Office of the Mayor

Proclamation

Lawrence, Kansas

WHEREAS:   Lawrence, Kansas and the surrounding environs continue to be a source of nutritious local foods- both wild and cultivated; and

WHEREAS:   The community and City of Lawrence, Kansas support a thriving farmer’s market, a wide variety of local and regional farmers and food producers, and acknowledges their contributions to the physical and economic health of the Lawrence community; and

WHEREAS:   The United Nation Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) indicate that over one billion people in the world are going hungry, over 80% of whom are food producers and the majority of which live on the territories of Indigenous Peoples; and

WHEREAS:   Lawrence, Kansas is home to Haskell Indian Nations University and is attended by Indigenous Peoples of the forty-eight contiguous states of the U.S. and Alaska - each with their own unique food traditions; and

WHEREAS:   One of the greatest gifts the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas offered to those who arrived on their shores 500 years ago was food.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Aron Cromwell, Mayor of the City of Lawrence, Kansas, do hereby proclaim Saturday, October 22, 2011 as

INDIGENOUS FOOD DAY

in the City of Lawrence and recognize the Haskell Indigenous Food Festival as the City of Lawrence’s contribution to the first ever National Food Day activities.

                                                          Aron Cromwell, Mayor

October 11, 2011