June 23, 2026

By Lisa Abelar

In the rural North Dakota town of Fort Totten, Mary Greene Trottier spends a lot of her time thinking about food. She talks to kids and elders about it. She manages programs that address it. And she’s even spoken to Congress about it. 

As a member of the Spirit Lake Reservation, Greene Trottier confronts food insecurity every day.  As the director of the Nation’s food distribution program, Greene Trottier has watched more and more of her neighbors go hungry. She’s determined to change that trajectory.. 

“The U.S. produces the most food and we have the most waste and the most hunger. How do we close that gap? Nobody should go to bed hungry,” she said. 

Fort Totten is the governmental and cultural center of the Spirit Lake Reservation, which encompasses 240,000 acres of crop and pasture land, and includes a shoreline along the picturesque Devils Lake. It’s home to about 4,500 tribal members, an increasing number of whom rely on food distribution support. 

“We’ve seen participation increase consistently, by 40% within the last year,” Greene Trottier said. 

Meeting that growing need was easier after Greene Trottier submitted a successful grant application for the tribe’s participation in a USDA’s Local Food Purchase Assistance program (LFPA). The LFPA program gave the Spirit Lake Nation federal funding to buy food directly from nearby farmers and producers, keeping dollars local and food fresh. 

Greene Trottier used the funding to buy locally sourced foods including culturally traditional foods including wild rice and bison from nearby farms and ranches, foods that reflect what Spirit Lake families actually eat and want. Her goal is straightforward: fewer people going hungry. 

“Part of our culture is watching out for each other and making sure we have resources within our community to help each other out. The LFPA was a good way to help out community members and make sure they can save their resources and potentially get a pair of tennis shoes for their kids or snow boots. The costs of goods are continuing to escalate. It just makes sense,” she said. 

It also kept her spending for the tribal food program local, offering a fresh infusion of revenue to farmers and ranchers in the state who otherwise might not have experienced those sales.

“Locally-sourced is a no-brainer in my mind,” she said. “You’re not paying for transportation or warehousing and decreases storage costs. It’s a fresher product and it helps boost your local economy. So every dollar you can keep within your community, that’s a win. We already know that through economics.”

Spirit Lake’s food distribution program serves at least 1,100 people every month, the majority of whom are either children or elderly community members who rely on food delivery. The first round of LFPA funding was so valuable, Greene Trottier completed an application for the third round the following year. But by then, the Trump administration had ended the LFPA program, and the second round of funding never came. 

It was a “huge loss,” Greene Trottier said. Not only did the program provide food to community members in need, it provided tribal members with more economic stability as costs continue to increase and life’s unpredictable surprises inevitably land. 

“I don’t like to refer to it as a handout, but a hand-up. It’s one less stressor when you don’t have to worry about feeding your family,” she said. 

Without it, Greene Trottier said, families are making harder choices at the end of the month and farmers and ranchers lose revenue and access to a nearby market at a time when production costs are rising. 

Without renewed LFPA funding, Greene Trottier said she will continue to seek other grants that could support the tribal food distribution program. The local food bank has said it will offer additional resources to the Spirit Lake Reservation community, but Greene Trottier said it likely won’t be enough to fill the gap. And she fears the food bank may begin to feel the strain of nutrition needs as Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) enrollment becomes more restricted. 

The loss of the program also impacts the farmers and producers who participated in it, Greene Trottier said. They took a risk and were left hanging after the abrupt discontinuation of the program.

“A long-term investment would have been sustainable for anybody looking at farming, and farming is in a spiral now,” she said. “It would be a good time to implement more funding. We want to keep that farm economy going.”