Gary’s article Cultures of Habitat revealed the facts that the health status among the Native American community is spoiled by the modern society fast-paced lifestyle and the way of eating. The way of Native American dietary intake is mostly depend on the “wild foods” and value family and community. Sadly, a lack of social support and the separation within the indigenous community nowadays contributed to their undesirable health outcomes. This article reminds me the event I had been to at the Native American Museum called The Living Earth Festival and the symposium Creating A Healthy Food Future. The Native American community put a lot of emphasize on the nature and the surroundings who nourish people and provide the food sources to help us thrive. Human beings come from nature and thus our lifestyles should adapt to the pace of the nature without undermining the health of the planet. In other words, living sustainably means we shall live in harmony with the nature through the lens of sharing and giving back. Essentially, what is healthful for the earth and what is healthy for us is the same thing. Native American communities held the belief that foods is people, this means foods share the identities with the people. How you treat foods in terms of growing, processing, and consuming is how you treat your body as well. The respectfulness to the nature shows upon on our environment outcomes. According to Dr Vandana Shiva, humans are part of the nature so protecting nature is not a luxury. Everything is interconnected to one another, and that’s way the native American communities value the “cycle” and thus the concept of circle symbolizes their value through a sense of sharing and in search of communal truth.

Storytelling is another way for human beings to convey the respectfulness to our landscape from generations to generations. A lot of times we feel hungry not only because of our biologically desires but also we are hungry for the relationships. We eat for creating and maintaining relationships. Especially in this fast-paced era, people living their lives with a lot of stress and sometimes tend to turn to comfort foods to ease the feelings and emotions. Reflect on my own experiences, sometimes I use food to eat away the fears and the sense of insecurities. Foods then become my comfort zone. I certainly not only learn to be aware of my own thoughts and feelings but also learn to communicate and face the “insecurities”. It turned out that storytelling helps me to get through my own obstacles.

Knowing the history of the foods is beneficial to our health and environment. We tend to focus on the short term and do not care about the original knowledge that has been cultivate and sustain our lives. Joining the gardening volunteer is a way of knowing the “history” of our foods. Because gardening involves beyond the food works itself but the relationship people build through the feelings they shared with one another. The declining agriculture practices also decreases the physical health and social health of people. Moreover, according to the article “the curative quality of the native foods is a customary component of their diets.” This resonated with me that traditional foods play functional role in public nutrition or culture. Back to home in China, my parents always instilled me the knowledge of using foods as natural medicine to adjust the body function. Whenever I feel kind of sick I usually first cut down the amount of my food intake, and I choose wisely based on my symptoms. For example, if I have a burning throat I would increase my consumptions of fruits and vegetables and be very careful the way I cook and eat them as well. For example, I would like to keep the original flavor of the foods during the cooking process, which means controlling the amount of additional flavorings input. That’s helps me a lot with controlling and reducing  my symptoms and overall health conditions.