IF WE EAT LIKE THEM, WE WILL BECOME JUST LIKE THEM: A COLONIAL DISRUPTION OF CHEYENNE FOODWAYS AND ITS CONTEMPORARY CONSEQUENCES

Abstract

This thesis examines the colonial disruption of the Southern Cheyenne, Tsetsėhestȧhese (Zi-tis-ta-aas), foodways, and the ongoing consequences of western food regimes has to their community health, cultural endurance, and food sovereignty. Grounded in the prophecy of Motsé'eóeve (Mah-zi-eh-yu-ve) “If we eat like them, we will become just like them,” this research argues colonial food systems were deliberately imposed through federal policies, including buffalo extermination, reservation confinement, ration dependency, and boarding school assimilation. These actions fundamentally restructured the Cheyenne’s relationships to land, food, and governance. Drawing on archival research, oral history interviews with Cheyenne elders, and community-based knowledges, this research project centers on Cheyenne methodologies and epistemologies that value relational accountability, cultural ethics, and lived experience. These approaches challenge Western frameworks of food sovereignty that isolates food only as sustenance and disregards the system of knowledges, identity, and responsibilities that are embedded within them. This thesis contends that contemporary Indigenous food sovereignty is not a return to a precolonial past, but an evolving, ongoing process of cultural revitalization and resistance. These cultural revitalizations are inclusive of the cultivation of land-based gardening practices, the restoration of traditional food knowledge which represents pathways toward renewed self-determination and improved community health. Ultimately, Cheyenne food sovereignty is imperative for cultural survival, noting that the reclamation of food systems is central to their self-determining right for restoring relationships between people, land, and their future generations.