I grew up in Rose Park and have lived here for a lot of my life, witnessing changes over time. I remember the supermarkets that have come and gone at the corner of Redwood Road and 700 North, including IGA, Food 4 Less, Supersaver, and now Lucky. I am interested in the lessons we might learn from taking a closer look at our food cultures and genealogies here in Soonkahni (Salt Lake Valley in Shoshone/Goshute).
In addition to supermarkets, there are places that provide foods that represent West Side diversity. However, there has been a growing demographic shift occurring in the 84116 and 84104, which represents changes with the ‘promise’ of ‘progress’ through ‘development’. I fear the result will price people out of their homes, and bring consumer options that will overwhelmingly cater to this ‘growth’s’ more recent occupants. I raise an eyebrow whenever I walk into an establishment that has service provided by a local community, but patrons who are primarily not. I do not have an issue with change itself, but I am cautious with lofty promises that do not address root causes or social design flaws.
I understand that businesses want to be successful and should be open to all, but there are places that do this, while also primarily serving the people with depth on this side of town. Chubby’s Mexican Restaurant is one of those places for me, which continues to serve its classic red salsa and signature tortillas made in house. That Sandwich Shop is another one, which always hits the spot for me with their hearty Philly Cheese or The Deluxe sandwich. A short drive down the road and you reach Pacific Seas Restaurant, with its classic Lū (coconut milk and taro leaf wrapped protein) and Oceanic staples. These restaurants are distinct with unique kinds of food that represent diverse peoples. What they have in common is when you walk into those places they are grounded in family and rooted in the communities they come from, and it shows. These are just a few of the spots that feed what feels to me like the soul of the West Side I grew up in.
When I imagine a deeper time, I wonder about the older and often ignored soul of Soonkahni that has nourished the peoples of this place for ages. When I think of the events and social structures that dramatically transformed this place, I now see them as beginning with ‘food fights’ and ‘water wars’, which catalyzed an apocalyptic change across this region. The Varmint Hunt of 1848 and ensuing Battle Creek Massacre, Provo River Massacre, Bear River Massacre, Utah’s Black Hawk War, up to Posey’s “War”, and more - represent a small amount of time with violently unprecedented consequences, including both physical and spiritual starvation. The aftermath has left the elder soul of this place malnourished.
One of the malnourishing impacts of intensive extraction on this wetlands area is the reduced size of Pia Okwai (Utah’s Jordan River), which is now one fifth of its original magnitude. There are many archaeological findings in Utah, some even stretch back over ten thousand years, including remains of aquatic sources of life which provided the calories that sustained the first ancestors of this place. I have learned that up to one third of the Indigenous Northern Utah diet was once aquatic based. Native fish, mollusks, and waterfowl were once more abundant and safer to eat prior to the extraction and pollution that has rendered much of them obsolete or unsafe in less than two centuries. Game meat and plant foods were also once much more abundant, and a depletion of water meant there was less elk, deer, and plant foods. One way of thinking of the historical conflicts here is that folks became ‘hangry’. Some with millennial food traditions and lifeways that were violently and acutely being eradicated, and others bringing their systems into a new place trying to survive, but causing cataclysmic effects for the elder peoples of this region.
We are currently facing more recent gentrifying forces that seek to build a future that does not include many of us who are currently here. Yet, there are powerful memories in this place that we can learn from. What do our elder relatives of this place think? Those whose ancestors survived an apocalypse of water wars and food fights, violence and displacement. Are today’s challenges just new layers to continued struggles original peoples of this place have had to endure? Change is not the issue, but instead what kind of change. What are the forces and purpose of change? What is the magnitude and rate of the change? The scale and speed of modern colonial change are a couple reasons that make the last 178 years an unprecedented shift with dramatic impacts on this place. We need a different kind of change. Change that does not violently displace or harm and then ignore. Change that does not force a way of life on the lands and waters we depend on to sustain us. Change that adapts to live differently, with dignity for all, and within our ecological means.
Soonkahni means many houses in the Shoshone and Goshute Language. Perhaps in time we might earn extending a meaning from this name, to represent the many peoples who now also call this place home? One day I imagine a society here that honors ancestral authority and has repaired relationships with the elder Indigenous peoples. A society built out of being valiant in facing difficult and ignored histories, and courageous in challenging ‘development’ designs that leave devastation for many and profits for few. A society that leaves a legacy of healthy people, nourished by grounded community and good food. The memories of deep time offer diverse lessons to fuel the possibilities of tomorrow. We may not be able to go back, but we can remember and act in the present. May we honor the limits of the place that we depend on to sustain us, respect the first and many peoples and life we share this space with, and imagine into being a future we so desperately need now.