Living in a food desert is bad enough - that's defined as an area vapid of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, usually found in impoverished areas - but it's worse when you live 20 or 30 miles from the closest place that sells anything to eat at all.
Compound that with skyrocketing rates of obesity, type-2 diabetes and other food-related illnesses, plus a quarter of the households under the poverty line and finish it off with the knowledge that at one time, traditional Native food systems were deliberately targeted to create dependency on the federal government, and you begin to understand why organizations and programs like the First Nations Development Institute, the Native Agriculture and Food Systems Initiative and the Seeds of Native Health programs are so important.