by Tony Skrelunas, Native America Director
Early Saturday morning, pickup trucks will file into a dusty parking lot behind the Denny’s in Tuba City, on the western edge of Northern Arizona’s vast Navajo reservation, many still with their headlights on. Tuba City has long been a hub for trade and collaboration between Native American tribes in the Colorado Plateau and, for the past three years, the red dirt lot has been the site of the popular weekly Painted Desert Farmers Market. Hopi and Navajo farmers travel from miles around—Hardrock, Curly Valley, Redlake—to offer corn, melon, squash, tomatoes, and other products, including local honey, in an area where fresh produce can be hard to find unless you grow it yourself. The market is at the heart of a larger effort to put traditional knowledge to work in service of sustainable development, increasing opportunity and improving quality of life in a region that is ground zero for climate change.
Bringing fresh veggies to a “food desert”
“We’re a food desert,” said Alicia Tsosie, the Grand Canyon Trust Food Corps member stationed at Tuba City’s Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health, who coordinates the farmers market.
The Navajo Nation covers nearly 18 million acres, larger than Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland, and Delaware combined, but has only twelve supermarkets.
