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More than 162 years after the Mdewakanton Dakota people were forcibly detained and held at Fort Snelling in Minnesota, a Mdewakanton woman found herself detained in the same place her ancestors had been.
On the drive into Fort Snelling, Sophie Watso, 30, said she closed her eyes and prayed. She sang a song in Dakota, a prayer song, asking her ancestors for guidance.
Upwards of 3,000 Dakota and Ho-Chunk people were imprisoned at Fort Snelling, a concentration camp, during the winter of 1862 following the Dakota Indian Wars. Approximately 300 Native people died there.
Aside from being the site of a former concentration camp, the area is also a site of creation for the Dakota people. B’dote, where the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers meet, is one of the Dakota peoples’ creation sites. Today, B’dote is visible from the bluffs at the historic Fort Snelling complex.
As historic immigration raids pay out across the Twin Cities, several Native people have reported being detained at Fort Snelling. The Bishop Henry Whipple Building in Fort Snelling is being used as an ICE detainment and processing facility by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The encounter
Watso was detained on Wednesday, Jan. 14, in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, a suburb immediately north of the city of Minneapolis. Watso wasn’t released from ICE custody until Jan. 16, more than 48 hours after her initial encounter with ICE.
The Mdewakanton Dakota woman said she was monitoring ICE activity from her vehicle when agents and another group who she initially believed were local law enforcement approached her in her truck.
The video shows agents with the words “Police ICE” on their vests, which makes Watso believe they were all immigration enforcement personnel. Some agents or officers in the area have had the words “Police” or “ICE” labeled on them.
“It was a very confusing situation,” she said. “Because of the way that they [ICE agents] do not identify themselves, right?”
Dakota citizen arrested by federal officers during Minneapolis protests Saturday
One agent told Watso she was in violation of U.S. Code 18 section 111, which is a federal charge pertaining to imposing, obstructing or assaulting a federal law enforcement agent while on duty. ICE agents are allowed to detain U.S. citizens believed to be in violation of the code.
ICE agents have used this same charge against at least two other Native American people, William LaFromboise, a Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota man arrested while protesting ICE on Jan. 26, and Jose “Beto” Ramirez, a Red Lake Nation descendant detained on Jan. 7. Ramirez was charged nearly two weeks after his detainment.
Watso said one of the men told her she was impeding or obstructing an ongoing federal immigration investigation, but another told her if she didn’t stop what she was doing she would then be in violation of the code.
“A lot of people were talking at the same time,” she said. “At that point, I was already pulled over. So I had already stopped everything I was doing.”
Agents asked for her identification, Watso said she did not feel comfortable stepping out of her vehicle or handing over her ID.
Some tribes have reported incidents where individuals posing as ICE questioned members and asked for their identification.
Roughly three hours south of Minneapolis, the Meskwaki Nation in Tama, Iowa, reported at least one tribal member was questioned by men in nearby Toledo, Iowa, pretending to be immigration agents. The tribe said upon investigation, the individuals were confirmed to not be ICE personnel.
A photo taken after Sophie Watso’s detainment shows her pickup truck’s windows smashed in by immigration agents on January 14, 2026, in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. Credit: Courtesy Isavela Lopez
“I didn’t know who these people were,” Watso said. “They’re just some masked men that approached my window. So I didn’t feel comfortable giving them my identification.”
Moments later, Watso said the agents used a window breaker to smash in her truck’s driver’s side and passenger side windows.
Watso’s dog, a small pomeranian named Modean, was sitting on the passenger seat. She grabbed Modean to try and shield him from the shattered glass. Around her, prairie sage from her dashboard fell around the drug.
Watso, who is 5 feet, 2 inches tall, said it wasn’t difficult for the agents to pull her out of her truck from the broken window and place her on the ground. She held tight to her dog, who she feared was injured from the broken glass.
“There was nothing I could hold on to,” she said. “I was just holding on to my dog, and they put me on the ground on top of the glass that they just broke. And that’s when they were just trying to rip my dog from my arms.”
Watso said agents grabbed Modean from her arms and took him away from her before laying her face down on the ground, on top of the broken glass, a few agents leaned their full weight on her back and placing her in handcuffs. She could barely breathe, she said.
Fortunately, some of her friends were in the area and able to record the interaction, she said.
“I was yelling to them,” she said. “I told them, ‘Tell them where my dog is,’ and they were also malicious about that.
Watso said her friends were able to locate her dog at a nearby pound while officers drove her to the Whipple building in Fort Snelling for processing. Her friends then took her dog to stay with Watso’s mother.
Sophie Watso and her dog Modean pose in front of a mural she painted. Watso, Mdewakanton Dakota, was detained by immigration agents outside Minneapolis on January 14, 2026, and held for 48 hours. Credit: Courtesy of Sophie Watso
In detainment
At this point, knowing she was on her way to Fort Snelling, Watso began to sing.
“So it was important to me to sing a song, one of the only songs that I know by heart,” she said. “It’s a prayer song, and it’s asking for help.”
She felt like she was captured, she said, and began reflecting on what her Mdewakanton ancestors had experienced a century ago.
“The words in this song are asking for help, telling the creator that I want to live,” she said. “Not only am I praying for my safety, but I was also praying and wanting to greet my ancestors, in our language, with a song, because I know that my ancestors are there.”
Agents began to make fun of her singing, she said, asking if she was on drugs. But she didn’t care.
“I don’t do drugs and I don’t drink alcohol, but I expected that from them,” she said. “I understood that these people are colonized and they have the intention of degrading you.”
So she made sure to look them in the eyes as she sang.
“I wasn’t going to show them that I’m a spectacle,” she said.
Once inside of the Whipple building, Watso said she waited for several hours in a warehouse-like facility, her arms and legs shackled. She felt scared but oddly enough comforted at the same time, knowing her ancestors were there, she said.
“I knew that I wasn’t alone,” she said. “I knew that my people have suffered here, but I also knew that people have lived here.”
She said she took comfort in that fact.
Former Native American concentration camp lies beneath current immigration detention center
While detained, Watso said she was not offered an opportunity to speak with a lawyer. Watso said she at one point verbally requested to speak with a lawyer, but was not given the opportunity. Since she was not able to speak with a lawyer, Watso was further transferred out of the Whipple building to an ICE partner facility, the Sherbourne County Jail.
Sherbourne was a much better experience than being kept at the Whipple building, she said.
“The people at Sherburne County, these are just sheriffs, people who work there, and they’re actually nice to you,” she said. “They actually treat you like a human. They ask you if you want water and they give it to you. They talk to you normally like you’re a person.”
‘I’m traumatized’
In Sherbourne on Thursday, Jan. 15, Watso said was finally given an opportunity to make phone calls. Watso was then able to contact a lawyer and has since been working with the Native American Rights Fund, a non-profit organization dedicated to the legal protection of Indigenous people, tribes and tribal organizations.
Because no charges were filed against her, Watso was let go from Sherbourne after a 48-hour hold on Friday, Jan. 16.
Following her release from Sherbourne, Watso said was taken back to the Whipple building in Fort Snelling by two Homeland Security department agents. Watso was given paperwork and her possessions back at Fort Snelling and informed she could now go home, but it wasn’t the end, she said.
While leaving, Watso said she wasn’t given clear instruction by the agents on how to exit the building. While making her way through the parking lot, jogging to speed up her journey due to the below freezing temperatures, Watso was tackled by several ICE agents who assumed she was attempting to break out of the facility.
Watso said at least four agents dressed in full gear tackled her, leaving her with back pain and further traumatizing her. She was placed back in handcuffs and again taken into the Whipple building where another agent verified she had been released from custody, at which point she was freed again, this time with a ride home.
“It’s all on surveillance video,” she said. “Here I am free, running, and then I’m tackled, brutalized, cuffed back up and brought back inside. Every time I go outside now, my head is on a swivel, like, left, right, left, right, turn behind you. ‘Is there anyone behind me?’ I’m traumatized.”
A young Dakota woman incarcerated at the Fort Snelling concentration camp is photographed in 1862. Survivors of the camp were sent via steamboat to the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota and the Santee Reservation in Nebraska. (Courtesy Minnesota Historical Society)
Watso said as of Jan. 26 she had not yet been able to go to the hospital to have her injuries evaluated. She has, however, been able to visit with a therapist and is staying with friends for safety, she said.
The experience has left her completely terrified, she said. Since she’s staying with friends, on one occasion she accidentally locked herself out of the apartment and began to panic.
“I was here alone, and I was outside, and I didn’t have anything, any identification on me, so I was immediately terrified,” she said.
Fortunately, a couple welcomed her into their home until her brother was able to come pick her up.
“That was a crazy feeling,” she said. “For people like me, who look like me, you don’t even want to leave your house because you’re scared ICE is going to take you.”
Watso said she wants to share her story to raise awareness to what’s really happening in Minneapolis, a place she moved to two years ago to be closer to her ancestral homelands.
“[I moved back] to reconnect to the land and my people and to live on this land,” she said. “So many people don’t get to live on their ancestral homelands in America, so I felt like it was important to do that.”
After hearing about charges pressed against Jose Ramirez, a Red Lake nation descendant who was detained by ICE the week prior, Watso was scared of the potential for the same thing to happen to her.
“I feel like it’s important to speak out about what happened to me,” she said.
Being surrounded by friends and family is helping her heal, she said. Leaning on prayer and medicine has helped to center her.
“I haven’t been to sweat yet but I’m planning on it,” she said. “I know that there’s definitely a lot to process, but at the same time I don’t want to. I don’t want to think about it.”
The post Dakota woman recounts more than 48 hours in immigration detainment appeared first on ICT.
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Last spring, the EPA made a surprise announcement: President Trump would consider giving some polluters exemptions from a handful of Clean Air Act rules. To get the ball rolling, all it would take was an email from a company making its case. The EPA set up a special inbox to receive these applications, and it gave companies about three weeks at the end of March to submit their requests for presidential exemption. Hundreds of companies wrote in, including coal plants, iron and steel manufacturers, limestone producers, and chemical refiners.
One industry was particularly eager for exemption: medical device sterilizers. About 40 of the roughly 90 device sterilization plants that operate nationwide, along with their trade association, wrote in, arguing they shouldn’t have to comply with an air quality rule limiting how much toxic material they could emit. That’s because these facilities sterilize medical equipment with ethylene oxide, a potent carcinogen that studies have linked to cancers of the breast and lymph nodes.
In 2024, the Biden administration issued regulations requiring sterilizers to cut their emissions by about 90 percent. Companies were given two years to comply, and many had begun installing new monitoring equipment and pollution-control devices to meet the standard. But last year, after President Trump took office, the EPA gave these companies a way out; they could request a presidential exemption. About 40 facilities, many of which are located in residential neighborhoods close to schools and day cares, took advantage of the offer and were granted the exemption through a presidential proclamation last summer.
Now, a coalition of national environmental groups and community nonprofits is suing Trump and the EPA, seeking to overturn the ongoing exemptions. Maurice Carter, president of the Georgia-based environmental advocacy group Sustainable Newton, which signed on to the suit, told Grist that financial interests of sterilization companies shouldn’t override public health concerns about ethylene oxide. Any policy change should account for that, he argued.
“You have to do that in ways that are not harmful to the people that live here and to the planet that our children are going to inherit,” he said. Carter lives about a mile away from one of the exempted facilities.
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Georgia sterilization plants using toxic gas among those exempt from new rules
Drew Kann, The Atlanta Journal Constitution
The suit was filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C., and assigned to Judge Christopher R. Cooper, an Obama appointee. Trump’s Justice Department, which represents federal agencies in court, has 60 days to respond.
Taylor Rogers, a spokesperson for the White House, told Grist that the president had used “his lawful authority under the Clean Air Act to grant relief for certain commercial sterilization facilities that use ethylene oxide to sterilize critical medical equipment and combat disease transmission.” The Biden-era rule would’ve forced facilities to shut down, Rogers argued, “seriously disrupting the supply of medical equipment and undermining our national security.” A spokesperson for the EPA said the agency doesn’t comment on pending litigation.
A provision in the Clean Air Act does allow the president to grant facilities narrow exemptions from one section of the law. But presidents can only grant an exemption if the technology to meet the standard is not available and the exemption is in the country’s national interest. The sterilization facilities claimed they met both criteria. In a letter to the president, the Ethylene Oxide Sterilization Association, the industry’s trade organization, claimed that companies would not be able to meet the 2024 rule “due to the limited number of equipment manufacturers and workforce shortages.” Supply chain constraints and the time it would take to install and validate equipment meant that the control technology needed “is functionally unavailable within the required timeframes,” the group said.
When the EPA finalized the rule in 2024, it determined that only 7 out of a total of 88 sterilizer facilities “already met the emission standards and will not need to install additional emission controls.” Several others met one or more requirements of the rule. Nearly 30 facilities would be required to install so-called Permanent Total Enclosures, which are among the most expensive pollution control technologies and seal facilities so that ethylene oxide can be trapped and burned.
Georgia has the highest concentration of exempted sterilization plants; all five of the state’s facilities were granted exemptions. By comparison, only two of the facilities in California, which has the largest number of sterilizers in the country, received exemptions. According to records submitted to the state environmental agency, nearly all California facilities already meet the vast majority of requirements laid out in the 2024 rule. One facility in Atlanta met the standards as early as 2022 — yet it nevertheless received an exemption.
“These are facilities that have been making changes to their processes in their facilities to comply, and yet they received exemptions anyway,” said Sarah Buckley, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the environmental groups suing. (Editor’s note: The Natural Resources Defense Council is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.)
“That shows that the president was not making any good faith determination, was not basing this on an actual assessment of the facts on the ground and the capabilities of these facilities, but instead was just looking for excuses essentially to hand out free passes to avoid the rules,” Buckley added, calling the exemptions a “get-out-of-jail-free card.”
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James Boylan, head of the Georgia Environmental Protection Division’s air protection branch, said the agency had been working with companies to install upgraded control equipment and revise permits to comply with the 2024 rule before President Trump announced that Georgia’s sterilization facilities would be exempted. Some of those updates have since been delayed because of the exemption, Boylan told Grist in an email.
If companies exceeded the Clean Air Act emission limits and faced state action or lawsuits by community groups, they could use the exemption to claim the rules don’t apply to them. Companies that are exempted will also be relieved of the cost of complying with regulation. The EPA estimated that it would cost $313 million for all of the roughly 90 sterilizers to meet the new standards. But even those already in compliance could benefit from an exemption, because monitoring and pollution control equipment require regular maintenance and oversight.
“There is a monetary incentive to not operate equipment even if you already have it,” said Buckley.
Sterilizers aren’t the only industry benefiting from these exemptions. Last year, President Trump issued a series of proclamations exempting more than 150 facilities, including dozens of coal plants and chemical manufacturers. Environmental groups have sued over several of these exemptions, claiming that Trump had exceeded his statutory authority. Many of these cases are winding their way through the courts.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump’s ‘get-out-of-jail-free card’ for polluters faces its latest test in court on Feb 2, 2026.
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Article Summary
• Arkansas has had the highest food insecurity rate in the nation for three years in a row, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
• In the town of Fayetteville, food security efforts have spanned the private and public sectors for many years. At the heart of the work is the community’s approach to nutrition education for youth, including growing food.
• Leading the charge: Apple Seeds, a nonprofit teaching farm, and the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance, in collaboration with Fayetteville’s public school district.
• Federal budget cuts for programs like SNAP-Ed and the Farm to School Program have impacted this work, but most of Fayetteville’s efforts will continue regardless.
At Apple Seeds teaching farm, in Fayetteville, Arkansas, the simple act of unearthing a carrot can be life changing.
Executive Director Mary Thompson remembers one child in particular, a fourth-grader who had just harvested a carrot. “He washed it and put it in his pocket. Later, he took it out and took a nibble like he was really savoring it, then put it back,” she says. “I told him we could harvest another carrot, and he said, ‘Oh my gosh, thank you. I’ve really, really been trying to save this to take home to show my mom. She would never ever believe where this carrot came from.’”
In Washington County, food insecurity rates are among the lowest in Arkansas. Those low rates are driven at least in part by over many years of remarkable community-driven hunger relief efforts there.
Since 2007, Apple Seeds, a nonprofit, has worked to teach children about the wonders of fresh produce and inspire healthy eating through garden-based education. Recently, this mission took on new urgency: The state of Arkansas has had the highest rates of food insecurity in the nation for three years running, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) latest Household Food Security report.
In Washington County—where Fayetteville is located—food insecurity rates are among the lowest in Arkansas. Those low rates are driven at least in part by many years of remarkable community-driven hunger relief efforts there, led by Apple Seeds and the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance (AHRA), in collaboration with the Fayetteville Public School District.
The 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill terminated SNAP-Ed and trimmed funding for the Farm to School program, among other budget cuts. The federal policy changes, which reduced nutrition education for children and are likely to exacerbate food insecurity for many Americans, are affecting Fayetteville too.
While only a small portion of farm to school grant funding has been reinstated for 2026, most of Fayetteville’s efforts continue regardless, providing a look at how proven solutions are adapting to address hunger.
Fighting Hunger in Fayetteville
Nearly 20 percent of Arkansas households lacked adequate access to nutritious foods in 2024, based on the most recent USDA data available. That equates to nearly 600,000 Arkansans facing hunger, as well as 1 in 4 children.
Washington County had one of the lowest food insecurity rates in Arkansas at 17.4 percent, according to the most recent Map the Meal Gap data collected in 2023 by Feeding America. Though higher than the national average of 13.5 percent, it is significantly lower compared to other areas in the state, such as Searcy County, where 24.3 percent of residents experienced food insecurity that year.
For Searcy County children, the rate was much higher than for the county’s general population—32.2 percent—which is a common pattern in counties across the state. Washington County, however, is an outlier; the rate of food insecurity among children there in 2023 was lower—16.8 percent—compared its general population. And Washington County’s childhood hunger rate was the second lowest in the entire state.
Apples are just one of many kinds of fruits and vegetables that grow on the two acres of land that make up Apple Seeds Teaching Farm, which students can pick themselves and enjoy as a healthy snack. (Photo courtesy of Apple Seeds)
These numbers reflect local efforts to focus on students. The work spans the public and private sectors: For roughly 20 years, nonprofit organizations like Apple Seeds and the AHRA, in collaboration with the Fayetteville Public School District, have shown how giving kids access to fresh produce and helping them have positive experiences with vegetables early in life can have lasting and far-reaching impacts.
The AHRA started working to boost food security in 2004. The Little Rock–based nonprofit began as a coalition of six Feeding America food banks in the state, which continue to operate. In addition to providing food for Arkansans in need, AHRA also partners with local and federal organizations on advocacy and educational programming to mitigate hunger in the long term. This includes everything from leading cooking classes to helping people enroll in the SNAP program to coaching volunteers on how to ask lawmakers to negotiate additional funding for the program.
Another driving force is the Fayetteville Public School District, which created edible gardens at its 17 schools between 2009 and 2014. In 2013, the school district received a $99,000 USDA Farm to School grant to expand a sustainable farm-to-school program, and in 2021 it received a second Farm to School grant for $82,000, but this latter grant was never implemented due to COVID restrictions and staffing issues. Currently, the gardens are managed with $450 per school per year.
In 2015, Apple Seeds signed a 20-year lease for 2 acres from the City of Fayetteville at no cost—the land was a gift from the city “in exchange for the services we provide the community,” said Thompson. They built a barn with a kitchen and dining space, placed wooden benches in a semicircle around an old pecan tree for an outdoor classroom, and cleared a plot to plant vegetables. The teaching farm is just 14 miles from the Northwest Arkansas Foodbank, one of the six food banks that form the AHRA.
“While they might not have [had] any interest in trying broccoli at first, if they grew it,…they would literally eat the broccoli off the plant.”
The initial Apple Seeds curriculum was created with the Arkansas Children’s Research Institute, based on seven years of lessons developed by the Fayetteville Public School District. The curriculum covered nutrition, cooking, and gardening with hands-on activities in the school gardens and field trips to the Apple Seeds teaching farm.
In 2018 came a moment of synergy: The farm, the research institute, and the school district combined forces with the AHRA to further develop the on-farm curriculum with components of the AHRA’s nutrition education program, Cooking Matters.
“I learned with my own kids that while they might not have [had] any interest in trying broccoli at first, if they grew it, we wouldn’t even bring it inside; they would literally eat the broccoli off the plant,” says Stephanie Jordan, a nutritionist and the school district’s part-time garden coordinator.
Jordan helps kids plant, harvest, sort through seed catalogs, study pollinators, manage a compost bin, and supply leafy greens to the cafeteria salad bar. Jordan’s enthusiasm for these programs is formidable, limited only by resources.
“Being only half-time and having 17 schools, it’s just not feasible for me to maintain all of the spaces,” says Jordan. “Maintenance is what I’m most worried about. I think if these spaces don’t look beautiful, they’ll just be mowed over.”
Working from its one teaching farm location in Fayetteville, Apple Seeds partners with 74 schools throughout western and central Arkansas, and its curriculum is integrated into the daily schedule for K-5 students at 36 of those schools.
“In kindergarten, they pull a carrot out of the ground and start to formulate the concept of where food comes from,” Thompson said. “At first, we’re building a fun experience with a vegetable. Then we layer in cooking skills as they get older. By the time they finish elementary school, they know how to prepare vegetables for breakfast, snacks, lunch, and dinner.”
In other words, students learn how to harvest, wash, and cut that carrot before eventually baking it into carrot muffins or another Apple Seeds recipe. The hands-on group fun transforms tasks from dreaded chores into pleasant experiences kids can look forward to recreating at home.
Outside the K-5 curriculum, Apple Seeds also offers summer camps and workshops at its farm to teach real-world agricultural and culinary skills to teenagers. Programs focus on growing and cooking fresh produce, in the belief that understanding and enjoying the farm-to-table process is one step toward greater food sovereignty.
Turning Kids Into Veggie-Lovers
In the Apple Seeds kitchen, kids learn basic cooking skills, like how to chop a cucumber for a salad. (Photo courtesy of Apple Seeds)
AHRA food banks provide ingredients while culinary and nutrition education programs teach kids how to prepare healthy meals for themselves and their families. Food access and education, however, aren’t always enough to inspire healthy eating habits. Nothing changes unless a kid wants to taste those foods.
“I think one of the biggest things we’re doing is trying to change the mindset of kids from ‘Ooh, vegetables are gross’ to ‘Wow, I like vegetables, and cooking them is really fun,’” Thompson said.
Only 3.6 percent of Arkansas kids eat the daily recommended servings of vegetables—about 1.5 to 3 cups depending on factors like age and gender—according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Apple Seeds measures the impact of its programs and shares the results publicly in its annual Impact Report. All students are surveyed before and after the program, with images of vegetables and the question: If this were on your plate, would you eat it?
“It takes five to seven points of interaction with a new vegetable to start to shift the mindset of a kid around what they think of that vegetable,” Thompson explained.
“It takes five to seven points of interaction with a new vegetable to start to shift the mindset of a kid around what they think of that vegetable.”
This year, there was a 91 percent increase in the number of kids willing to eat turnips after participating in an Apple Seeds program, Thompson said. And roughly three-quarters of participating students are willing to eat leafy greens—compared to less than 30 percent of American adults.
Also this year, Apple Seeds saw increases in kids’ willingness to try the vegetables used in the program, their retention of nutrition information, and behavioral changes such as cooking at home or using a nutrition label to make a decision, Thompson said.
Apple Seeds grows produce year-round using organic farming practices, and its staff select crops for educational and nutritional purposes, not commercial value. Two examples: sweet peppers and cherry tomatoes, which kids can harvest without a sharp knife.
Apple Seeds also increases food access through donations of “produce bundles.” In 2024, the farm supplied students with 16,854 of these bags of fresh vegetables.
“Whatever we’re growing, we bundle it up with a recipe and the kids who participate in the programs get to take home a cooking kit that includes everything needed to make that recipe,” says Thompson.
The produce bundles are delivered monthly directly to the schools that offer the Apple Seeds K-5 core curriculum. The bundles change seasonally—in the spring, for example, students may receive carrots, assorted herbs, and fresh greens such as spinach, kale, and lettuce. “Ninety-eight percent of the families that get access to our food say that it increases their consumption of fresh vegetables at home.”
At Asbell Elementary in Fayetteville, 90 percent of the roughly 300 students are eligible for free and reduced price lunch through the USDA National School Lunch Program. Every grade level there also offers an annual field trip to Apple Seeds and access to their produce bundles.
“The first couple of times that we had the produce bundles, students were a little hesitant, but now they will come right up and they’ll show so much excitement, they’ll want to take five different bags,” says Asbell Principal Jamie Baureis. “It’s completely changed the level of engagement with vegetables.”
At the Apple Seeds Teaching Farm in Fayetteville, Arkansas, staff and volunteers help students plant vegetable seeds to learn about where our food comes from and increase interest in healthy ingredients. (Photo courtesy of Apple Seeds)
The Future for Fayetteville’s Nutrition Education
Apple Seeds’ concept was inspired in part by Zenger Farm in Portland, Oregon, and Jones Valley Teaching Farm in Birmingham, Alabama. Tucson Village Farm in Tucson, Arizona, and Cedar Circle Farm in East Thetford, Vermont, also offer interesting models for on-farm growing and nutrition education for schoolkids.
Perhaps the most well-known and broad-reaching initiative is Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard, which was founded in California in 1995 and now comprises 6,500 programs across 47 countries, according to its most recent impact report.
These organizations all manage to address hunger and health issues in their communities without significant federal funding.
But for many others, including in Fayetteville, the sudden loss of federal funding last year is forcing abrupt shifts in how they operate and fulfill their missions.
For many others, including in Fayetteville, the sudden loss of federal funding last year is forcing abrupt shifts in how they operate and fulfill their missions.
AHRA took an $800,000 hit to its annual budget last year, with $600,000 cut from nutrition education for children and adults due to the termination of SNAP-Ed. “We lost that funding without warning,” said AHRA CEO Sylvia Blain. “We still had one year left on our agreement, so there was confusion about whether or not we would be allowed to finish out our contract which would go through September 2026. We have not yet secured new partnerships to fund this work.”
Since July 2025, when the One Big Beautiful Bill set an Oct. 1 end date for SNAP-Ed, the AHRA has pared down programming and tried to fill the gap by focusing on individual and corporate donors. This hasn’t been easy, because the coalition must compete with other nonprofits for a limited pool of resources.
Apple Seeds typically relies on government grants for about a third of its funding, with events and donations from individuals, family foundations, and corporations bringing in the rest. In 2025, several grants that Apple Seeds had received or applied for were unexpectedly discontinued.
When the Farm to School grant program was reinstated in September 2025, AHRA and Apple Seeds co-submitted a proposal in the hopes of receiving some of the allotted $18 million in funds for all states, to be announced in April 2026.
Depending on Diversified Income
The funding cuts from the past year confirmed the importance of having diversified streams of income, Thompson said. “They can balance each other whenever one area is not as strong in any given year. This is across individual giving, corporate giving, grants, and services we offer at a fee.”
In the future, this could mean that Apple Seeds plans more ticketed events, like a Kitchen Table dinner series they have hosted monthly since 2017. “We love to fundraise around the same mission of our work with our kids—building community around good food,” Thompson said.
Last year, 20,155 students from central and northwest Arkansas (including Fayetteville) participated in Apple Seeds programs. This year, the organization expects to reach capacity and is planning to build two additional teaching farms over the next few years. This will, of course, depend on funding.
“I think we’re going to see a highly competitive fundraising environment in 2026, and that is concerning, because there’s a lot of great work that needs to be done,” Blain said. “Hope is the flip side of that—it’s the coalition building that’s happening right now across sectors to make sure that this work continues. People realize that we’ve got a lot to do in the grassroots sector, and that our communities have got to support one another.”
The post Fighting Hunger in Fayetteville, Arkansas appeared first on Civil Eats.
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This story was originally published by Grist.
Miacel Spotted Elk
Grist
Earlier this month, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposalto revise the Clean Water Act, specifically a section of the law that regulates water quality and limits states’ and tribes’ authority over federal projects, as well as how tribes can gain the authority to conduct those reviews. Experts say the move would dissolve one of the few tools tribes have to enforce treaty rights and hamper their ability to protect tribal citizens.
“What the Trump administration is proposing to modify here is a really important tool for states and tribes, because it gets at their ability to put conditions on or, in extreme cases, block projects that are either proposed by the federal government or under the jurisdiction of the federal government,” said Miles Johnson, legal director at Columbia Riverkeeper, an organization that works on issues affecting the Columbia River.
Developers seeking to build dams, mines, data centers, or pipelines must navigate a permitting process to do so. One requirement in the process is obtaining certification from a tribe or state confirming that the project meets federal water quality standards. Currently, tribes and states conduct holistic reviews of projects, known as “activity as a whole”, evaluating all potential impacts on water quality, including spill risks, threats to cultural resources, and impacts on wildlife. This approach was established under the Biden administration in 2023.
However, the newly proposed rule would limit reviews to “discharge only,” where both states and tribes are able to review projects solely based on how much pollution they would release, narrowing the scope of oversight.
The proposed rule also changes how tribes can gain regulatory authority to assess water quality under the Treatment in a Similar Manner as a State program, or TAS. Under that program, tribes are able to act as regulators, one of the few tools available to them, and directly set conditions to limit factors that would pollute waters near tribal lands. To date, only 84 tribal nationshave received TAS status, allowing them to review federal projects. Currently, Section 401 of the Clean Water Act allows tribes that can demonstrate the capacity and resources the ability to review water quality standards, expanding regulatory powers beyond tribes with larger resources. The proposed change would shrink those powers, allowing only TAS tribes to perform evaluations through a separate, more rigorous authorization program.
“Treaty rights are one of the strongest mechanisms to enforce against the federal government, against the state, against third-party actors, and in litigation,” said Heather Tanana, a law professor at the University of Denver. “It takes years, it takes money, it’s complicated to do, and so you want these other mechanisms.”
A reversion to pre-2023 rules, Tanana said, would put higher demands on tribes to show larger-scale capacity, often in the form of dedicated water departments.
“There’s such a wide variance in tribes of what resources are available to them. Do they have other sources of revenue, right? How many staff do they have? Do they have their own environmental departments? Is it one person, or is it 10?” said Tanana.
During the Biden administration, tribes advocated for a baseline rule allowing all tribes some input in federal projects while seeking TAS status, but industry pushback during the comment period and a Trump win during the general election in 2024 led to its withdrawal from the EPA in December.
Patrick Hunter, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, noted that of 7,500 projects submitted during the Biden administration, fewer than 1 percent were denied. Most were approved with conditions such as mitigation measures and sediment traps to prevent water pollution during construction. Tanana said tribal review outcomes were similar.
The EPA’s 2025 report on tribal consultations highlighted widespread opposition to changes. “The clear feedback from the tribes was, ‘Don’t change it,’” said Tanana. “‘You’re going to make it harder for us to exercise our sovereignty to protect our waters and protect our community.’”
A 30-day public comment period on the proposed rule is currently underway. The rule is expected to face litigation after finalization.
“Tribes have an obligation to care for the rivers and waterways that have sustained their communities since before the existence of the United States and are weighing every option to protect their way of life,” said Gussie Lord, head of tribal partnerships at Earthjustice.
Note: This story was updated to correct where Heather Tanana is employed.
The post The EPA wants to eliminate one of the few ways that tribes can protect their water appeared first on ICT.
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Mexico legislators introduce bill to recognize and regulate Indigenous healing practices
(icmagazine.org)
Last Updated on February 1, 2026 Lawmakers in Mexico’s Guanajuato state have introduced a legislative proposal that would formally recognize and regulate traditional Indigenous medicine, a move that could bolster cultural health practices and expand health care options with cultural relevance. The initiative, presented Jan. 29 by Deputy Plásida Calzada Velázquez, president of the state […]
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