After months of food shortages, tribes of all sizes have been left with few answers and empty shelves.
By Ben Brasch, The Washington PostAgriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack speaks to reporters at a press briefing at the White House in Washington on July 31. A 62-year-old exemplar of Minnesota Nice, she unloaded a truck - pallet by pallet - on her own the weekend of Aug. 23. “It put a big strain on me,” she said. “That was the struggle the last two months.”
The Food Distribution Programs on Indian Reservations - or FDPIR, pronounced “fuh-dipper” - was created by the Food Stamp Act of 1977 to get nutritious food to low-income Native Americans. Essentially, the program is the Native American version of SNAP, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.For those who run the tribal food programs, filling the need isn’t as simple as just running to Costco.
Vilsack, in his first interview on the issue, four days later told The Post that his team had implemented short-term fixes, includinga seven-day workweek at the Paris Brothers warehouse and sending customer experts from the military and Federal Emergency Management Agency to the warehouse in Kansas City. He said a 20-person team is getting granular, literally helping Paris Brothers find ways to better organize paperwork.
Greene-Trottier said they offered a number of solutions, including going to the warehouse themselves to pick up the food. She said they were denied.Greene-Trottier, who handles the program for her community, said the Spirit Lake Tribe received one truck in July compared to their usual two or two and a half per month. She said her warehouse shelves were empty.“You wouldn’t go back to that grocery store,” she said.
He said the first problem happened right then, when the bid committee should have had a much deeper discussion about whether Paris Brothers could actually handle the job on its own.
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