# Building food sovereignty, sustainability and better health in environmentally-impacted Native Americans

> **NIH NIH R01** · NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE · 2022 · $631,509

## Abstract

The Ramapough Turtle Clan Chief states that, “Return of healthy soil on our farm will allow healthy plant
production, resulting in healthy foods to nurture our bodies and mind with optimum results.” Native Tribes have
been, and continue to be, exposed to disproportionate amounts of toxic waste as a product of decades of
environmental injustice. Emerging from this disastrous situation are Native Americans (NA) who face an even
greater risk of adverse health outcomes from contaminated soil that grows tainted traditional food sources,
degraded recreational water sources leading to isolation and a loss of sovereignty, community strength and
resiliency. Such is the case for the Ramapough Lunaape Turtle Clan members in northern NJ who live on a
500-acre toxic waste site generated by over a decade of industrial dumping of thousands of gallons of paint
sludge with high levels of heavy metals and solvents. As no culturally-meaningful solutions have been
implemented for the Ramapough community that could promote public health and well-being to date, we will
build on our equitable 8-year-long Tribal-academic partnerships with this Tribal Nation to advance tradition-
centered, evidence-based best practice strategies for sustainable environmental food systems that address
food insecurity, nutritional deficiency, and chronic disease health outcomes among this community
disproportionately affected by environmental contamination. Three Specific Aims and several sub-aims are
proposed to test the hypothesis that a complex array of factors including soil, water and plant contamination,
psychosocial stressors, displacement and environmental assaults to the land have led to a loss of food
sovereignty and sustainability; and, that food security and cultural food practices can be renewed through a
community-engineered farming system and educational strategies to: 1) Assess the extent of environmental
contamination, individual toxicant burdens and micronutrient levels and health disorders in Ramapough Tribal
members of both sexes; 2) Adapt and implement a community-centered farming program on the Munsee
Three Sisters Medicinal Farm land informed by a design studio approach; and 3) Assess the development
process and early outcomes of the farm program using an implementation science framework and refine the
public health action plan for dissemination to reduce food insecurity, regain food sovereignty, and improve
community health. This project will identify and implement safe and nutritious farming practices and restore
food sovereignty among an environmentally-impacted and marginalized semi-urban Tribal Nation through
development of a farming system program supported by the Turtle Clan-founded Munsee Three Sisters
Medicinal Farm. This innovative study will integrate a culturally-centered, environmental road map created from
community input for food sovereignty and sustainability that can be shared and disseminated to other
environmentally-impacted Nations leading to an e...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10320547
- **Project number:** 1R01ES033545-01
- **Recipient organization:** NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
- **Principal Investigator:** Esther Erdei
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $631,509
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2022-05-19 → 2027-02-28

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10320547

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10320547, Building food sovereignty, sustainability and better health in environmentally-impacted Native Americans (1R01ES033545-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10320547. Licensed CC0.

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