WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) — Food delivery trucks stopped coming on time to the Spirit Lake Reservation in North Dakota this summer.
“Towards the end of July, that’s when we started running out of a supply of food,” Mary Greene-Trottier said.
Mary Greene-Trottier is Director of the Tribe’s Food Distribution Program, and National President for Food Distribution Programs on Indian Reservations.
The USDA program serves more than 50,000 living on reservations across the country. It’s a lifeline for rural areas often far from grocery stores, Greene-Trottier said.
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“They’re counting on us to make sure services are provided,” Greene-Trottier said. “We are considered what is a food desert.”
But participating reservations haven’t been getting deliveries on time — or at all — for months now. Delayed deliveries started after the USDA switched from two distributors to one earlier this year.
Greene-Trottier says tribes expressed concerns to the agency before the change.