Food bank refuses food to Indians

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An Edmonton area food bank is refusing to give food to treaty Indians, telling them to back to their home reserve if they are in need.

Treaty Indian Linda Mowry and her husband helped the East Parkland Food Bank in Spruce Grove deliver food to needy area residents 15 months ago.

But when she turned to the food bank for help a year later in July, they were turned down and told that because she's a treaty Indian with C-31 status, policy wouldn't allow the food

bank to give food to treaty Indians. Mowry was advised to go to a reserve.

"I was just about in tears," said Mowry, a student at the Yellowhead Tribal Council's Grant MacEwan College campus.

"I explained I wasn't from a reserve and that I had a child I had to feed, but I was still turned down. I felt discriminated against as a treaty woman," she said.

Mowry's explanation she didn't have band membership got her nowhere.

"They shut the door in my face."

Mowry, who is in her second year of a social work program, has a 13-year-old son, Mason. Her husband, Timothy, 32, is drawing workers' compensation benefits.

"It was a horrible feeling," she said. "It made me feel used."

Timothy, who is white, went back to the food bank and was given a hamper containing three bags of food and a box of food.

"I was really angry," Mowry said. "I'm frustrated. Who are they to decide who can use it and who can't?"

The family has made donations to the Edmonton Food Bank.

On Sept. 27 with the family staring a cash crunch in the face, Mowry bravely went back to the food band. Again she was confronted with a posted sign saying treaty Indians couldn't

get hampers, because of government policy.

The worker reconsidered as Mowry was walking towards the door and said she could have a hamper since she was a student.

But Mowry decided to turn down the offer. "I didn't feel right about taking it, because I though about the other Indian women like me, who had kids and probably needed it and were

being turned down," she said.

Stephanie Shenfield, coordinator of the food bank, said policy now forbids hampers being given to students or to treaty Indians living on reserves.

She was not at the food bank when Mowry was turned down in July, she said.

Students get enough money to live on, said Shenfield.

"It's how they use the money."

She said the food bank has cut off many people, who they felt were abusing the service, including both Native and non-Native people.

Shenfield speculated that some people who come to the food bank spend their money on playing bingo and then turn to the food bank for help. The source of many people's

problems, she suggested, is not budgeting their money wisely.

Marjorie Bencz, acting executive director of the Edmonton Food Bank strongly questioned Shenfield's policy.

"This is not the proper way to run a food bank. We don't agree with that practice at all," said Bencz.

"Is she running a food bank or a behavior modification program?" she asked.

"You don't judge people, who come in need like that," she said. "I'm quite disgusted with the situation."

Bencz intends to raise her concerns about East Parkland at an Oct. 10 board meeting at the Edmonton Food Bank.

"I don't agree with a lot of things they do," she said.

Bencz hopes her board will agree to write a letter to East Parkland expressing its displeasure that reserve Indians aren't allowed hampers.

She has already raised the issue with the board president of the Edmonton Food Bank, urging that pressure be applied to encourage the Spruce Grove Food Bank "to act in a

humanitarian way.

"Maybe a little bit of pressure will help to get this all sorted out," she said.