Woodlands Wisdom: Traditional Knowledge Guiding Contemporary Health

The long-term goal of the Woodlands Wisdom Nutrition Project is to create a regional community consciousness within and between Native American communities around how food and nutrition impact community health and well-being. The figure shown below was created by the Woodlands Wisdom Academic Committee to illustrate our approach to educating students of food and nutrition science. We believe this approach has implications for how these subject areas are taught, how research is conducted, and how communities of Native people across the country are empowered to make positive changes in their lives. Broadly speaking, nutrition can be seen as the interaction between food and living organisms. Since everyone has a lifetime of experience eating food, the perspective of personal experience is an important asset to any student of nutrition. Common sense tells us that our relationship with food, based upon our own unique identity, background, and experience is vital in shaping our preferences and how we use food. By looking through the lens of self-reflection at our own behavior, we can become more aware of how we make our food choices as an individual. We may also look to the collective experience of communities to see how communities decide what foods are available, those that have cultural significance, and those used frequently. The ancient science perspective of Woodlands People offers the fragments remaining of an elegant and sophisticated ancestral system of understanding the relationships of land, plant and animal food sources, and health of people This perspective emphasizes the interrelatedness of all things, the seasonal and spiritual nature of foods, and food as nurturance for people, communities and the environment. The biomedical perspective offers a modern scientific and medical understanding where the nutrition interaction is seen in chemical and physiologic terms. The Woodlands Wisdom food and nutrition curriculum is designed to involve faculty and students in a mutual exploration of each of these perspectives: ancient science, biomedical experiment, and personal experience.