Acorn Gathering for Yurok Sovereignty 

Annelia Hillman, food village coordinator for the Yurok Tribe's Food Sovereignty Program, loves her job. "I get to be outside and connect with the land and I'm learning so much more about food and processing," she says. "It's really good for the mind and the soul to not be behind a computer all day."

About two years ago, the tribe began building the program started under its Environmental Resources Department. "Our goal is to create access for tribal people to land, to food, to ... resources and education, and building our capacity in our own sovereignty," Hillman says. "Helping people to be self-sufficient, helping our tribe to be self-sufficient." Sometimes that means workshops or outings to places where traditional foods and materials, like acorns or grass for weaving, can be found. "Encouraging people to get out and gather," she continues, is vital "not just for sustenance, but for mental health and health and healing."

The Food Sovereignty Program is still a tight ship, with a pair of coordinators and two field techs, who Hillman says do much of the gardening and gathering. So far, there are two "food villages" on Yurok tribal land, one in Klamath and one in Weitchpec, each with garden space to teach cultivation. "Right now, we have gardens and the people," she says, though the long-term goal is to install commercial kitchens with food storage equipment and space to learn and practice food cultivation and processing.

Foodways are woven into a culture and the loss of traditional foods, cultivation and preparation methods can be a devastating severing of connection to the past and to one another. Teaching tribal members about the practices of generations past on their ancestral land can be a way of reconnecting individuals and communities. Hillman pays visits to the Yurok Indian Reservation's Jack Norton Elementary School, Margaret Keating Elementary School in Klamath and Big Lagoon Elementary School to conduct demonstrations and pass on practical knowledge.

"We grind acorns and crack acorns with the kids," she says. "We try to engage the youth, and introduce and normalize eating acorns."

Acorns, says Hillman, are "one of our sacred foods. It's what we eat at ceremony. It's one of our foundational foods. Yurok people are salmon people but acorns are important, too." She also describes them as a "superfood" filled with antioxidants, proteins and nutrients. Not that she's eager for "wellness" marketers and influencers to jump on the acorn bandwagon. (Though hopefully the year-long journey from forest to porridge is enough to keep it from trending.) For local Indigenous people, acorns are not only a nutritional staple, but "a spiritual food because they do connect us to our land and are used in fasting," she says, noting acorn water sustains participants during a 10-day ceremonial fast.

But like other Indigenous food sources on the North Coast, salmon among them, acorns are no longer as abundant as they once were. Over time, Hillman says, logging "encroached on some of our most important gathering places ... [and the ] threat of sudden oak death is on us now." Caused by a plant pathogen, sudden oak death has decimated oak tree populations throughout California. "We had a certain way of taking care of our acorns, managing our trees," she says, adding that the tribe is working on ordinances to protect "terrestrial resources" like huckleberries, mushrooms and acorns on Yurok land for Native people.

In recent years, Hillman says, "the relationship with the [California] parks department is improving and growing, and we've been able to gather ... basket materials at Sumeg State Park and other places." It's meant the ability to gather acorns on park lands, too.

The gathering season for acorns typically falls between mid-October and mid-November, but it can be hard to pin down a date on the calendar for a trip. "You have to go with the seasons and when the land is ready to provide," says Hillman. On Oct. 21, she and other tribal staff caravanned with some 30 others, all carrying buckets, bags or traditional baskets, to gather acorns at Lady Bird Johnson Grove.

Organizers went over safety protocols, talked about the significance of reclaiming an ancestral acorn gathering place and shared a children's song about acorns. Then they went out to a spot where they knew there were some ready to be harvested. "Everyone got some and got to see the difference between a good acorn and a wormy acorn," says Hillman, explaining the ones that are eaten away fall first and have darkened tops.

Hillman and her team followed up with a workshop on cooking and canning acorns — a year-long process that starts with a couple months of drying, then cracking, grinding and leeching out tannins to make them edible, all of which will be covered in workshops down the road using acorns gathered last year. Of the 30 attendees, she estimates 20 were learning the methods for the first time.

There are more field trips planned for the spring, including huckleberry, seaweed and mussel gathering. And future workshops will cover incorporating traditional foods into one's diet, especially for pregnant women and nursing mothers.

"We're still trying to obtain access to traditional gathering places," says Hillman, who says some ancestral lands are privately owned by individuals, Green Diamond Resource Co. or the state parks. "We're trying to reclaim access to our gathering places."

Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her) is the arts and features editor at the Journal. Reach her at (707) 442-1400, extension 320, or [email protected]. Follow her on Instagram @JFumikoCahill and on Mastodon @jenniferfumikocahill.