NATIVE NUTRITION 2025

Hadih/ Aloha!

My name is Tiaré Lani, I’m a Two Spirit & Mahu artist. (Lheidli First Nation, Hawaii, Tahiti, Irish, Chinese). I listen to groups and draw live murals to harvest our collective wisdom for aliveness and liberation.

In spring 2025, 600 strong gathered in Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Territories (Minneapolis, Minnesota) to lift up Native Nutrition, a 7th annual gathering!

This mural is a reflection of Indigenous ways of being and knowing, food as medicine, land as relative, abundance, and nourishment.

Please get comfy, drink water, and come for a journey in this visual story weaving. 
Please share this visual story weaving with your people

Let it be seeds to keep growing our stories
Growing seeds & leaders

What stories does this stir in you about food and land?
How can you slow down and be with what nourishes you?
How can food be every day ritual, gratitude, and feel connection?
How can we take judgement and shame away from eating and increase access to dignity and choice?
What lessons do our relatives, the plants and animals, have to remind us about love, trust, collaboration, and interdependence?

How can we connect to the reality that our world is inherently abundant?

This image is a garden of ideas, people with brown & black bodies differently shaped bodies of all gender interacting with Indigenous foods - our relatives, squash, corn, beans, elk, wild rice, blue vervain, buffalo, seals, kalo (taro), fish and more. 

Buffalo driven to near extinction, grief of our lost loves AND
if buffalo thrives, so can I

The diversity of the foods mirrors the diversity of the people 
Diversity is resilience
ike wai wai
true wealth is to be one with water, to be fluid

Two Spirit artists live & breathe fluidity, the spirit of water
blending genders, stories, and possibilities
in some tribes, we had mermaid clans
clans of queerness, transformation, shape shifting
Indigiqueer people are innovators and healers in our cultures
just as our diverse seeds carry medicines

from the Kingdom of Hawaii to Alaska we feel our kinship 
coast to coast, north to south, and across oceans
in our connection to the waters, the lands, the foods that sustain us
we are all connected by our water and food ways

7 circles of Indigenous food ways is really about
doing things on the land for people you love with people you love
malama aina - care for the land that feeds us many foods

what feels lost, ancestor foods remember you
taste activates ancestral memory
new flavours grow new neural pathways
our languages honour all that is alive

when we slow down on the land or with our food
we can connect with our spiritual intuition

in a world where food is weaponized again and again
what first step will you take on your courageous journey?

when they say “this is the only way” and your body knows the truth
there’s more than one ways, we choose, we create culture, we invent new ceremonies
stay true to your values & attract the right relationships

act from love not fear
do it scared
weep into the berries they will hear your prayers
break down & become whole
your story matters
it’s hard & it’s ok to be mixed race, ok to not know, ok to be learning
you are where you are meant to be
and you will get where you need to go

So lets ‘a ha ‘ai (gather for the sacred purpose) to be pono (well & healthy)
Just ask, those who are ready will come
find your partners, find your cuzzies, stoodis together

relationships grow at the speed of trust
movements grow at the speed of relationships

connect with me 
let’s gather and harvest collective wisdom & medicine
let’s talk story, create something beautiful and alive
Join me in my journey of erotic aliveness