W&M Indigenous Food Sovereignty Initiative

We are a research team of William & Mary faculty & students guided by tribal communities to build intelligent software tools that support food sovereignty initiatives. Our research takes a multi-objective approach which looks like the following: 1. Establish an Indigenous Advisory Council (IAC) to provide us with tribe-specific information such as demographic data, traditional food preferences, and tribal boundaries. 2. Ensure all data is handled under each tribe's Indigenous data protocols. 3. Collect data on tribal boundaries and other data such as soil and climate data to conduct suitability analysis for sustainable crop production 4. Infuse tribal data and information learned from suitability analysis into our biophysical model 5. Build Intelligent software that provides tribal communities with the ability to understand what, where, when, and how much food can be grown sustainably on tribal lands to feed the entire community. 6. Intelligent software is only one piece to the Indigenous food sovereignty challenge. As a result, we also partner with and support other programs, such as our local Indigenous food sovereignty program.