“Food sovereignty and ultimately sovereignty is deciding what has value and what that value is.”

Trent Kissee, Director of the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the Muscogee Creek Nation, grew up on his family’s allotment land in Ottawa County, Oklahoma, in Eastern Shawnee territory. His grandfather raised bison and cows, kept a garden, and served on the Muscogee Creek Nation council. Feeding people was always part of how Kissee was raised.

Today, Kissee is helping the Muscogee Creek Nation build food sovereignty as infrastructure. The Nation purchased ranch land in the heart of the reservation, ten minutes from a USDA-inspected meat processing facility deliberately placed in a USDA-designated food desert. The plant supports citizens processing their own beef and shipping it across state lines. The retail Loop Square Meat Co brings fresh groceries to families. A test kitchen helps citizens with their own food products navigate the path to market. Tribal Nations stay in their homelands. They build the communities they are part of.

This story explores what sovereignty looks like, lived out one beef contract, one test kitchen, and one allotment at a time.