YAKANAL

YAKANAL is a grassroots organization based at Laguna Pueblo, NM, and fiscally sponsored by the New Mexico Community Foundation. YAKANAL focuses on food sovereignty and supports our community in traditional farming, beekeeping, and cultural exchange. We work to restore access to healthy, Native foods, reduce reliance on processed commodities, and provide sustainable income for young farmers. Through farm-to-table initiatives, community education, and intergenerational knowledge exchange and mentoring, YAKANAL nourishes the connection between our people, our land, and the foods that sustain us.

A unique aspect of our work is cultural exchange that honors Indigenous peoples’ migration stories and knowledge transmission across landscapes, ecosystems, and cultures. Our food sovereignty initiatives benefit from cross-cultural exchanges with our Indigenous relatives in Mesoamerica and South America. Since 2011, YAKANAL has engaged Indigenous participants in immersive cultural exchange experiences, offering opportunities to share rich cultures and traditional knowledge.

YAKANAL rekindles ancestral relationships that have thrived for generations among Indigenous groups through cultural exchange, migration, shared knowledge, and the gifts of the land. Our food sovereignty work promotes well-being by restoring Indigenous ties to the land and offering sustainable solutions. YAKANAL joins the words for “corn” in the Western Keres and Yucatec Mayan languages, honoring a mutual and sacred relationship with our Mother food.

Laguna is a Pueblo of two stories—one told through government records, the other passed down through generations who have lived in our homelands for millennia. The first story primarily portrays a deficit model, with a community challenged by lack of resources, marginalization, statistical poverty, ill health, and limited opportunity. But we carry forward our story—rooted in who we are, and have always been. We are Ka’waika’, the people of the lake, living in relationship to our ancestral lands, nourished by corn, beans, squash, and the snowmelt of Shpinah’kudthah (Mount Taylor), our sacred mountain. We are guided by our “Science of Place” and a shared responsibility to care for what sustains us.

Our Programs include: 

Traditional Agriculture: We cultivate community fields and focus on strengthening our Indigenous and ancestral agriculture techniques. Our work nurtures pollinators and native flora for long-term sustainability and community resilience. Restoration of healthy, native foods allows our community to become increasingly devoid of processed foods and can provide a sustainable source of income for Indigenous farmers, supporting farm-to-table initiatives.

Adobe Architecture: Traditional cooking methods help nourish our community’s collective memory and relationship to place. We build communal adobe hornos, designed to complement our Pueblo’s local efforts to revitalize the cultivation of native foods and strengthen our knowledge of earthen architecture.

Beekeeping: We reignite the spirit of relationship between our bees and the Laguna Pueblo community. The project is closely tied to our agricultural efforts and the restoration of native flora. Bringing back the bees to the Laguna Pueblo community is creating a healthy and thriving ecosystem based on relationships among the land, the plants, the pollinators, and humans so we can all benefit.

Mother Moon and the Stars: The light of Mother Moon animates the relationship of our female-identifying participants with the mover of the waters on Earth, the keeper of medicinal plants, and the guardian of fertility. Through cultural astronomy and starry night events, we reconnect with our oldest ancestors, the stars. We explicitly acknowledge Earth and Sky to support community health and wellbeing.

On the Horizon:

In partnership with the McCune Foundation, MASS Design Group, Southwest Business Development Consultants, and Data Management of New Mexico, YAKANAL has created a vision for a Native Foods Center and Laguna Learning Hub—community-driven, culturally rooted future facilities focused on collective well-being for Laguna Pueblo. This vision is strengthened by rising market interest, strong partnerships, and a practical phased strategy for lasting sustainability.

We are deeply grateful to the funders and partners who have walked alongside YAKANAL and made this work possible. Because of our funders, we are not only growing food—we are restoring relationships between people and land, between generations, and across Indigenous cultures.

To those who have supported us, thank you for believing in this vision. To those considering joining us, we welcome you with appreciation, purpose, and opportunity for mutual learning. Your partnership helps carry forward the Science of Place—nurturing a future where Indigenous knowledge leads the way in healing our communities and our lands.

Together, we can cultivate resilience, reciprocity, and renewal for generations to come.