YOUTH ENGAGEMENT IN CULTIVATING SONORAN DESERT FOODSYSTEMS THROUGH A MILPA PEDAGOGY

This paper investigates how community organizations in the Sonoran Desert Borderland region are supporting youth engagement in cultivating food systems through the use of the milpa traditional farming system. This is important to consider as conventional gardening and farming programs have not centered marginalized youth’s knowledge and history within these outdoor spaces in schools, truncating the impact of these programs and the opportunity to create deep, true transformation of youth, food systems, and their relationship to the land. Two non-profit organizations named SEEDS and Flowers and Bullets are changing this narrative surrounding gardening and farming. Incorporating interview data and observations from these two organizations, this study demonstrates that educators in grassroots organizations in the Sonoran Desert borderland region create space for youth to engage in a Milpa Pedagogy that centers indigenous foodways that resist dominant education and centers indigenous practices as a way forward toward deep transformations in how the youth interact with their environment and towards food, ultimately leading them to take part in cultivating indigenous food systems.