What can hamburger meat teach us about leadership? Meet Angel Charley, Executive Director of the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women. Growing up on Laguna Pueblo—“a place with more land than people”—Angel’s family navigated financial poverty, but they were abundant in lots of other ways.

“You know when you’re poor...but you don’t know it? Well, poor, as in not a lot of money,” she explains in her Nutritional Values booklet. “We had lots and lots of love, attention, family time, so we didn’t notice we were ‘poor.’”

Despite growing up with this bounty, Angel’s family relied on food stamps to keep dinner (including hamburger meat) on the table, and this was something Angel was angry and ashamed of as a kid.

“It was internalized hatred: this is how the system does it," she says.

Angel’s experiences with poverty give her crucial insight into how institutions fall short when it comes to Indigenous women and survivors—and how to create systems where their needs are prioritized and honored.

To learn more about how Angel is working to reconnect communities with traditional foodways and reestablish food sovereignty, visit www.csvanw.org and check out their Nutritional Values conversation guide.