the administration?’” says Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the . “They are pretending that there are no laws binding them, but in fact, these laws exist, and we will check them on that through federal court litigation.”

While litigation on the federal level focuses on halting rollbacks and protecting vital programs, organizers say on the state and local levels, the climate movement is still looking to gain ground. “Local and state action is going to be really important over these next four years, and there are some really big opportunities there,” says Carter. 

One of those opportunities could be broadening the climate movement in the U.S. by rallying Republican politicians and constituencies behind IRA programs. Although no Republican backed the IRA during the Biden administration, Republican-held areas have benefited most from the legislation since its enactment. Nearly , representing 85% of investments and 68% of jobs, are in Republican congressional districts.

Carter sees the effects of disruptions on North Carolinians, where just over half of voters in the 2024 presidential election. Many in the state were counting on energy assistance, tax rebates, or new employment opportunities on infrastructure or clean energy projects—the futures of which are now uncertain. 

If Republican lawmakers want to remain in office in North Carolina and other Republican-held areas, they may need to bend to constituents who do not want to see cost-saving programs stripped away. “This is a big opportunity to leverage those connections and mobilize representatives to push back,” says Carter. “If that funding is taken away, that has a real impact for people across the political spectrum.”

Focusing on the material benefits of climate resilience programs has already been a winning strategy elsewhere, including in Schlenker-Goodrich’s home state of New Mexico. While New Mexico has Democratic leaders, it is a top . Transitioning to cleaner energy promises to reshape the state’s economy and workforce. Still, the , legislation aimed at decarbonization, is progressing through the state legislature. Schlenker-Goodrich says it has been successful because “climate equity principles are built into the bill,” ensuring communities on the front lines of climate change and those most affected by the energy transition will be targeted for support.Ìę

Messaging around the Clear Horizons Act in New Mexico highlights how the legislation would not only reduce pollution but also create new jobs, spur small business growth, and improve infrastructure. Carter says these talking points are persuasive in Republican-led constituencies and perhaps even on the federal level. “It’s something [to keep in mind], especially when you have a federal administration that is clearly very concerned with cost cutting,” she says. “We should be talking about cost benefits of renewable energy, of electrification, [and] the burdens of high energy bills.”

Looking ahead, the climate movement is not only facing Trump’s early top-down attacks but also fatigue and harmful misinformation campaigns seeking to divide it. “People are getting burned out,” Carter says. “I think it has felt like that for a while in the environmental space, but with the very quick dismantling of federal programs, it puts a lot of concern, fear, and just general exhaustion into the advocacy community.”

To combat these threats and ensure continued progress toward climate justice, organizers say building power within communities is more critical than ever. This work begins on the local level and requires critics of the Trump administration to be strategic in their organizing and communication. Carter, who organizes with North Carolinians across the political spectrum, suggests focusing conversations with neighbors on shared goals and material concerns rather than misinformation. “Say, Hey, if you need help with your HVAC, you need to call your legislator and tell them ‘I need this funding,’” Carter explains. “This is a huge opportunity to unite people.”

Looking at the bigger picture, Schlenker-Goodrich urges imagination and even optimism. “I think this moment compels us to think pretty expansively about not only how we defend against this moment, but also, how do we create something new that emerges out of it?”

For the Indigenous peoples of Moananuiākea—across the water from our relatives on Turtle Island and around the globe—our fight for justice is rooted in our ancestral connection and kinship to the land, water, and earth. Our °ìĆ«±èłÜČÔČč (ancestors) have long practiced sustainable stewardship values, including mālāma ʻāina (care for the land) and kuleana (responsibility) to restore both our environment and our communities. Real climate justice work requires honoring Indigenous knowledge and empowering grassroots efforts to protect our sacred relationship with Mother Earth.

As we navigate a volatile economic and political environment, our resolve must be clear: Climate justice cannot take a back seat. We cannot abandon the decades of work to create healthier environments, regenerative systems, and economic opportunities in tribal, Indigenous, and rural communities across the country. 

The fight for has always been led by Indigenous, Black, and frontline communities because we have always been the first to experience environmental harm. The forced displacement of Indigenous peoples from our lands was one of the earliest acts of environmental injustice, literally paving the way for extractive industries that have since poisoned land, air, and water. Today, fossil fuel projects continue to bring violence to Indigenous communities. As a result, Indigenous communities around the globe have always been—and continue to be—on the front lines, protecting our land and our communities. 

Climate justice is not a separate battle from racial justice, Indigenous rights, gender equity, or economic justice—it is the throughline that connects them all. Take, for example, the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives (MMIWR+), which is fueled in large part by transient male workers in fossil fuel extraction camps near reservations. The MMIWR+ crisis is inseparable from environmental exploitation. Ending pipeline construction and mining projects is not just an environmental imperative; it is a necessary step to halt violence against Indigenous communities, against women, and against our two spirit relatives.Ìę

When we view social issues through the lens of climate justice, we create pathways for real, systemic change. Investing in renewable energy and land stewardship is not only about sustainability; it is about sovereignty, community resilience, and protection from the rising tide of authoritarianism. 

Knowledge for the Future

Indigenous communities have long held the key to climate resilience. Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) offers regenerative models of land and water stewardship, ensuring sustainability for future generations. One example is in South Dakota, an organization revitalizing Lakota culture, increasing job and food security, and reconnecting people back to our land through regenerative buffalo ranching. 

Buffalo are native to this land, and therefore have a symbiotic relationship with it. Their presence creates biodiversity in many ways. They graze the grasses down to different heights, providing nesting grounds for birds. They also roll around and pack down the soil in depressions in the ground known as wallows, which fill with rainwater and offer breeding pools for amphibians as well as sources of drinking water for wildlife across the landscape. And buffalo travel long distances to graze and find water, their sharp hooves churning the earth along the way, breaking up roots and aerating the soil to allow for new growth. 

Pre-colonization, 60 million buffalo roamed North America, supporting both the ecosystem and Indigenous lifeways. The U.S. government nearly wiped out the buffalo in a deliberate strategy to starve Indigenous people. Today, Native-led projects like Sacred Storm Buffalo are restoring buffalo populations, reviving local economies, and rebuilding biodiversity.

Similarly, in Hawai‘i is restoring Indigenous farming techniques to grow staple foods like kalo (taro). Before Western contact, HawaiÊ»i was a fully autonomous island nation, supporting nearly a million people through the ČčłółÜ±èłÜČčÊ»Čč system—a sophisticated land-management approach that connected mountain agriculture to shoreline aquaculture, ensuring ecological balance and abundant resources. 

Pre-colonization, Native Hawaiians used regenerative farming techniques such as diverting stream water to nourish wetland crops before returning nutrient-rich water to the ocean, which in turn sustained thriving fishponds. Colonization and exploitative plantation agriculture—particularly sugarcane—dismantled this system and caused widespread environmental and cultural devastation. The U.S. military and modern tourism industry has exacerbated environmental harm even further, creating the conditions that led to the devastating Maui wildfires and continue to cause among Native Hawaiians. 

Today, KIKA is revitalizing traditional farming practices, restoring ecosystems, and producing culturally appropriate food to support Hawaiian communities. And by teaching youth 21st-century versions of traditional farming practices, they’re also strengthening cultural identity and mental health, providing young people with a sense of belonging. 

These are just a couple examples of Indigenous-led efforts proving that climate solutions already exist—and make sense for our environment, our communities, and our economy. Indigenous communities are developing solutions to mitigate the climate crisis based on real-time experiences coupled with generational knowledge that is rooted in relationships with their environment. 

Supporting Solutions

With government agencies and programs being gutted on a mass scale, leaving countless organizations and efforts unsure of their futures, the role of the private sector has never been more urgent. Private foundations, high-net-worth individuals, and philanthropic organizations must step in to close the funding gap and ensure that communities on the front lines of the climate crisis are not abandoned.

We need strategic investment in climate resilience, Indigenous land stewardship, community-led sustainability projects, and the frameworks and strategies that Indigenous, Black, and frontline organizers have spent decades developing. The Bloomberg Foundation, for instance, has committed billions to combat climate change—this must become the norm, not the exception.

Philanthropy alone is not enough. We must also strengthen grassroots networks by increasing our resilience efforts. Every community should be asking: How can we become more climate resilient? How can we build mutual aid networks that support people during climate disasters? How can we use climate action as a tool for broader social change and economic empowerment? How does our existing work shift if we look at it through a climate justice lens? 

Indigenous communities are developing solutions to mitigate the climate crisis based on real-time experiences coupled with generational knowledge that is rooted in relationships with their environment. Investment in climate justice in Indigenous and rural communities helps those communities become energy sovereign, it helps communities access affordable and healthy food, and it creates regenerative economic opportunities. It just makes sense. 

Mitigating climate change is not a new endeavor for Indigenous, tribal, and rural communities. We already hold the knowledge necessary to navigate the next phase of the climate crisis. What we need now is unwavering support—from philanthropists, from organizers, and from every person who believes in a just future. 

Climate justice means food security for all, clean air and water for all, the development of clean energy on tribal lands, and protection for our Mother Earth. Climate justice is racial justice, Indigenous sovereignty, and the path to liberation for all people and Mother Earth. We must lock arms and stand for all that is sacred now.

There is no sager dietary advice than “Eat your vegetables.” A parent has probably told you this countless times. It’s also the mantra of Michael Pollan, which he turned into multiple best-selling books: “” Nutrition experts have been telling us to eat more fresh produce for so long .

However, it turns out vegetables are making us fat. The more servings of vegetables we eat, the more calories we consume. That’s the startling conclusion of a 2014 United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) report titled “,” which concluded that when we eat one cup of a particular vegetable—read on to find out which one—in a restaurant, we rack up 364 more calories than if we didn’t eat it.

To understand why requires a brief primer in nutrition. We need fruits and vegetables to thrive. They provide water, fiber, vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals. They have a lot of bulk but are low in calories, so they help us avoid sugary, salty, fatty snacks. Pickled produce, such as cabbage, mango, radish, and cucumbers, delivers probiotics for gut health. Most importantly, eating lots of fruits and vegetables can help us live longer. In the clinical language of : “Fruit and vegetable intakes were associated with reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and all-cause mortality.”

Nearly everyone is familiar with the “five-a-day” recommendation for fruits and vegetables. , the , and even the agree we should eat five servings a day. That means half a cup of foods such as blueberries, cucumbers, broccoli, carrots, or apples. For greens such as spinach, kale, cabbage, or lettuce, a serving is one packed cup of raw leaves or a half-cup of cooked greens. A half cup of cooked pulses, such as beans, chickpeas, peas, and lentils also counts as a serving.

In 2014, Americans ate, on average, , or five servings, according to the USDA. It sounds like we are meeting our goals, but all is not what it seems. One problem is the real minimum is a day, per the U.S. National Cancer Institute. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, eat this amount of fruit or vegetables.Ìę

But even seven servings a day is misleading. That’s what should eat. The first problem is many of us should eat 10 or more servings a day, as I will explain. Because we are so far below 10 a day, the advice to eat five servings is a form of harm reduction. Nutrition experts are encouraging us to eat one or two more servings a day rather than discouraging us by admitting we are falling far short of out minimum needs.

The second issue is we also need . Every day we should have a serving of dark leafy greens; a red or orange vegetable, such as a tomato or a sweet potato; and lentils, peas, or beans. Virtually no one eats these foods every day. The third problem is the type of vegetables we eat regularly, how they are prepared, and what accompanies them. Related to this is the problem of what the USDA considers a serving of a fruit or a vegetable.

Here’s the rub: We average about three servings of vegetables a day, and of that. Potatoes almost always come loaded with fat, calories, and sodium, such as fries, chips, mashed, scalloped, or gratin. Baked potatoes are healthier, but spuds are typically swimming in butter, cheese, sour cream, and bacon. Tomatoes are even worse. We may think we usually enjoy them on a refreshing salad with a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil, but in reality we eat tomatoes as salsa, ketchup, and sauces in cheesy pizza, meaty lasagna, stuffed burritos, loaded nachos, thick hamburgers, and greasy fries. That’s why for every cup of tomatoes we eat in restaurants, we pack on an extra 364 calories. 

Eliminate potatoes and tomatoes, and Americans eat less than one cup of vegetables a day, and there is no guarantee it’s healthy. It might be creamed spinach, broccoli with cheese sauce, or greens piled with meat and cheese and slicked with oil. 

Adding fat to vegetables is a strategy in the restaurant industry. Vegetables can be made tasty, healthy, and low fat, such as those roasted, but such methods are labor intensive. Instead, restaurants have adopted the mantra “.” These ingredients are taxpayer subsidized, packed with flavor, and require little added labor, which makes them high profit. But we end up ingesting excessive amounts of , only adding to the restaurant’s bottom line and our waist line.

Our diets have worsened since the USDA’s 2014 report. since 2003, dropping from more than 400 pounds annually per capita to about 350 pounds in 2022. This is largely a result of social conditions: The Great Recession, the pandemic, and inflation have pushed more people into poverty even as food, especially fresh produce, rises in cost.

The situation is just as bad for fruit. That’s because the USDA considers juice a serving, which accounts for . Sure, 100 percent fruit juice has vitamins and minerals. But it can have , and it’s the added “” that are most harmful to our health. Another 10 percent of our fruit intake is canned or dried—and it’s a good bet they have added sugar as well.Ìę

Remove potatoes, tomatoes, and fruit juice, and Americans eat barely 2.5 servings of fruit and vegetables a day on average, and even that may be overstating it. How did our diets get so bad and how can we improve them? 

The main problem is corporations hold sway over our food system and our lives, from work and housing to family and leisure. Agribusiness fruits and vegetables are expensive. They are grown thousands of miles from our tables, expensive to transport and store, and cost far more per calorie than energy-dense and heavily such as beef, cheese, wheat, and sugar. Since we are time and money stressed, we eat subsidized foods in the form of ultra-processed fast food and junk food that give us a moment of satisfaction at the cost of a lifetime of illness.Ìę

The solution is simple: Remove the profit motive so workers and communities own and operate farms, kitchens, grocers, and restaurants. This would allow us to mine our vast culinary history to match food cultures with local communities, tastes, and bioregions. Food cooked daily from fresh ingredients in small batches is mostly found in immigrant or high-end restaurants as it requires skill and labor. Such restaurants often exploit workers, but we could redirect tens of billions in agricultural subsidies that benefit food giants to subsidize local systems with cuisines that are far more delicious than corporate food while being healthy and low cost.

Of course we need to build a constituency and political power to have any hope of creating food systems free of capitalist rot. In the meantime, how do we get more fresh produce every day?

I tried one method after stumbling on an created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2013. Based on age, exercise, and gender, it told me how many fruits and vegetables I should eat. Forget five a day—as a male in my 40s who exercised more than one hour a day, I had to eat 12 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. For my partner, Michelle, who is similarly active, it was 10 servings a day. (, but there is a similar one at .)Ìę

I was stunned. Having cooked professionally, I knew that meant shopping, prepping, cooking, cleaning, and storing 154 portions of fruits and vegetables a week. I tried it for several months. It took me 25 hours a week or more, almost a full-time job. But I discovered something interesting. When I ate more than eight servings of produce a day, I shifted to a plant-based diet. I was eating fewer chips and cold cuts, and more salads, beans, pickles, fresh fruit smoothies, and stir fries. 

Even though I work from home, spending so much time cooking wasn’t a realistic solution for me, much less for families with kids and those who don’t have professional skills and equipment. 

The most important morsel of knowledge for healthier eating is understanding what motivates food choices. Taste, convenience, speed, predictability, and cost determine what we eat. We hit the drive-through because we know and like how that fried chicken sandwich tastes, it is (relatively) cheap, the location is convenient as is eating—it can be done with one hand while driving—and it’s quick to order, cook, eat, and clean up. 

have risen sharply as eating out has soared. Over a 40-year period, beginning in the late 1970s, more than 70 percent, and fast food visits nearly tripled. Knowing this, eat at home as much as possible. Minimally processed foods such as pre-cut vegetables and salads are fine. When possible, avoid highly processed foods in bags, cans, and boxes. Plain frozen fruit and vegetables are great since they preserve the nutritional value at peak harvest, but when possible, avoid frozen meals like burritos, dumplings, and pizzas. They tend to have lots of additives, are high calorie, and lead to overconsumption. Eat produce without gobs of meat, dairy, oil, and sugar. We joke that “,” but putting a salad on top of a slice doesn’t make it healthier. Have a salad instead.Ìę

While we should eat more fruits and vegetables however we can, we can’t put the onus on individuals if for no other reason than 50 years of health advice is not working. Real change begins with knowing how Big Food is tricking us into thinking we are eating healthy when we aren’t. Ultimately we need to tear out the existing food system root and branch, and create a culinary polyculture that serves the needs of humans and the planet.

The rapidly circulating avian flu has yet to be detected in New York’s dairy herds, but these farmworkers—members of , a group dedicated to fighting for the rights of dairy workers and their communities—don’t want to take any chances.

Already detected in New York’s wild birds, a range of wild mammals, and multiple poultry farms, the virus could soon hit the state’s dairy industry—New York’s largest agricultural sector, spanning almost . While the virus is still considered low-risk to the general public, it poses a  who directly feed, medicate, and milk the cows from dawn to dusk.

So far,  of the U.S. outbreak of the virus have been in poultry or dairy farmworkers, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Yet members of Alianza AgrĂ­cola say that farmworkers in their group have not received education or training in their workplaces about how to protect themselves from the virus. This has prompted them to take matters into their own hands. Over the past few months, the group has educated hundreds of other farmworkers on how to prepare for avian flu, including by traveling directly to dairy farms and providing education at their meetings.

“None of the employers have given us any information about this,” Luis JimĂ©nez, a dairy farmworker and the president Alianza AgrĂ­cola, tells Sentient. “All of the information I have [on avian flu]—and that we’ve been able to share with other workers—is because we’ve been able to inform ourselves from other institutions.”

The CDC has issued interim  to protect farmworkers and other people working with animals from avian flu, recommending that employers train workers on how to identify the virus and other infection-control practices. Yet this guidance is voluntary, without any means of enforcing or even widely distributing it—creating a significant gap in worker protections, in New York and across the country.

Even in states where the H5N1 virus is already circulating in dairy herds, advocates have observed that dairy farmworkers lack basic training and information on the virus.

“A lot of workers have told us that they weren’t told anything, which actually really stresses people out. When cows were getting sick, they weren’t told why,” said Bethany Alcauter, who directs research and public health programs for the National Center for Farmworker Health. “Many workers were really concerned that they were doing something to make the cow sick, and it caused a fair amount of distress,” she added.

Providing Education to 500 New York Farmworkers

If the virus were to strike New York’s dairy farms, these farmworkers—low-wage, without health insurance—would be on the front lines. Beyond protecting other farmworkers from H5N1, Alianza Agrícola’s outreach helps prevent the spread of the virus to  and the rising risk of its  if it were to mutate to become transmissible between humans.

“Farmworkers, of course, are the most vulnerable to the disease because they’re the ones working with the animals,” said Delcianna Winders, the director of Animal and Law Policy Institute at Vermont Law School. “But then, of course, they don’t live in isolated bubbles. They live in larger communities, and so when they go out into those communities, they’re at the highest risk of spreading the virus to other members of the community.”

JimĂ©nez says that they’ve worked with the New York Department of Health, the , and other institutions outside of the state to ensure that their educational materials on the quickly evolving virus are accurate and up to date. This has involved printing and distributing a brochure (in ÌęČčČÔ»ćÌę), “H5N1 Guidance for Farmworkers,” to about 500 dairy workers so far, according to JimĂ©nez.

The brochure explains how the virus can spread through milk, feces, and other body fluids of the infected animals and provides guidance on how farmworkers can reduce exposure to the virus.

While Jiménez has encountered some farmworkers who have never heard of avian flu, the majority of workers are familiar with it. More frequently, he encounters farmworkers who are confused about the public health risks of the virus, while not realizing that they are  of contracting the virus.

“[Other farmworkers] always tell us that they believe you can’t get infected so easily, or that it’s like any normal flu. So we tell them that, ‘No, it’s different symptoms, and it’s very easy to get infected if you work with infected animals,”’ says JimĂ©nez.

The brochure also includes information on how to identify symptoms of the virus in humans with clear visual graphics, though it also notes that . Finally, the brochure provides farmworkers with QR codes and links on how they can get tested for the virus through  and receive health services through New York’s statewide .

At every meeting, JimĂ©nez says they pass out the brochures. “We tell them, ‘Don’t forget, we have brochures to be informed about what is happening and what avian flu is,’” he says. They also host meetings dedicated to discussing the virus, sometimes with speakers like Mary Jo Dudley, the Director of the Cornell Farmworker Program, who spoke with the group about how to prepare. They’re currently working with Dudley and the New York Department of Health to put out a graphic video with further guidance for farmworkers on the virus.

Dudley says she fielded questions from farmworkers about how they would be able to know if the virus is spreading through cattle—questions that are critical not only to the safety of farmworkers but also to the broader prevention of the virus.

“There’s a lot of questions about how would we detect it if the cows have it? How is it spread?” Dudley tells Sentient. “So it’s spread through milk. So milk includes splatter. Splatter gets into manure. So there’s all these different levels. How do you protect people at each level?” As H5N1 continues to spread, the answers to these questions are also evolving—particularly as some scientists are concerned the virus 

Keeping Farmworker Communities Safe

In addition to the looming threat of avian flu, the recent , or Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, since Trump returned to the White House has heightened fears and anxieties among farmworkers.

In recent weeks, Dudley says that she has observed both ICE and local enforcement parked directly outside health clinics where New York farmworkers would seek care if exhibiting symptoms of the virus. “That creates pause,” says Dudley. “Are you going to try to go into that health center, you know?”

Dudley has also heard concerns from farmworkers about the prospect of government personnel entering farms should there be an outbreak. “If there is an event with avian flu, then the first step is that inspectors will come to inspect the herd,” she says. Yet in this environment of heightened immigration enforcement, Dudley says, farmworkers are more suspicious of strangers and government officials who come to their workplaces.

“There’s a lot of government vigilance,” says Dudley. “When you see somebody who you interpret to be a representative of the government, you can’t differentiate between what they’re there for,” which can create fear and confusion.

Dudley recommends that dairy operators put a sign in front of the farm entrance that reads, “No Visitors Allowed for Biosecurity Reasons,” along with a number that any invited visitors can call if they need to inspect or conduct business on the farm. (The biosecurity issue isn’t a cover;  can increase the risk of tracking in avian flu.)

JimĂ©nez says they’ve provided virtual and in-person trainings to the local community in western New York on how to respond to ICE raids. “Right now, we’re in this difficult situation with the new administration, so we’re asking allies to be alert,” he says. “If the police call ICE, I think that the allies can help by  supporting the families, or  saying that the workers are part of the community and they are just working and being good neighbors.”

In the meantime, JimĂ©nez plans to keep working hard at his job at an large-scale dairy farm where his role is tending to the calves. “The weapon that we use as workers is doing good and responsible work,” he says. “We are always going to have that as a tool for organizing.” Alianza AgrĂ­cola has won what seemed like an impossible fight before, successfully pushing New York to allow undocumented immigrants to .

While the fights ahead may be even larger, Jiménez has never been one to give into fear: He plans to keep organizing with other farmworkers to prepare for both the risks of immigration enforcement and the avian flu hitting New York dairy farms. The future may be deeply uncertain, but Alianza Agrícola is informed and ready.

This story was originally published by .