Nihi Hokchi--Planting Seeds

The Chahta Foundation is a 501(c)(3) that works closely alongside the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma (Nation, CNO), a federally recognized tribe with approximately 200,000 members, whose jurisdictional boundaries span 10 ½ counties (almost 11,000 square miles) in the southeastern quadrant of Oklahoma.

The need for programming and services is high in the region, which experiences some of the highest rates of poverty, educational attainment shortfalls, single parent households, food insecurity and lack of food sovereignty, and significant health disparities as compared to Oklahoma and national levels. The Choctaw Nation tribal service area received Promise Zone designation in 2014—a classification given only to the most socioeconomically challenged geographies and communities in the United States.

Through innovative, unique programming, the Chahta Foundation helps dismantle the obstacles faced by Choctaws in the realms of education, health, and culture. Our vision is effective and our impacts are garnering stakeholder support, as evidenced by the Choctaw Nation signing a Council Bill in 2015 that documented its commitment to match, dollar for dollar, any external monetary donation raised by the Chahta Foundation. This has dramatically increased the Foundation’s effectiveness and capacity to help the Choctaw people.

The Chahta Foundation mission is to empower the Choctaw people to be self-reliant and take active ownership in the advancement of Choctaw life and culture. Below are summaries of initiatives in each of our focus areas.

Health and Wellness: The Chahta Foundation connects communities with Choctaw health and wellness initiatives that enrich quality of life, establish sustainability and reconnect generations of Choctaw people with their agrarian heritage. Because food and wellness go hand-in-hand, we launched an initiative that brought raised garden beds to Choctaw elders residing in elder living communities throughout the tribal service area. Over 70 raised beds were donated to Choctaw elders, complete with soil, mulch, hoses, gardening implements, vegetable plants and herbs, gloves, straw hats, and sunscreen. The project has enabled Choctaw elders to grow some of their own fresh foods, to exercise and stay active, and to connect with their neighbors and community—all accomplished by working outside on their raised garden beds.

Initiated in 2017, the Green Growth Initiative is the Chahta Foundation’s version of an Edible School Yard. During the 2017 pilot year, the project was so well received and successful that plans are currently well underway for the project to be expanded in Spring 2018 to include more garden stations and to include the support of a master gardener to guide the educational and maintenance efforts in the garden. All activities have been designed to empower Choctaw students through experiential learning that builds knowledge and skills at an early age, and that initiates thought and discussion about our food systems and our ability to grow our own food—on any scale.

The Green Growth Initiative: Students enrolled in the Choctaw Nation Head Start Program and Day Care Center in Durant, Oklahoma, are now able to see the evolution of food from seed to plate. The students’ ages are 3-12, and activities and educational efforts are customized for appropriateness. In late Winter, the students plant seeds in a local greenhouse and in early Spring, they plant those seedlings in raised garden beds at a communal location on their campus. Throughout the growing season, the students follow a maintenance schedule whereby they tend to the garden and harvest the crops as they become ripe. Tomatoes, onions, and peppers raised in the garden have been used in salads that were served to the students for lunch. Interestingly enough, the strawberries never seemed to make it to the kitchen!

The garden is within a fenced, central location on the shared Head Start and Day Care campus. Benches and picnic tables are scattered around the garden area, and the enclosure is often used for sports and recreation, making the garden a regular fixture in the students’ days. In 2017, the pilot year garden boasted six six-foot long raised garden beds fashioned from trough feeders, four large tabletop herb gardens in fabric sacks, two large water troughs filled with soil, and two very large plastic containers outfitted with a percolating PVC pipe for deep-root watering. A stand of beautiful giant sunflowers was grown against the fence in a corner of the garden, providing shade and plenty of bird activity! Plans for 2018 expansion include adding steps to better enable the younger children to reach the raised beds, new fabric underlayment for the fabric sack herb gardens, and the provision of a part-time master gardener to provide educational programming and guide maintenance efforts. Stakeholders involved with the project are very eager to begin the work and launch another successful, fun year of growing and learning.

Additional initiatives outside of gardening and outdoor classrooms include our scholarship and cultural artifact programs.

Education: The Chahta Foundation connects Choctaw higher education students with competitive scholarships specifically geared toward Choctaw tribal members. Annually, we award over $300,000 to students enrolled in college programs ranging from undergraduate to doctorate degrees. With 30 competitive scholarship opportunities, the Chahta Foundation is able to connect both traditional and non-traditional students with funding to pursue post-secondary education.

Cultural Citizenship: We are advancing Choctaw culture by sharing the wisdom, skills and values that define Choctaw life across generations of people from around the world. With an artifact repository of over 1,200 pieces, the Chahta Foundation stores Choctaw artifacts in a state-of-the-art facility to ensure the perpetuity of the artifacts and collective history they represent, well into the future.

Through the Chahta Foundation’s Storytelling project, we interview and store recordings of Choctaw elders in which they speak about their childhoods, the Tribe’s growth, and their familial histories so that their voices and wisdom may be accessed by future generations. The Chahta Storytelling project has achieved success both within the Tribe and for non-Native communities alike. Through the Storytelling project we proudly store approximately 50 interviews of Choctaw elders—many of them first speakers of the language--for posterity. The Chahta Storytelling project received global recognition in 2016 when the Chahta Foundation Executive Director, Seth Fairchild, gave a TEDx talk about the project and the philosophies guiding it. https://chahtafoundation.com/initiatives/tradition/