The Tribal Elder Food Box (TEFB) Program started in 2021 with the goal of increasing access to nutritious, culturally meaningful foods for Tribal members over 55 years old. Since then, the program has distributed over 94,500 Tribal Elder Food Boxes. At the core of the TEFB Program is self-determined community healing, equitable food access, a decentralized food system, and food sovereignty.
The Oneida Nation is one of 11 sovereign tribes in Wisconsin and is located near Green Bay. There are approximately 17,000 Oneida Citizens enrolled in the Tribe. Within the Oneida Nation, there are dedicated Tribal members and partners involved in every part of the program. From Oneida producers contributing their products to the boxes, to packing and transporting the boxes, distribution at the Oneida Emergency Food Pantry, and cooking demonstrations for recipients, the TEFB Program is providing fresh, healthy, culturally significant food to those who need it most.
Grown in the Community, For the Community
The Oneida Nation Apple Orchard is located on 34 acres, just outside of Oneida, Wisconsin. Orchard manager Heather Jordan works year-round to care for 4,443 apple trees, 120 chickens, and three beehives. In collaboration with the Oneida Nation Cannery, apples and processed apple products from the Oneida Nation Apple Orchard are included in the Tribal Elder Food Boxes.
“It really makes my day just to see our apples in the [Tribal Elder Food Boxes] and to see Tribal members enjoy them,” Heather said. “It’s so great that our first product out the door is going to a demographic that deserves it the most: our Tribal elders. It’s so symbolic.”
Being involved with the TEFB Program has provided stability for Heather.
“Being able to plan ahead is also a really understated benefit of being part of this program as a producer,” Heather said. “Having the ability to plan operations around a known income source is a big deal.”
But the TEFB Program isn’t about making a profit, Heather said. It’s really about health and community wellbeing.
“When you’re talking about putting a dollar amount on apples and worrying constantly every year about making a profit, then you may start making sacrifices like using more pesticides and insecticides than you want,” Heather said. “As the manager, that’s where I refuse to make sacrifices. With support from Vanessa Miller [Oneida Nation Food and Agriculture Area Manager] and other leadership, I am able to grow based on our principles using regenerative agriculture techniques and I see the land improve every season. This is about community wealth building because good food prevents chronic disease, it improves connection to the land, and those are things you can’t put a price tag on.”
As the Food and Agriculture Area Manager for the Oneida Nation, Vanessa Miller is tasked with the Nation’s long-term food sovereignty vision and sustainability plan. She sees the TEFB Program as a great example of how to improve the food system.
“The TEFB Program is showcasing food system decentralization,” Vanessa said. “It’s prioritizing local producers. Having a program that truly values food, not as a capitalistic, transactional good, but rather as medicine is really how we want our food system to function on a broader scale.”
The connection to local and Indigenous producers through the TEFB Program is transformational.
“There’s something really special about knowing who grew your food,” Vanessa said. “Heather puts everything into those trees. There’s such a beautiful, symbolic relationship when you’re more connected to your food. And that’s what we’re trying to do with the TEFB Program: give our community a more valuable connection to food, rather than a transactional one.”
Procurement and Transportation
In collaboration with the Great Lakes Intertribal Food Coalition (GLIFC), Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin (FAEW) is a procurement and transportation partner of the TEFB Program. FAEW subcontracts with the Wisconsin Food Hub Cooperative (WFHC) to deliver Tribal Elder Food Boxes to 23 pick-up sites around the state.
Kara Black is the Procurement and Programs Manager with FAEW where she helps to coordinate the TEFB Program, including sourcing products for the boxes from 43 Native producers. She is proud of the work that her organization is doing, especially when it comes to leveraging organizational resources to support food sovereignty and uplift community food programs.
“It’s an organizational goal of ours to support Tribal food security and the intertribal food system,” Kara said. “We're experts in running a food bank, we have big warehouses, we can pull in volunteers, we have a big pull in the community so we can leverage our resources to fundraise and advocate for programs like the TEFB Program at the state level.”
Kara also works closely with partners to strengthen the TEFB Program, with the goal being for GLIFC to steer the program in the future.
“At FAEW, our mission is to solve hunger,” Kara said. “Really what we’re striving for is to put ourselves out of business. GLIFC and other program partners wrote bylaws for GLIFC to incorporate as a nonprofit. The next goal is to have GLIFC incorporated as a nonprofit and bring in funding so the [TEFB] Program can be totally self-determined.”
The WFHC has been integral to the work of the TEFB Program, assisting with packing, food safety, partnership development, and more. In 2024, FAEW and the WFHC assisted with the purchase and distribution of over 31,230 Tribal Elder Food Boxes to all 11 Federally Recognized Tribes in Wisconsin and 3 Tribal-run organizations in Milwaukee County.
“The TEFB Program is about many completely different groups coming together to make something work for the whole state,” WFHC General Manager, Tara Roberts-Turner said. “We really want all partners to benefit from this relationship.”
The TEFB Program received funding from a number of grant, federal, and state sources to
support operations. State funding included an allocation of $1.5 million each year from 2023-
2025 through the State Budget. Notably in 2024, FAEW received a Community Partner grant
through the Wisconsin Local Food Purchase Assistance (WI LFPA) Program to assist with
procurement funding. The WI LFPA Program also provided food to the TEFB Program through its Direct to Farmer grant track.
From Farm to Food Access
The Oneida Nation Emergency Food Pantry, founded by the Tribe in 2007, is a distribution location for Tribal Elder Food Boxes. Samantha Boucher is the Office Manager at the pantry and she assists with TEFB distribution.
“This year the program has been really popular and we’ve been running out of boxes,” Samantha said. “We receive about 400 boxes each time and we usually run out in 35-45 minutes.”
Mending the Disconnect with Food: An Oneida Food Sovereignty Initiative, also hosts cooking demonstrations that coincide with TEFB distribution days to share ways in which products from the boxes can be used to make healthy, culturally-relevant meals. ‘Mending the Disconnect with Food’ is a partnership between Oneida Nation and University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health through a Wisconsin Partnership Program (WPP) Community Impact Grant. The five year grant aims to promote Tribal food sovereignty initiatives as a comprehensive approach to health. Arlie Doxtator is an Oneida chef and the Community Outreach Coordinator with the Oneida Nation Food Sovereignty Initiative. In 2024 Arlie hosted the cooking demonstrations as a way to reduce waste and share cooking skills with Tribal elders.
“What we initially heard from the community was that it was great to get the Tribal Elder Food Boxes, but they didn’t know what to do with it,” Arlie said. “So we started the cooking demonstrations to address that need and all the recipes I demonstrated used just ingredients from the box.”
There was an even bigger goal for the cooking demonstrations: to uplift traditional knowledge about Indigenous foods, Arlie said.
“It’s not just about food,” Arlie said. “It’s about our connection to our relatives. As Indigenous folks, we’ve lost that relationship to our relatives. We’ve lost our ancestral flavors and the knowledge of why we eat certain foods. But we can rediscover that connection through food.”
For Arlie, it's an honor to share his knowledge as a chef and to help people in his community feel good about themselves, their connection to their culture, and their food.
“The food being given to our elders in the boxes is some of the best quality,” Arlie said. “In the humblest way, I get to be a part of helping people feel a sense of dignity.”
Community Impacts
The TEFB Program has had a profound impact on the Oneida Nation, not only through addressing food insecurity, but also by reconnecting Tribal members with cultural foods.
Belinda McLester, Project Manager for ‘Mending the Disconnect with Food,’ shared the following:
“The loss of our traditional foods combined with Western diet, has significantly contributed to chronic health disease in Native Communities. One way we are ‘mending the disconnect’ is through food. We ‘mend the disconnect’ when we grow and eat our traditional foods, when we are intentional with what we put in our body, and when we sit together at the dinner table to connect with the ones we love. Because food is a large part of culture, when we eat our traditional foods, it strengthens our cultural identity; this connection alone has a significant impact on our health and well-being.”
Through data collected as a result of programming like the TEFB Program, 'Mending the Disconnect with Food' hopes to provide evidence that will further support the need for food sovereignty initiatives as a normalized part of healthcare.
“Imagine if doctors promoted ‘food as medicine’ and prescribed food instead of pills,” Belinda said. “If food is the number one cause of chronic health disease, then it is also the solution.”