At Rocky Boy School District, lunch is no longer just about meeting nutrition requirements. It has become a way to reconnect students with their culture, improve long-term health outcomes, and strengthen food sovereignty across the Chippewa Cree community.
Inside the school kitchen, food service staff are intentionally moving away from heavily processed foods and toward ingredients native to the land. Many of those foods are grown, harvested, and processed within the reservation itself.
Aneesa Coomer reports - watch the video here:
“We do want to include more culturally relevant foods to our reservation as well as Indigenous foods as a whole,” says Lori Osgood, food services director at Rocky Boy Schools. “It’s healthier when we serve bison. We know that the bison that we’re serving today is from our own buffalo ranch here. We know what’s grass fed. We know where it comes from. There’s no fillers in it. It’s just healthier.”
On the day MTN News visited the school, students were served bison chili made with tribally sourced ground bison, baked bannock prepared with locally grown grain, and a traditional berry soup.
“We’re making Native American soup,” says Loren Bacon, head cook at Rocky Boy Schools. “You could use juneberries, chokecherries, strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries. And today we’re using blueberries and raspberries, taking into account that we have some kids that are allergic to strawberries.”
Bacon says cooking with bison is about more than nutrition.
“Bison is a big part of our culture,” he says. “It gave us not only food but clothing, medicine and shelter for our people. For us not to get that lost because of modern times, it’s good that the schools are implementing this entire menu so we can show our students a part of a piece of our culture.”
School leaders say incorporating bison into school meals is also a way to address ongoing health concerns in Native communities, including diabetes and heart disease.
“With the health conditions that come across Native Americans in general, diabetes, heart disease, et cetera, it’s just nice to be able to include more healthy meals to our students,” Osgood says.
Osgood says the shift requires careful planning and support. School meals must still meet state and federal nutrition requirements.
“We do menu planning and we have requirements that we have to meet from the state,” she says. “So many proteins, so much milk, so much fruit, so many grains. And just trying to go healthier is just better for our students.”
Many of the ingredients served in the cafeteria come directly from tribal food sovereignty programs. Donna Gopher, food development specialist with the Chippewa Cree Tribe, says the work focuses on long-term self-sustainability.
“What we do as our program is food sovereignty,” Gopher says. “So what we’re working on and what we’re doing, planning, developing, is food sovereignty for the tribe, for the Native American people here.”
Gopher says tribal members grow, harvest, and process food locally before it reaches the school.
“We planted, we grew, and we followed all the way through to the milling process,” she says. “And now it’s in the kitchen. It’s amazing that it’s now in the school and the kids can try it. They can eat it. And we’re hoping that it will become a main staple, rather than overly processed flours.”
The effort includes providing wheat grains, vegetables, potatoes, and bison to the community and to local schools. The bison served at Rocky Boy Schools comes from the tribe’s own buffalo ranch. Theron Oats, buffalo ranch manager for the Chippewa Cree Tribe, says supplying schools is part of a broader effort to improve community health.
Oats says, “We’re glad that we’re able to source tribally owned bison to get back to the schools and for the lunch program. We’re trying to get the buffalo back into the diets of the local community so we can all be healthier.”
In addition to supplying schools, Oats says the ranch also provides bison to the local help lodge and to markets in the community.
School and tribal leaders say the work extends beyond the school year. Summer meal programs help ensure students have access to food when school is out, and leaders hope the model can continue to grow.
“What we’re doing is huge for Indian Country,” Gopher says. “Hopefully we can help other tribes to develop. We can process, sell markets, bring it into the schools, into our community.”
At Rocky Boy, lunch has become more than a daily routine. It reflects culture, health, and a community investing in its future, one plate at a time.
