Tribal nations are filling gaps while a USDA food distribution program struggles

The USDA’s Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations, better known as FDPIR, serves as an alternative to food stamps for eligible families living in tribal communities. Instead of receiving a debit card to use at the grocery store, they pick up a box of groceries every month from their local distribution center. 

But changes to the program’s distribution model have caused a summer of delays and canceled deliveries, and tribal governments are filling the gaps. 

Back in February, the USDA told tribal leaders it was consolidating the FDPIR supply chain from two warehouses serving tribes all over the country to just one. 

“We just thought, ‘Wow. That’s an undertaking like no other,’” said Mary Greene Trottier, who runs the Spirit Lake Tribe’s commodity program. 

Starting in June, she said deliveries have been arriving weeks late — if at all. “I don’t want our program to suffer and see us running out of food. We immediately came up with Plan B.”

That means they were sourcing tens of thousands of pounds of food on their own — easier said than done in rural North Dakota. 

“There’s challenges in rural areas to buying food,” said Greene Trottier. “That’s why FDPIR exists in the first place.”

FDPIR has been around since the late ’70s. But it’s an extension of historic ration and commodity programs and a part of the federal government’s treaty obligations to tribal nations, according to Carly Griffith Hotvedt, executive director of the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative.

“And so when this program is derailed, it really impacts the trust responsibility,” she said — especially with many tribes drawing funds from other programs to ensure families don’t go without. 

That’s one temporary solution the USDA has suggested. “They’re basically telling tribes that they can rob their own programs to solve USDA’s problem,” said Kayla Gebeck Carroll, an attorney with the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community. 

In the next Farm Bill, she said tribal leaders will be pushing for a regional distribution model.