| Food for Elders Program Teaches the Yurok Way
Yurok youth process acorns to make acorn meal for elders. |
Yurok youth deliver food and visit with elders. |
To keep tradition alive, the Yurok are teaching their children how to fish—and then how to give the fish away.
With more than 5,000 members, the Yurok Tribe is the largest Native American tribe in California. As part of a food service program for elderly tribe members, Yurok youth are returning to the traditions of fishing and gathering acorns for their elders. Put simply, the Yurok way is for adults to take care of children and for children to take care of elders. Many families still follow this tradition, but some do not.
One of the missions of Yurok Social Services, which reaches out to 49 kids from ages 8 to 16 and 106 elders, is to teach young people the history, traditions, and values of the Yurok people. Through the Food for Elders program, Yurok youth hang nets, catch fish, and then process the fish; they also gather, shell, and leach and process acorns. The young people distribute the food to elders who are living in Humboldt and Del Norte Counties. Just before Christmas, Yurok youth distributed 105 jars of kippered salmon and 64 bags of acorn meal to 105 elders. Many of the elders were thrilled with the visits and touched that the young people were thinking of them.
Felice Pace, Director of the Yurok Tribal Department of Social Services, and Yadao Inong, prevention coordinator, have been working on the program for 2 years. Even though the social services department is in its last year of a Tribal Youth Grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, Pace and Yadao plan to expand beyond fish and acorns to seaweed, mussels, and other traditional foods. Youth also will begin to gather basket-making materials for elders who are weavers.
Because Food for Elders is successful as a prevention program, Pace also wants to use it as an intervention program with youth in juvenile hall. Native American youth represent roughly 25 percent of the detained population in the area's juvenile hall, though the area's overall Native population is less than 10 percent of the general population.
“We want to keep our kids out of trouble,” Pace said. “It is very difficult; we are in one of the most infamous marijuana growing areas, have the meth epidemic, and our county has the highest rate of narcotic prescriptions per capita in the nation,” he added.
Research has demonstrated that involving young people in service to their communities builds character and helps them resist drugs and other problem behaviors.
“Kids are internalizing the Yurok value that they're responsible for the elders,” said Pace.
Modern society has discovered what Yuroks of old knew and practiced as part of everyday life and what Yurok Social Services is attempting to keep alive.
For more information, contact:
Yadao Inong
Prevention Coordinator, Yurok Social Services
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