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It won’t come as a surprise that Indigenous cultures are often overlooked in conversations about health and well-being.
The current anti-meat narrative often demonizes traditional foodways. Just take a look at the “food igloo,” which places culturally appropriate Inuit foods at the top, highlighted in red.
Source: Nunavik Food Guide Educator’s Handbook
Additionally, sacred rituals and ceremonies of First Nation people are regularly turned into performative, Instagrammable acts or commercialized for profit.
Chelsey Luger and Thosh Collins are on a mission to reclaim and revitalize Indigenous health and wellness. As members of Native American tribes, Chelsey and Thosh cofounded Well For Culture, an Indigenous wellness initiative that promotes whole lifeways through ancestral teachings to optimize contemporary Indigenous lifestyles.
This work is not just for Indigenous people. Everyone can benefit from the Seven Circles, their holistic model for wellness. Their book, The Seven Circles: Indigenous Teachings for Living Well, shares the seven interconnected areas of life through lessons from Indigenous teachings and gives practical advice on how to engage with this wisdom.
Chelsey and Thosh are on the show today to chat about the seven circles and how they can realistically be incorporated into life. Listen in as we discuss:
- How to show yourself grace in your daily life
- The seven circles of wellness
- Wellness as an industry
- How to question health advice
- Why demonizing meat is a social justice issue
- What the ceremony circle represents, and how to incorporate ceremony into life
Rather watch this episode on YouTube? Check it out here: Episode 248: Well for Culture
Resources:
Nunavik Food Guide Educator’s Handbook
The Seven Circles: Indigenous Teachings for Living Well
Connect with Well For Culture:
Website: Well For Culture | Native Wellness Institute
Instagram: @chelsey.moves | @thosh.collins | @wellforculture
Email: [email protected]
Episode Credits:
Thank you to all who’ve made this show possible. Our hosts are Diana Rodgers and James Connolly. Our producer is Emily Soape. And, of course, we are grateful for our sponsors, Global Food Justice Alliance members, and listeners.
If you believe in making sure that people all over the world should have access to nutritious food, please join my mission through my non-profit, the Global Food Justice Alliance. All sustaining members get early access to ad-free podcasts plus free downloads, and you’ll be helping get healthy protein like meat, fish, and eggs to food-insecure kids. That’s sustainabledish.com/join.
A big thanks to the sponsor of today’s show, Paleovalley, maker of one of my favorite supplements, the Organ Complex. It contains all of the benefits of liver, heart, and kidney – without the taste. You can get 15% off by clicking here: sustainabledish.com/pv15.
Transcript:
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. I’m Diana Rodgers, a real food registered dietitian, author, and sustainability advocate. I co-host this podcast with James Connolly, who was a producer on my film Sacred Cow. I also founded the Global Food Justice Alliance, an initiative advocating for the inclusion of animal-source foods like meat, dairy, and eggs for a more nutritious, sustainable, and equitable worldwide food system. You can check it out and join me at global food justice.org. Thanks again for listening. And now, on to our show.
Diana Rodgers, RD (Paleovalley Ad)
Today’s podcast is sponsored by Paleovalley, makers of one of my favorite supplements, the Organ Complex. It contains all of the benefits of liver, heart, and kidney to those of us who don’t really love eating those ancestral foods because of the taste. The nutrients are helpful for brain health, hair, skin, and nails, and also for energy. Get 15% off with my link, sustainabledish.com/pv15. That’s sustainabledish.com/pv15.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. I’m so excited to have Chelsey and Thosh from Well For Culture. They have this beautiful book The Seven Circles: Indigenous Teachings for Living Well. Welcome to the podcast, guys. I learned about you through a post that you did on social media about… that related directly to the stuff I was talking about in Sacred Cow with… we even – Robb and I talked about it in the book about how insulting the idea that you know, someone is spiritually cleansed if they’re not eating meat and how insulting that is to First Nations people. So I really appreciated your post about the bison and got to know a little bit more about your work. And we’re finally chatting. It’s been a little while. So please introduce yourselves and talk a little bit about how you got into this.
Chelsey Luger
All right, I’ll go first. [Indigious Greeting]. Hello, relatives. Hello, everyone out there listening. It’s really great to be here today. My name is Chelsey Luger, and I am an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, which is a tribal nation up in north central North Dakota where I grew up. I’m also from the Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux tribes. And I am now coming to you from my home in Tempe, Arizona, which is an awesome territory where I live here with my husband, Thosh, and as you mentioned, we’re the co-authors of The Seven Circles, and we are wellness advocates, and most of the work that we do is within indigenous communities.
Thosh Collins
Yes, [Indigious Greeting] friends family [Indigious Greeting] Thosh Collins and from the Onk-Akimel O’Odham people, the Salt River people on my paternal side and my maternal side is Wa-Zha-Zhi and Haudenosaunee from Oklahoma, and I was born and raised in my father’s community in Salt River right outside of what is now known as Phoenix, Arizona. And like Chelsey said, I live together with her just outside of our reservation with our two daughters Weston and Aloe. And we are in the process of building our home on the reservation in the community. So in so right now we are living in town. But we started our work together: Well For Culture, we started working on this in like 2013, and 2014. And we started traveling the United States and all over First Nations communities in Canada, and doing Indigenous health and wellness educating. So we, you know, look at ourselves as the indigenous community health educators. And a lot of the things that we’re talking about the things that we write about in the book is really based upon our respective teachings that we learn from elders and knowledge keepers, you know, firsthand experience and in our communities, and just really taking in oral tradition and what the history says, amongst our people about how to live a good way of life. And in the recent recent years, here, we have been keeping our ears to the ground about what’s happening in science and medicine and looking at the various scientific evidence that comes out that is, coincides with what we know to be true is indigenous peoples. And so we are advocates of the marrying of both scientific knowledge and information, recent evidence and Indigenous ways of knowing and being. So we are huge advocates of putting these together. And that’s why we enjoy your work, the work of your colleague, Robb Wolf, and many others that are associated in your circle. And so thanks, you know, thank you for having us on the podcast. And we look forward to sharing and talking.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah. There’s so many parts of your book that I loved, and especially the introduction just really sums up so much of your worldview, which I relate to so much. And right in the beginning, you talk about how your worldview or the way you approach wellness is not purely anything. That it’s a… you’re not anti-science, you’re not… you’re kind of just combining all the best of all things. And I really love that because it’s so… there’s so many things that you share with sustainability and regenerative ag and where I’m looking at wellness from and you know, another thing that you talked about right on the next page is that you both kind of came to this because of some struggles that you had growing up. And I think that that’s something that a lot of people – us moral people – when we see gorgeous fit, folks like you are out there with like, beautiful bodies doing these movements that I don’t know that I could even do anymore. But, you know, you kind of… there’s an assumption that you’ve always looked like this, that you’ve always, you know, this is just something that, you know, you were sort of gifted in there. It’s unattainable for us regular people. And but you talked about, you know, that you had a lot of challenges. And where you’re at today is not despite them, it’s because of them. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Chelsey Luger
Yeah, I mean, you know, Thosh and I, we always like to start by saying that the reservations that we come from are beautiful, rich, dynamic, wonderful places, spiritually wealthy places. And a lot of the stereotypes that you see about Native American culture and life in mainstream media, are totally absent of that side of our narrative as indigenous people. So part of our work is, we really like to show how not only we but many people from our communities, defy or live differently from the negative side of those stereotypes. But at the same time, we’re not sugarcoating anything like yes, of course, we are facing immense struggles in our communities. And even though Thosh and I are, we don’t actually really share too much about our personal lives or personal struggles, because we don’t want to be gratuitously sharing those things like sharing it for likes, or for sympathy or something like that. And then also, we acknowledge a lot of the struggles that we’ve been through involve our family members, and it’s not our place to share personal information from family and community. So all that is to say, to be honest with you, we have we’re not immune from those struggles, even though we don’t highlight that or talk about it all the time. We’ve both been through a lot of things and a lot of struggles, that have been, you know, a part of just the struggles that our communities face post colonially. But at the same time, it’s our spirituality and our culture and the teachings of our people, that have allowed us to emerge from many of those struggles or to face them today with a sense of resilience and a sense of strength. And so it’s not despite our culture, or despite our struggles, but it’s because of our culture, that we’ve been able to, you know, ultimately live a fairly well and balanced lifestyle that we could say we’re living today. And we’re very, very grateful for that. And we don’t take it for granted. And we don’t think that we’re finished, you know, I could wake up tomorrow and fall completely off of this path. But that’s why I have to wake up every day with the conviction. I’m going to keep working on this.
Thosh Collins
I like that you asked that question, Diana, too, because a lot of people sort of assume that about us when we are either on social media, or maybe we traveled to certain communities and, you know, people will might make a comment or speak at a tone like, well, it’s easy for you, or it must be nice. They said that about us before we had kids, right? And we hear
Diana Rodgers, RD
Oh really for sure before kids yeah. Now they’re like, We trust you a little bit because you’ve got kids.
Thosh Collins
But like we write in the book, and Chelsey wrote this part in the book, where she said, we both narrowly escaped addiction, and looking at, you know, our history and our communities. And, you know, it’s generally known, of course, and should be known more by those that don’t that indigenous communities today are still healing from the persisting impacts of colonialism. And some people in most people damaged society when they are colonialism, they think hundreds of years ago, it’s really a concept that seems to be sort of erased from the dominant society narrative right now. But it’s used much within the indigenous community in this movement to reclaim our identity and reclaim our original lifeways and to be able to create a good life, you know, is the norm once again for future generations. But yes, both of us, you know, have had our struggles, you know, with alcohol, substances, unhealthy relationships, unhealthy circles of people, and like Chelsey said, but simultaneously, we were raised in certain traditions really raised in community and it was those that gave us the tools to overcome when we did get these obstacles both of us were, you know, born and raised on a reservation and around it. And then both of us, you know, left to live in major cities. She went to New York City, she went to Dartmouth and the East Coast and she went to Columbia, New York City. I went to San Francisco – an artist to San Francisco, I lived down in Los Angeles and that’s where we really experienced a lot of, you know, the bulk of our challenges, of course in childhood as well, but it was our teachings it was a cultural teachings and somehow we were able to muster up that much strength to get back on walking a good path, as they say, in our communities, we’re walking a Red Road. And you know, walking in a good way with a good heart, a good mind and following the teachings that our ancestors have laid out. So, you know, I’d like that you asked that, because that’s certainly you know, how we are in like Chelsey said, you know, we always share with our own people, there’s no finish line to health and wellness in this journey. And there’s never a point where all of a sudden, yeah, I’m healed, I can do whatever I want, you know, I can drink again, or I can, you know, eat this or do that, again. I don’t have to workout ever again, because I’m at this level of my fitness. It’s never that way. Right? It’s… we are constantly on this journey. And there’s constantly obstacles in our path. And it’s about having the tools to be able to overcome those obstacles and navigate a really complex world, a world that seems to clash with all of our values, as human beings have a world that is a complete mismatch to our genes is human beings. I think that’s what living a good way of life is. Health and wellness is having the tools to overcome that and to be able to maintain your humaneness in this world, that it’s so polarizing, and extreme as it is today and toxic in many ways environmentally, you know, social, politically, social narratives. It’s about maintaining nuance and maintaining a strong presence and being able to move forward. You know, like an arrow cuts through the air move forward, and you’re steadfast, and you have your vision, and you continue on regardless of what’s in the path. To me, I think that’s what health and wellness is really about.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, and I mean, I think that’s why your work resonated with me so much. And, you know, there was something that Robb said one time in one of his talks that I kind of stole, and that was like, if you’re not sick, and overweight and suffering, then you’re kind of not doing American right, you know. And so that goes, I mean, it’s so wonderful that you’re able to pull on your indigenous heritage. And I think that might be part of the reason why we have so many lost people in America today, because there’s no heritage to pull from for any of them. And mainstream society is just so toxic, the food environment is toxic, the work environments are toxic. It’s all about taking and taking. And this concept, I know, we had talked briefly about the book a smile, but like the levers and takers, which I know is integral to the worldview of your book, as well, so So again, just like kudos for bringing this all together in a really holistic way, because that’s how I approach things. And I know we had talked also about wellness culture, right, today, and how it has been so reduced to this vanity thing. And I think, you know, that partly can feel alienated to alienating to some people who are trying to do better, because they see fitness influencers and you know, they look so unattainable, right, but by you bringing in all these other aspects and talking about, you know, there might be some points in your life where movement just is not the biggest priority for you. And that’s okay. So will you talk about, like how this beautiful, like organism of health and spirituality and wellness can kind of morph depending on where you’re at.
Chelsey Luger
But yeah, so the model that we use that we’ve have been using to teach for a long time that we created, as a result of learning how to teach about wellness, when we’ve traveled all around native country, we call it the seven circles of wellness. And it includes food, movement, sleep, sacred space, which is your home, community, land and ceremony. So those are seven areas of life that we believe our ancestors thrived in. And those are seven areas that remain relevant for health today, no matter who you are, and where you’re come where you come from. So the reason that we initially organized it into circles as opposed to anything else is because everything we saw in health before was pillars, separate pillars, separate categories, this department here, this wing over there, everything compartmentalized. And so we knew that all of these areas, in fact, are interconnected and overlap. And to answer your question about how do we apply this to our daily life? Well, it starts by acknowledging that at any given day, you’re going to wake up really strong in some of those areas, and you’re going to wake up feeling like you having neglected other areas, and we can’t do them all every day. We can’t be perfect in all of them in equal measure every single day. But that model is always there as something for you to visualize and return to. So for me like I wake up today, my sleep hasn’t been the best. But I know it’ll get there, I have a two year old who sleeps with me and, you know, kicks me in the stomach all night. And, you know, rather than just beating myself up and saying like, Oh, I’m so bad at this. So I’m never going to have the perfect circadian rhythm. Because I know that it’s a model I can return to you, I say to myself, I’m just more patient with myself. And there that contributes to my wellness, and my mental health and my mental wellness, as opposed to just making me feel like some kind of a failure movement. You know, gosh, I have to tease myself because my instagram name is Chelsey Moves. But it’s more like Chelsey moves for about five days and then forgets to move for another three weeks and then gets back to it, you know, but that’s the truth. And when I was in my early 20s, following bodybuilding culture, I would have felt like a complete failure and really beating myself up and making myself feel bad if I missed a workout. But now Oh, my gosh, are you kidding me? No, it’s okay, if I fall off for a little while life happens. And the important thing is, I maintain and I get back to it, and I maintain that determination when I can. So yes, like every day, some of these circles will grow, some will shrink different phases of life, some of these circles will be much more prevalent and thriving, while others will be neglected. But we got to just keep returning when we can and keep those wheels in motion.
Thosh Collins
And to add, you know, back to the model, the circles is that all those seven circles are lifeways. Right, those are things that we do, and what areas those affect us as a whole, a spiritual, physical, mental and emotional well being. That’s what we are made up of. And a lot of indigenous people recognize that. So those lifeways are affecting that connection to land, you know, you zoom into that, and what does that mean? That really means that everything we do as human beings evolved on the land, right, at some point, everything evolved in the land teachings come from the land. We learned how to eat from the land. We learned how to build shelter, and all that from the land there. The land is the curator of our cultures, but as we know, since industrialization, there’s been a disconnect from that. And there’s been a disconnect between the people and their connection to the land, and emerged out of that was this concept of nature is something separate from you, it’s different than you. You’re not a part of it. And it’s something to conquer, it’s something to break down and to control and create this commodity, you know, create some sort of a deed out of it, you know. So we look at connection to land, it’s the original, and it’s sort of interconnected to all these other circles, such as you look at foodways getting out on the land, to hunt to forge, to plant seeds, you’re doing this stuff with community with people, you did this in units, and we still do this today and in units in, you know, family structure, social structure. So that’s that component of the circle, of connection to community, right, because community is made up of you family, your community that you live around, and those that you’re connected to at large and a greater world at large. So it brings all that together. And it’s also on the land as you do things such as movement, you know, we have gatherings on the left, we have maybe a ceremonial thing, or maybe somebody goes out to meditate, or they go out to do mindfulness, or they want to do intentional breathing, you know, out on the land, there’s so many different components of this that are inextricably connected. They’re all so sort of interrelated. And that’s what we tried to communicate in the book in with our model to everybody and outside of our culture. And the reason, you know, we had shared this was because we, as Native people are watching, we’re partaking in dominant culture, but we’re also seeing it – we’re watching it from sort of almost this outside perspective. You know, I watch the news, I watch what’s happening in social media. And many indigenous people have commented on this, all of our cultural leaders in history have commented peeking into dominant culture and try to offer and some say, you know, we have pity upon them, because they don’t know, they’ve lost their way, which is what you alluded to earlier. So the book is really a way in offering, it’s our offering is just really to Native people, like we say in the book, we can’t speak for all Indigenous people, you know, or even for our communities, but really, just as a family, we tried to share this very basic model, a basic template to return into your human ways. And that’s really what indigenous culture is, it’s just returning to original human ways, the ways that we have that have allowed us to evolve and thrive and survive, you know, over a million years on the lens that we’re all on today. So that’s why we created it in that circular format. If you want to speak to even how this sort of vanity component, like please do.
Chelsey Luger
Yeah, um, well, you know, the thing is that wellness has become an industry and we all know that it’s, I think there’s real wellness. And then there’s the industry. Wellness, and…
Diana Rodgers, RD
In the vanity of wellness and Instagramming ice baths and things like that
Chelsey Luger
Right and not be removed from the industry. And we try our best to acknowledge when that and to recognize that aspect. And that’s, you know, just like the healthcare industry, it relies upon people being sick and desperate in many cases. And so that’s why you’ll never see Thosh or I pitching products that we don’t believe in or anything like that, and really just trying to be aware of that commercialize aspect and how a lot of people are being sold products and ideas that are going to benefit them in the long run. So we just hope that folks, when they read our book, they’re not feeling like they have to run to the store, buy something new, buy, you know, 20 ingredients from all around the world to make a smoothie and supplements and this and that, like, we really just hope that folks are able to look at wellness, in this true sense of seeking balance and be able to look at foodways, in a much more practical sense, once again, to do the best with what we have in this, you know, very challenging time and too, for folks to be easy on themselves, is really what we’re hoping for.
Thosh Collins
Yeah, absolutely. You know, we encourage everyone to have a critical mind when they are learning things about how to live a good life. And we encourage critical thought, and encourage people to try to put on their nuanced lens and look at how all these certain aspects of the the mainstream wellness scene, how these may be needed at certain times more than other and how these are not the end all be all solution, like, you know, we see, like you said, we see a lot of… we see the cold plunge fad that’s happening. And many of us been doing that for a long time. And I write about that in the book before I realized this was a huge fad. We’ve written about how our men’s society or men’s circle would run us young men through that, at an early age, going into the river during the wintertime at sunrise, when we were freezing and shaking, and they told us it was going to improve… it was going to make our skin harder, was wanting to improve our grit. You know, and why learn later on that? Yes, it did improve my grit at a young age, it’s you and your nervous system gives you tools that gives you a little bit of resiliency as well. But that’s just one component, there’s so many components to living a good way of life on the land there. So we encourage people to be careful about jumping all in and much of these fads that we are seeing until to look at, you know, when these are needed, and that these are just all components to the larger picture. And it’s important for people to, you know, not look at one person, or one practice or one food is the end all be all, because that’s what we see, as Native Americans, I’ve seen the dominant culture, there’s always an emphasis on one, you know, one man, one place one food, you know, there’s this concept and it comes from, I guess, religious ideology. And it made its way into dominant societies collective consciousness. So people are sort of, they’re sort of trained to see one person is going to lead them, you know, or one food is going to save them, you know, or one organ, you know, of meat eating or something like that, or one sort of super plant food is the solution to end all and it just isn’t that way.
Chelsey Luger
Or one style of exercise.
Thosh Collins
Yeah, one style of exercise, you know what I mean?
Chelsey Luger
It’s capitalism. People are trying to sell you something. That’s why.
Thosh Collins
Exactly. It’s the marrying of a capitalistic mindset in this concept of the one end all be all thing. And we like to just remind people that nothing in our world is dependent upon just one thing. And how you can look at the true roots of it, is if you look at the aspects that allow us to live, it’s air, it’s the sunlight right here, the earth beneath us, it’s the microorganisms in the soil. It’s the microorganisms and the animals that live on limits, the animals roll out on the land, it’s our role. And if you look at us, if you go into us, you’ll see that liver, heart, brain, all these things, the nervous system, the enteric, nervous system, you know, the endocrine system, all these things work in it together, they work together, and then they’re inextricably connected their whole, and that everything in this world is dependent upon one another. And so we must acknowledge the whole of everything and how it works. I think that people can understand that by understanding the basics once again, it’s just like that in functioning community functioning society is many different things. So we like to encourage people to be careful of really jumping on with these fads and just seeing them for the vanity component to it. But looking at what’s the functionality of this? Is this right for me, you know,
Diana Rodgers, RD
Or for you in a certain time of life, right, like if you’re up all night with a two year old kicking you in the stomach, jumping into a cold plunge first thing in the morning might not be what your nervous system needs right now, you know, and I think the older I get, the more nuance I see with wellness. And you know, I just dive into these different circles at different times. And it’s something that I’ve been, you know, intuitively incorporating in my life, but I’m not right now in my life is not the time for a cold plunge. It’s just not and I feel good about that. And I don’t need to be, you know, telling other people that it’s going to solve all their problems. And it’s so funny because I think, again, when the ancestral health paleo movement first started, it was a very holistic, you know. These are the ideas and then it got reduced to ultra processed paleo foods that were making lots of money and good for them. But it just got reduced to, you know, these special goji berries or acai bowls are gonna save you, right? And we can – I think I mentioned to earlier before we got on to with even regenerative agriculture, you know, started as a concept that came from a very kind of sacred worldview of wanting to improve the land. And now, it’s like, how can we trademark this? How can we profit on this idea? How can and I think that’s where the plant-based industry has really, you know, like, how can I capitalize on sustainability? How can I make money on this idea that people are feeling uncomfortable with where the world is at right now? And how can I sell them this promise? In a $6 package of vegan, no death meat, right?
Thosh Collins
Yeah. And again, that’s where the critical thought component comes in, you know, people we encourage people really need to look at what’s being fed to them, whether it be a narrative or product and look at is this sustainable for the long run? Do I need this? Is this congruent with my budget? You know, is it sustainable for me to continue to order this or subscribe to this over Amazon over the next 15-20 years? You know, can I do without this? Am I going to be dependent upon another product? How many products are we already dependent upon as human beings? We’re largely dependent upon so many different things. And, you know, is a another product, you know, really something that’s that we need, I think, and we try to encourage that.
Chelsey Luger
And I think another reason that Thosh and I are both so confident in how we teach about wellness and how we view wellness is sort of in this more broad sense, that is mindful of these trends, and the packaging of different ideologies, the greenwashing so on and so forth, is because not only have we researched ancestral science, indigenous science, as well as Western science, not researched is the wrong word. We’re not researchers. We’re not in the lab doing the science. But, you know, we worked into all of these things, and read the studies and so on and so forth. But also we’ve experimented when we were… not so much anymore, but when we were both first getting into the wellness world, in our, you know, early, mid 20s. And trying, I think I did experiment with plant based and completely gluten free and completely dairy free and, you know, kind of did these little trial periods with trying to understand a lot of these different fads and seeing how it made my body feel and seeing whether or not it was actually sustainable for me in my lifestyle, particularly when I was living up in North Dakota, and nine times… nine and a half times out of 10 wasn’t working for me, you know, and what a relief because ultimately, I’ve come to a place where wellness has gotten a lot easier for me and a lot more manageable to maintain because I don’t have to be so extreme about it the way that so many people are pitching. And I remember you know, this is why I really appreciate the work that you do because folks like you have brought it back to the you know, brought back the idea to the conversation that you know, things like red meat have been so demonized. And so, you know, misconstrued and misunderstood by a lot of these health influencers. And that remains an issue today and when and I just remember when I feel like in the bottom, you know, in the back of my mind, I always knew that that can’t be right. I’m a Lakota person. My people survived off of bison meat for hundreds, 1000s of years. There’s no way it can be so bad. I also grew up on a cattle ranch and I saw what a healthy people eating red meat all the time, you know You should see my uncle, he’s, uh, pushing at something, you know, he’s in his late 70s. And he’s like one of the most in shape 70-something year olds I’ve ever seen. This guy eats steak every single day of his life, you know? So, um, yeah, I just… it was such a relief to me to see people like you, like, you know, sort of bringing this knowledge back that no meat is not the enemy. And when we look at it as the enemy, this is why. And when we, when I learned that it became so much easier for me to teach and share about wellness in my communities once again. Yeah, and this is why this is a social justice issue. When we demonize meat, we’re completely neglecting a huge portion of the indigenous population who cannot fathom a life without it. Because it’s true that when our when buffalo hunting went away, cattle replace that as a nutritional source as a source of nutrition that people are comfortable with, in my communities, I cannot go to North Dakota to a reservation and tell people not… to eat plant based, I will get laughed off. And if I do tell them that, then it’s going to be really hard for me to point them toward, you know, these different beans and legumes and all this stuff to find in the grocery store. It’s just not happening. So this is a social justice issue for me and it’s a cultural issue. And it’s really an injustice to demonize meat in the way that people have.
Thosh Collins
Chelsey speaks often to, you know, the proponents, or excuse me, the opponents of meat eating and how they advocate for, you know, the rights of animals, which of course, we have reverence for all living beings, but there’s nuance there, you know, which I’ll talk about a little bit later on. So she speaks to that. But their lack of compassion for the loss of Indigenous people on these, these plains, these lands that we now call America who have been removed, you know, to do things such as create not just, of course, industrial ag, but plant foods, and such those share about that, like how you get into that?
Chelsey Luger
Oh, well. Yeah, I just think, you know, whenever I hear sort of an extreme vegan or plant based argument about the way that, you know, ranching, and meat production is harming the environment. I never hear them talk about colonialism, I never hear them talk about the history of the destruction of the grasslands, which were, you know, some of the most biodiverse territory and in around the world, and I never hear them talk about any sort of initiatives to reclaim some of those wild grasslands to reclaim bison herds that experience a literal genocide. And but you know, people bottom line is, if you… the only way that that’s ever going to happen is if people are interested in eating and those eating that meat again and maintaining those herds. And it’s, you know, to me, that brings animals back to life, it brings habitat back to life, I would love to hear more sort of vegan and plant-based arguments that acknowledge that history.
Thosh Collins
Right, because it’s there largely absent from the social justice component of indigenous people who’s, you know, who’s whose lives had been directly affected, as you know, as well. So we kind of see that and that’s also one of our criticisms of the plant-based narrative that attempts to, I guess, infiltrate to the native country. And then there are some native people who have been who the plant-based narrative has infiltrated their mind because just because many different indigenous peoples we’re in pre-colonial times, we farm most notably corns been in squash all the way from, you know, what is now known as Central America all the way to the northeastern part of Canada, indigenous people have farmed in corn, in English terms across the board is sort of regarded as the mother because it united all these people and corn was prepared many different ways. And of course, we’re talking about heirloom corn 1000s of varieties, not the standard, the sweet corn that you see throughout, you know, the Midwestern portion of America, which is not even really used for eaten most of it, chemicals and such, you know, but, you know, so oftentimes people will get caught up in the narrative and they’re over embellish in this idea that their people ate mostly plant and didn’t eat meat, and there’s some that will go as far as saying that, that, you know, eating meat was frowned upon in certain nations with you know, and to me, again, it’s a really over embellishment, and they’re also being misled. Our people are also susceptible to being misled by these mainstream narratives. But if you look all Across native country, and I’ve been traveling various reservations for 20 years now over 20 years since I was a youth, and with a youth group that traveled all over the United States to various gatherings in different communities to connect to other communities. And never have I heard an elder or knowledge keeper say that their people didn’t meet me. Never have I met a very powerful spiritual person, a healer, who I’ve seen work with my own eyes, say they don’t eat meat. So that way, they can be spiritually enlightened. That’s just not a narrative that exists in native country in which you spoke to it, you know, in the beginning, saying that those narratives are sort of a slap in the face to indigenous people to say, you know, how can we survive the millions of, 1000s of years on this line here? How can we survive and be free of things such as cancer, colon cancer, to be free of type two diabetes, all metabolic health disorders? Neurodegenerative disorders? How can we exist and be free of all those but eat meat in the way that we did to eat fat from salmon and in walleye, and bison, you know, caribou and such? How can we eat them much fat, and meat and be in good health and you know, so we look at various regions of the country. And I always share with Native people, instead of jumping on with the fad diets, look at the modalities in which your people had acquired their food, in most places they required by hunting, fishing is one another region we grew food, we planted seeds pre-colonial times, and we forged seasonally, and we traded, and we always cooked. And no matter what they’re eating, they gave thanks, they always had gratitude at the forefront of the mind that gave thanks. And we encourage people to bring those into your daily habits, again, bring those into your daily, you know, ways of acquiring food, in addition to the grocery store, being a conscious consumers thing on the perimeter. And these are such critical things. So I tell people a better method is instead of jumping on with a fad diet, look at how did the ways did you? Did your ancestors acquire the food? How do you mimic that in a contemporary setting, how to incorporate fasting in between meals just like our people did. And they did that not because of you know, autophagy or whatever they did that because, you know, it was their survival is dependent upon it because they would ration… they had to ration food. And so we tell people today, you know, obviously we’re in the age of plenty, we’re living in a time where you have an abundance of food of high calorie, but low nutrients, and you’re consuming and we’re consuming all day long, and the blood sugar is up and down. Insulin is always out until we start to experience hyper, you know, hyperglycemia leading on to insulin resistance to form on type two diabetes, which puts us at risk of all the metabolic disorders – like this is the reason why it’s not because we’re eating meat. It’s because the environments that we’re living in are complete mismatch to our genes. You know, and so that’s what we… a big thing that we like to share people’s look at those methods of acquiring food, how do you apply that today? With regard to your budget and access your specific nutritional needs? Such critical things to think about? I think that goes beyond following a diet-based on ideology.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, gosh, there’s so much you just said that resonated with me. I don’t know. Did I share with you the food igloo that I saw come out of Canada?
Chelsey Luger
No, that’s really cool.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Oh my – well, it sounds cool. If there could ever be an image that would fully represent, like colonial imperialism, cultural imperialism on food ways it would be this. So it was Canadian dietitians, came up with for the Inuit food igloo knowing all of their traditional food that they would hunt at the top in red. So all the goose and all the other foods that they would hunt, and then at the bottom was orange juice, cereal…
Chelsey Luger
You gotta be kidding me.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, like the Mediterranean diet type foods.
Chelsey Luger
It’s unbelievable.
Diana Rodgers, RD
I’ll make sure it gets in the show notes. And I’ll email you guys a copy of this. We put it in Sacred Cow because it’s just abominable.
Chelsey Luger
My reaction at first was positive because in certain cases I’ve seen indigenous kind of food sovereignty advocates creating these you know, using that model of like, you know, some sort of an indigenous symbol and then actually making a good you know, iteration of the food pyramid but yeah, I’ve also seen that so it’s too bad that they did that and man the Inuit of all people, man. Their diet and the way that they’ve managed to maintain their hunting traditions and there is incredible you know, and a model to be learned from looking at their traditional food ways and the lifestyle associated with it. Um, and just a resilient people and, you know, brilliant foodways. But yeah, that’s really unfortunate.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, and, you know, genetically sugar absorbed, or sugar breakdown, for a lot of them is a real challenge. And so, you know, to give them a high carbohydrate recommendation, just assuming, you know, that Mediterranean diet works for everybody. You know, and on the flip side, I’ve also seen some in the, in the agriculture community promoting this, like African heritage type diet, which, you know, is very low in meat and high in in beans. And I also kind of question that as a dietitian, and someone who has studied, you know, very traditional cultures, because, you know, there’s a reason why meat was restricted. It’s not that that necessarily works best for an African human, you know, it’s that, you know, meat was restricted to slaves. And so they had to do what they could do with the scraps and things like that. And that’s why you see the South, so high in foods that could travel well, like fried chicken, but also, you know, just the, like, the food scraps instead of like, the cuts that were sort of saved for the landowners and things like that.
Thosh Collins
Yeah, yeah, when I hear those two, it’s hard to believe because for me as a hunter, like anytime I peek into even just a documentary on about, like, those tribes and nations in Africa and the way they hunt, and it’s, you know, to me, it’s humbling to watch what they’re able to do, you know, with the technology that they have, and they keep it that way, you know, the way they hunt, you know, in groups, with spears and such, and looking at, you know, these people they revered, you know, hunting still to this day, you know,
Chelsey Luger
Yeah, it’s, you know, it’s really interesting. And I think, you know, we definitely observe and we feel a solidarity with Gosh, people all over the world who have experienced colonialism and who are trying to maintain and reclaim foodways. And to understand what that is, you know, in our own individual circumstances, it really is hard, it really is challenging. And I guess that’s just what’s so upsetting about a lot of these fad diets is it just doesn’t make doesn’t make it any easier for any of us, you know, no matter who we are, and where we come from.
Diana Rodgers, RD
So let’s just touch a little bit on some of these other circles before we go. Because we did touch, we covered a lot of territory that I was hoping to, which I’m really glad about, but one that I haven’t really been very successful with. So you’ve got food, sleep movement, ceremony, sacred space, land and community and the ceremony piece, can you talk a little bit more about that, because that’s, I know, for myself, that’s an area that I could grow in.
Chelsey Luger
So I’ll start by saying this was the hardest chapter in the book for us to write, knowing that there are a huge community of New Agers and sort of creepy cultural appropriators out there who are literally trying to, you know, steal, like sacred indigenous ceremonies and to, you know, profit off of them and sell them and package them and all that kind of stuff. And we just want to start by, we always have to start by saying, we’re not advocating for that kind of stuff, you know, for tech bros, traveling to the Amazon to do Ayahuasca in a completely out of context, you know, scenario, like we don’t advocate for any of that stuff at all. However, we maintain throughout this, and we discussed this with our publisher, we’re, you know, our primary audience here is is indigenous people and then we also acknowledge that we want to be able to translate these teachings for a non-native audience as well. So we almost thought about calling it something else, not calling it ceremony because that is kind of a cultural word. But then we thought no, because then we would be removing our you know, we would be de-prioritizing indigenous people if we did that. So we maintain that it’s you know, we call it ceremony but within that circle of ceremony that’s gonna look different for people from you know, and there’s a way to connect to it in an appropriate way. No matter who you are and where you come from, for indigenous people like us. Yeah, that might be sweat lodge or you know, different ceremonies and modes of prayer that we have for non-native folks. You could be a religious person and perhaps your modality of prayer and peacefulness and meditation is a part of that ceremony circle, you could be a completely non-spiritual or non-religious person. And there are practices such as taking time in your day for silence. You know, we are overwhelmed in today’s world with audible and visual noise mostly coming from our phones. But you know, the over prevalence of technology in the workplace in every single thing that we do, we’re really addicted to our screens. So part of the ceremony circle is consciously taking time to, to remove ourselves from that noise. The 24 hour news cycle is another thing that really negatively impacts our mental health. And even makes us more sedentary. And so within that ceremony circle, consciously taking time to remove ourselves from that toxic – we’ll have news that we’re constantly absorbed in. The other thing was ceremony is, yeah, any type of contemplative practice. So you don’t have to make you know, a big scene out of it or, you know, make it, you don’t have to make it all performative and fancy, but literally, lean back in your chair, and close your eyes and just be silent for a little while, you know, speak to ritual, ritual, yes, ritual for anybody sort of shifting things from just like a mundane task that you do every single day, to just inserting a little bit of intention in that. So whether it’s like, for me, you know, my skincare routine, it can be a time that I just slather some stuff on – sunscreen and out the door because I have to, or I can, like, sit there for a minute, you know, in my head, say something nice to myself in the mirror, and just take some time to take some deep breaths, you know, put on my skincare, and try to make that a moment where I’m feeling better about myself, or make that a moment where I say, some positive words of affirmation, nighttime routines with the kids, you know, Friday evening getting home from work and you know, lighting a candle and reading a book and saying, This is what I do on Friday evenings, that can be a really powerful ritual for people. So any kind of any type of ritual, any type of contemplative practice, and finding time for silence, all of that fits within this circle of ceremony. And it’s something that we really, really need in today’s world.
Thosh Collins
And I would also say to that, yes, just to add to that, you know, a level that Chelsey has shared and to add to that, is that ceremony is the action of acknowledging your spiritual reverence for all living things for your life, for love, for health, for the sunlight, for the changing of the seasons, for the four legged, the winged, the fin nations, the small organisms, the plant life that hold our work or world together. If you have reverence for those things, I would say that that’s a spiritual thing, because these all of these things are connected by something, you know, by energy of some sort. And some people will say, Oh, that’s woowoo and I always share with people watch in the future. Technology is going to advance to be able to measure the connection between things, you know, if it’s not, if it already isn’t apparent to a lot of people, there’s something that’s making that that’s in gravity, there’s something that’s in the the bio electricity of our brains in our hearts. There’s a reason why you’ve got walk into a room and if people are sad, you feel it, there’s a reason because it’s energy, you know, there’s something there. And that’s, to me spirituality is it’s against spirituality is not something that you do, it’s just something you acknowledge, because it’s happening, whether we have the eye or the moral view for it’s happening, you know, what I mean? And I think in dominant culture, they people speak to certain parts of it, you know, people will say karma, which you know, it comes from another culture, you know, people say synchronicity, all those things in our worldview, that’s spirit at work. And so I think ceremony is really is just an action of acknowledging that you’re acknowledging that it could be something as easy as sitting up in the morning and taking breath and you’re acknowledging air I have I’m grateful for this air and breathing because without air all life would cease to exist. You can go on a fast you know, for I think a monks had fasted from food for like 300 something days, you can fast for water for several days, but you can’t fast from air longer than I think the world record is like 18 minutes somebody was underwater without air. So that goes to show the reverence we should have for air. It’s a basic necessity, but we take for granted because we don’t have to think about it. I think, you know, ceremony is simply sitting in silence and shutting off the prefrontal cortex. And it’s centering a lot of your energy in your heart and your feeling. What are you feeling right now? What do you what do you hear? Right now when you get on the land, what do you smell? What do you taste? How does the air fill in your skin there and take that breath and you’re silencing you’re resetting the brain, you know, and to be able to take care of your daily tasks for the day and a simple ceremony or ritual could be making a point to get up before the sun into sit in again in silence and open up the windows and let that sunlight coming to your eyes. It could be the same in the evening time. It could be taking a conscious walk and looking at the sun as it goes down. I’m taking in that evening light into your eyes there and helps prepare, you prepare your circadian rhythm. And just giving thanks for the day, because that’s what stuff that, you know, our recent relatives were doing very consistently in our communities. And my dad talks about that. Those are things that our people would do regularly in these pre colonial times. And so that’s something simple to me. I think all humans can do that, you know, all humans, because we all look and we see the sun, you know, we all look and notice it comes up. And if we take a moment to acknowledge those things in silence the mind there and abstain from any devices or technology or abstain from sharing it on social media, and sit there, acknowledge those things and give thanks for what help do you have right now not thinking about our deficits. I think that that ceremony is something we do individually. Ceremony is something that we do with family, and we do collectively with other people of the same heart, same mind. It’s something you do inside your office, it’s something you do in your near home, or outside somewhere on the land. So that’s what ceremony is and ceremony, the result of ceremony should be expanding your worldview and understanding that your place in this beautiful interconnected web of life, you are not at the center of it, you are part of it, you’re part of this and we walk in the world in a certain way ceremony should help foster that in the mind ceremony should relieve a little bit of stress, anxiety, there should be a dopamine release. So there’s a physiological component to what ceremony does, and it’s been studied, the science shows it. So again, we’re not talking about woowoo indigenous lifeways in ceremony, we’re very practical, there’s no like mysticism about it. Like, I think that people need to demystify this concept of having ceremony, it’s quite simple. And again, you could be an atheist and still do these things. You know, so to me, I think that’s a ceremony is and I encourage people to find what modes work for them to help again, to relieve their stress and to once your stress is relieved, then our purpose we are realized, again, if the person if the person hasn’t already realized that there’s their purpose for living and how they’re going to do, it might become more apparent. Or if you get off track in this crazy world, you might be able to realign like, Oh, my goal, once again, is this my goal is to communicate this message and ceremony helps me to keep focus meditation, or mindfulness, you know, or various forms of it. They helped me to focus my vision and get back on the path and stay focused and not spread myself thin. That’s what ceremony should – end results should be those things.
Chelsey Luger
Yeah, and I just want to share an example like, you know, again, we were so like, we just don’t, this performative spirituality that we see on social media, like really gives me a pit in my stomach like it. It’s, um,
Thosh Collins
Saging, grounding…
Chelsey Luger
Yeah, you know, it’s just, it’s a bit much and I think it, it actually doesn’t help us as indigenous people to make people have more respect for our culture, and our lifeways because you’ve got these, you know, New Agers out there. And just like, kind of making it all looks silly. But here’s a nightly movie, what we call when, when the circles are interconnected, which they often are. So here’s an interconnection of movement, ceremony and sleep that we’ve been doing in our family lately, which is, we go outside, right around the time the sun is starting to set. And that’s when we do our nightly walk with our kids, throw them on the strollers or let them walk or ride their bike, whatever they want to do. And we just walk around the block a few times here in our suburban neighborhood. And we make sure that, you know, our eyes are outside when the sun is setting, because we know about the scientific and the healing properties of being outside and observing the sunset. And we don’t, you know, make it this big performance. We just do it. And our kids enjoy it. We all get better sleep. We all get kind of in this state of being in a little bit better mood after this long, hectic day. And it was interesting the other night are, we must have said this out loud. At some point a long time ago. I don’t really remember. But our five year old she goes hey mom, because we said hey Aloe, what color is the sun? Oh, it’s pink, you know? And she goes hey mom, the sun gives us medicine. I said, Yep, you’re right. And so they pick up on it, you know, they pick up on it, and they and she has respect… she has reverence for the sun. And that’s just one example of a very simple ceremony that anybody can do.
Thosh Collins
And when we’re doing these little walks, I encourage other people to of course abstain from your devices and encourage the children to what do you see what colors do you see? That’s why she asked you know what caused your sun because we’re because the sun in Arizona this time of year is like you know, in the summertime, there’s like lots of colors, so it looks pink to her whatever purple because all the clouds and such, you know, so the girls, our daughters are real alert to what’s happening. They’re hyper aware of like how many birds are going on or if there’s a dog near here or they’re like a certain rock looks a certain thing and that’s because we intentionally trained them to be like that. And so that’s the real critical for overall brain development helps shape the worldview for for children and for people to to kind of reset us and sort of reground us some people think re-grounding is just standing in the barefoot grass or something and I could do that too. But it’s beyond just what your nervous system feels. It’s what your nervous system senses and it’s what your mind is acknowledging what’s happening around you. And so that’s one of the things that we like to do as well. And then when we get inside we start to try to dim the lights because we don’t want these like fluorescent lights blaring on us and we’re trying to get the girls prepared for bed you know sometimes the watch a little bit of something on their Kindle but you know, we try to minimize all that and and then when we go down when we lay down for with like say for my five year old, I’m the one that puts her to bed, she either wants a back scratch or she wants to cuddle and she wants me to talk to her so and what she means by you know talk to me, dad is because we do a giving of thanks so we say… we give thanks for the food we’ve eaten today the plants, animals, give thanks for life. We give thanks for so and so we give thanks for our fire we give thanks for air, shoes, dog, water, We give thanks for the [Indigious language] our mother earth. We talk about all these things. And she always falls asleep in it. And during it because it’s comforting. So to us that’s also a formal ceremony. And that’s consistency. And that’s where like Chelsey said to bring it back when she said that’s how your circles of connection to land, family, ceremony, you know, movement are all, you know, kind of blending in, they’re all intersecting. They’re intersecting. They’re happening at once and movement is we know we’re taking more steps, we’re increasing our total daily energy expenditure, you know, to meet especially after you know, meal that might be higher in carbohydrates, we’re allowing some glucose uptake by the movement. So improving insulin sensitivity, going to bed with the lower, you know, glucose level to wake up with a healthy baseline, there’s all these components that are going on. And I encourage everyone to think about that, not just zoom in and get caught up on one aspect. Sure, we need specialists, we need experts in these areas. But how do we get these experts together at the same tempo of that same table to formulate how we go forward as human beings, you know, for the best overall health.
Diana Rodgers, RD
That was just so lovely, thank you for sharing that. That was really I needed to hear that because I was feeling like, I don’t know, if I but I do things like yeah,
Chelsey Luger
Rituals that are repeated, and that are sort of just, you know, a little bit of intention. And, that really makes an impact with our health overall. And it is something that’s often neglected. But that, you know, I think everybody in their mind, they can think of a ceremony that they could, or ritual that they could pretty easily connect with and maintain.
Thosh Collins
And you’re already doing elements of it. And the more you understand it as the way we’re sharing it, the more becomes a thing in your mind. And they add more emphasis on it, it becomes a thing. And your more emphasis, then more emphasis. That’s why we wrote in the book, learn, engage, optimize, so you’re learning about it, you’re engaging with it, and over time you learn to optimize it. And that’s when you start to start to experience the benefit.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Thank you so much for sharing with me an hour of your time with my listeners and for writing this amazing, approachable, warm book that I think everybody needs to pick up. Especially if they’re feeling just kind of irritated with the latest new thing out there. Because this is like just a huge backwards step into real life and what it’s all about. So just thank you so much for putting this out there into the world. Do you guys ever do workshops? Can people can people see you in real life? And also, how can they find you on social media?
Chelsey Luger
Yeah, so you can find us at Well For Culture, all spelled out, which is our… we’re most active on Instagram, I would say of all the social media platforms. Thosh is @Thosh.Collins. I’m @Chelsey.moves – Chelsey with a y. And then for workshops and trainings, we’re associated with a nonprofit organization called The Native Wellness Institute. So native wellness, you can Google them, and you can reach out to us that way or just, you know, reach out to us at [email protected] But yes, we do workshops, trainings, speaking engagements, all kinds of stuff, and we love to connect with people in person. So I’m really happy to connect with you as well. And to you know, to hear that our book has been a good healing tool for you and easy to connect with that makes me really happy. So thanks for reading it. And thanks for having us here. We really appreciate it.
Thosh Collins
Yeah, thanks for having us, Diana. And we’re just… we’re honored to be you know, on your podcast and to be you know, brought into to your community of people and to share all the similarities that we have and you know, we’re part of that we welcome others to you know, be a part of the Native community as well and find out how to support and learn as well. So thanks for your awesome work like Chelsey said, you know, it’s just great to have years of people like yours and Robb’s and many more work to reference about you know, the importance of understanding the truth, you know what I mean? The truth and the nuances and in food particular meat eating in the means of producing it. So thanks for your awesome work too. We just look forward to continuing to see what more you’re bringing to the world.
Chelsey Luger
Yes.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Thank you. All right. Have a wonderful afternoon. Thank you.
Chelsey Luger
All right. Take care.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Thanks so much for listening today and for following my work. If you believe in making sure that people all over the world should have access to nutritious food, please join my mission through my non-profit, the Global Food Justice Alliance. Visit sustainabledish.com/join and become a sustaining member today. All sustaining members get early access to ad-free podcasts plus free downloads, and you’ll be helping get healthy protein like meat, fish, and eggs to food-insecure kids. That’s sustainabledish.com/join. And thank you.
