Food Security and Climate Change

Danielle Antelope, Executive Director, FAST Blackfeet

The Blackfeet food system has undergone tremendous change over the last seven generations that have resulted in high health disparities and lack of access to healthy food. Climate-driven ecological change is further harming the availability of traditional foods important to many Blackfeet people. Danielle Antelope is executive director of FAST Blackfeet, a local non-profit dedicated to improving food access and food sovereignty on the Blackfeet Nation. Danielle will discuss these challenges to local food access and security as well as the work her team and others are doing to improve access to healthy, culturally relevant foods. Her work, and talk, is grounded in her lived experience as someone who from a young age learned about berries, plants, and roots from her aunts and grandmothers on harvesting trips with her family. Danielle continues to build on her plant knowledge by learning from other cultural knowledge holders. Throughout her life, she has recognized the effects of climate change on the plant relatives that she regularly harvests. Danielle will share some of her plant knowledge and the effects of climate change that she has witnessed on the land, as well as the work of FAST Blackfeet.

Danielle is a member of the Blackfeet Nation and Eastern Shoshone Nation. She was born and raised in Browning, Montana. Antelope recently graduated from Montana State University with a bachelor’s degree in Sustainable Food & Bioenergy Systems. During her time at MSU, she received multiple awards based on her civic engagement on campus and within her home community. Danielle serves as the Executive Director of Food Access and Sustainability Team Blackfeet, known as FAST Blackfeet. This organization provides access to healthy and culturally relevant foods, nutrition education, and
gardening/wild harvesting opportunities within the Blackfeet Nation. Danielle is passionate about learning and sharing the changes in the Blackfeet food system and how those changes reflect in the health of the people today.