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Photo by Tony Sutton
Supporting the mobile food pantry
If you’re living in what is now called Maine, it’s hard not to see the impact Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness (WPHW) is having supporting Wabanaki people with multiple services, like the mobile food pantry. The mobile food pantry is one way Wabanaki food systems are being rebuilt, as food sharing is occurring across communities and its increasing access to healthy foods and medicines. When WPHW reached out about accessing conservation lands to support this project through increasing access to harvesting wild foods, medicines, fish, and game, we were absolutely thrilled. WPHW used the State of Maine’s conservation lands map to let us know the areas and species they were interested in and we used our network to reach out to those land managers. Working with individual land groups can help us understand the best points of access and even which locations are best able to find what we need. On one trip, we found chaga, cedar, a variety of ash, mushrooms (some edible), signs of deer/bear, and some of the biggest elderberry I have ever seen! WPHW made it clear early on that this partnership wouldn’t be for their organization but for all Wabanaki people and we couldn’t agree more. We are able to use this partnership to inform how we create cultural access statewide, while in the nearterm, WPHW can get people on the land and keep stocking the mobile food pantry with a more diverse set of Wabanaki harvested goods.