Junk Food Tax May Send Navajos Back To Their Roots

By Laurel Morales
April 08, 2015
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Laurel Morales
About 15,000 families on the Navajo Nation live without electricity. So all of their food has to be non perishable. Many people rely on convenience store food because the grocery stores are too far away.

This month the Navajo Nation started taxing junk food and soda. No other tribe and only one city — Berkeley, Calif. — has successfully passed such a law.

Navajo leaders are trying to trim obesity rates that are almost three times the national average. But half of the tribe is unemployed and say they can’t afford more expensive food. 

Relentless winds stirred up red dust in the northern Arizona town of Tuba City. Harriett Benally squinted to keep the dirt from blowing in her eyes. She stood outside the town’s grocery store.

Benally will now be charged an extra 2 percent tax for her favorite snacks, Funions and soda.

“To be honest, it’s not going to be a good thing 'cause mostly everyone loves that around here,” Benally said. “It’s like where all their money goes and food stamps.”

It’s where Norman Bryant Begay’s food stamps go until they run out.

“I have to bum around like, you know, panhandle,” Begay said.

Begay is unemployed and, like half the tribe, lives below the federal poverty level.

“I don’t want to be going around to people’s houses asking for food, you know,” Begay said.

The tribe has given people an incentive to buy fresh fruits and vegetables by removing a 5 percent sales tax on those items. One in three Navajo people suffers from diabetes, according to the Indian Health Service.

A
Laurel Morales
A recent survey showed 80 percent of the Navajo grocery stores' inventory qualified as junk food, food with little to no nutritional value.

“I would like to see more fresh fruits and vegetables out there, more options, like the store here, you know, it’s not often that you see much of a variety,” said Jerri Yazzie, who teaches families how to eat better through the WIC program.

A recent survey found 80 percent of the Navajo grocery stores’ inventory qualified as junk food. That’s food with little to no nutritional value. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has labeled the entire Navajo Nation a “food desert,” because of the lack of healthy foods. The rural reservation is the size of West Virginia with only 10 grocery stores. Many people rely on convenience stores and fast food restaurants.

Denisa Livingston is a spokeswoman for the Diné Community Advocacy Alliance, a grassroots group that pushed for the tax. She says some will drive off the reservation to go to a decent grocery store.

“When people have to drive that many miles across the Navajo Nation in this food desert, it definitely is discouraging because healthy fresh fruits and vegetables and healthy foods will not last a very long time when you have to take it back hundreds of miles across the Navajo Nation,” Livingston said.

The
Laurel Morales
The U.S. Department of Agriculture labeled the Navajo Nation a "food desert." A reservation the size of West Virginia only has 10 grocery stores like this one in Tuba City.

The tribe hopes to generate $2 million to $3 million a year from the junk food tax. And they plan to spend much of the money on farm initiatives. Stacey Jensen, who runs the North Leupp Family Farms, said Navajo people have traditionally lived off the land.

“When I was younger, I followed my flock of sheep around here, so I herded sheep here,” Jensen said. “We had our livestock and then had the corn fields as well as jackrabbits and cottontails.”

Jensen has helped about 30 families return to subsistence farming and eat healthier foods.

“Just seeing the folks having a hard time with illness because the lack of food, the lack of good food, that keeps me coming out here and doing this,” Jensen said.

Jensen said he hopes his farm and the revenue raised from the junk food tax will encourage more farmers like him throughout the Navajo Nation.