We live in a time when the challenges to having any reasonable expectation of a positive future are piling up against us rapidly. The climate is destabilizing. The few surviving remnants of native land. We’re in an extinction event that already threatens a quarter of the plant and animal species on Earth. For our own species, chronic lifestyle-related illnesses are a growing epidemic. In the U.S., average life expectancy is shrinking while wealth disparity is soaring. These and other challenges are beginning to compound in ways that can seem almost ridiculous. For example, a warmer planet means we’re all aging faster. It also means that not only are fruits and vegetables increasingly difficult to grow, but also less nutritious. All of these challenges are caused by human action. This is frustrating, but it can also be an avenue for hope. If our own decisions are causing these problems, then humanity could avert many of them by making different choices.
Indigenous communities are suffering more from the 21st century’s challenges than just about anyone. Yet, there’s hope even in that, because it means the potential exists for quality of life to radically improve if we can overcome these imposed challenges. At the root of many of today’s most pressing problems is an imbalance in the relationship between people and the land. The traditional cultures of Indigenous communities are an antidote. They are made up of the cumulative knowledge gained from hundreds of generations of ancestors’ real-world experiences, living closely with the land.
Amy Thompson.
In 2013, Amy Thompson, my wife, was diagnosed with a form of diabetes. We had both invested a good part of our lives to that point in learning and teaching Choctaw traditional culture. Her diagnosis became our motivation to remake our diet around the Indigenous Choctaw diet and other nutritionally equivalent foods. Within three months, we had collectively lost 70 pounds. Amy’s blood sugar was well outside of the diabetic range. Our energy was up, and our quality of life improved. Traditional culture had helped us. Making a temporary change is one thing, but it’s challenging to find time to eat this way day in and day out, year after year. The effort is worth it, though, because every time we deviate from this diet, our health suffers, and every time we return, it improves immediately.
This experience got us moving faster in a direction we were already headed: we established a small family farm as a hands-on experiment in applying the knowledge and perspectives of Choctaw traditional lifeways to the realities and challenges of the 21st century. In addition to providing healthier food for our table, it would be a way to learn firsthand about the culture and land that we have always wanted to know. It could also be an opportunity to contribute something of potential value to our community, outside of our day jobs working for the Choctaw Nation. In 2015, we took out farm loans and borrowed against our 401(k)s to buy a 160-acre tract of land near the heart of the reservation and went to work. We named it Nan Awaya, which means “Place of Growth” in the Choctaw language. This refers to the Choctaw place of creation in present-day Mississippi. Nan Awaya Farm has four primary goals: to restore the native diversity of the land we steward, help revitalize healthy Choctaw traditional cuisine, help reconnect our community with the land, and help enliven Indigenous Choctaw culture.
Two, two-year-old bison heifers at the farm on a rare sub-zero day. Their coats are so insulating that the snow on their backs doesn’t melt.
The first goal, restoring the land, is the foundation for the others. When we purchased this farm, it, like most of the American heartland, was in poor condition—over-grazed, logged, and eroded. It had apparently never been plowed, so many native roots and seeds survived in the soil. We allowed the land to rest for a year as we set up cross-fences to bring in a small herd of bison, a keystone species for this region. Under the guidance of a professional, we established a specific grazing rotation and stocking rate, only to discover that the native tallgrass ecosystem requires much longer periods of rest. We adapted our grazing strategy as we gained more knowledge.
Within a few years, more than 200 native, non-woody plant species had come up from what survived in the soil. The lowland reemerged as an acid seep—a rare local habitat type. The uplands reemerged as a tallgrass savanna, but were still missing some important plant species that had been grazed out. We experimented with methods to reintroduce them without harming the native plants that remained. One effective method has been to do controlled burns, followed by broadcasting seeds collected from local prairie remnants over the blackened ground. This is even more effective in pastures where we churn over strategically placed one-foot-diameter patches of soil with a garden hoe and plant them like little prairie garden plots. We’ve planted 11,161 of these patches now, and counting. Still a work in progress, the native vibrancy of this landscape is increasing year by year. In 2024, Nan Awaya Farm became one of approximately 100 natural areas to have been registered by the State of Oklahoma.
A native landscape is its own kind of teacher. Living on one (even one in rehab) provides a different type of life experience than living in a tame rural landscape. We gather healthy food within steps of our front door—wild plums, greens, muscadines, sassafras, persimmons, huckleberries, and the world’s tastiest blackberries. We’ve seen native pasture plants slowly reemerge, then explode into ecological greatness. Then, we’ve watched the interconnected impacts of rain, droughts, insects, bison, and fire on those plants every day for years afterward. Last fall, I made a traditional Choctaw archery set from materials gathered on this land and harvested a deer with a stone-tipped arrow, almost within sight of our house. That animal’s sacrifice supplied most of our meat for months. We process hides from our bison into braintan robes using stone tools and wrap ourselves up in them on cold evenings to the sound of the night birds. This land has become one of our most prolific teachers. Like a Tribal Elder, sometimes it can be harsh in showing us just how much we have left to learn, but the land has done more for us than we’ve done for it.
Tafula, a Choctaw hominy dish, with the clay pottery, river cane baskets, and wooden mortar traditionally used to make and serve the dish.
Connecting with the community is as vital as reconnecting with the land. With full-time jobs elsewhere, we have to be strategic about time management. The Tribe is a great partner in allowing us to share Nan Awaya Farm experiences such as cultural plant walks, bison talks, traditional food, native dye classes, and traditional pottery firings through existing Tribal programs. We’ve also had the honor of hosting the Tribe’s Indigenous immersion camp several times. “Choctaw Food” is a 400-page book published by the Tribe that utilizes the Indigenous foodway to share the rich history and culture of the Choctaw Peoples, with the goal of revitalization. The 2025 edition incorporates many images and insights directly from the Nan Awaya Farm experiment.
Nan Awaya Farm also has a website and blog that share culture and farm experiences with people around the globe. Connecting with people from the Choctaw community and beyond who are working towards a better future is one of the best outcomes of the Nan Awaya Farm experiment. The traditional cultures of Indigenous communities were developed over generations by intelligent, observant people who had life experiences that were different from those of the dominant societies of the 21st century. They can offer time-tested insights into tackling some of today’s most pressing challenges. Every square foot of native landscape, every Indigenous food dish, every living piece of Traditional Knowledge that this generation can pull back from the edge of oblivion, and every positive relationship that can be handed to the next generation, is a gift of a better future.
Ian Thompson (Choctaw and Euro-American), Ph.D., RPA, serves as Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
Top image: A stretch of the sandy seep at the farm in September. This view is dominated by swamp sunflower, boneset, ironweed, and black gum. scapes are disappearing.
All images courtesy of Nan Awaya Farm.
