Our Mission

The Four Corners Food Coalition is dedicated to supporting equitable, community driven, and localized food systems.

After years of informal organizing and collaborations, the Four Corners Food Coalition was formalized in the beginning of the Covid crisis to share critical resources across our hard hit region. The Coalition distributed hundreds of thousands of pounds of food and 1000s of dollars to folks addressing their basic needs at that time.

The Coalition has grown organically in response to shifting community needs and opportunities. We have been all volunteer run since our inception, offering stipends to folks who give their labor whenever possible.

We work in partnership with small grassroots organizations located in rural and isolated communities that operate autonomously and are accountable to and led by their community members. We commit to sharing resources with each other in support of community based and equity-driven food systems.

How We Got Here

    • Initiate purchase of farm land in the Mancos Valley to develop an Indigenous Community Farm

    • Launch our Indigenous Supported Agriculture Program

    • Complete our Food Systems Fellowship: Cohort #1

    • Launch Food Systems Fellowship: Cohort #2

    • Continue to develop a Community Food Center and commercial kitchen in Cortez

    • Continued the development of Indigenous Food Sovereignty support mechanisms

    • Led Colorado wide IBPOC Farmer Support Micro Grants effort with Seeds in Common and Spirit of the Sun

      • $25,000 distributed to Indigenous, Black and People of Color Farmers, Gardeners, and Ranchers in Colorado

    • Begin 501c3 formation

    • Begin organizing efforts to develop a Community Food Center in Cortez, Colorado

    • Continue to collaboratively write grants with food pantry partners to move more healthy and local foods into our communities.

    • Launch Food Systems Fellowship: Cohort #1

    • Run Winter Farm and Art Markets in Cortez

    • Began to develop Indigenous Food Sovereignty support mechanisms to move from providing goods for immediate needs to building systems for long term health and wellness.

    • Supported Indigenous led events with food supplies

    • Purchased tools and critical infrastructure for Indigenous led farms

    • Provided direct organizational funding for partners such as Construyendo Poder and Dolores Family Project

    • Built and installed raised garden beds for Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute families

    • Sponsored Indigenous community members to attend key events such as Slow Foods in Italy, Food Sovereignty Symposium and Festival in Michigan, and White Mountain Apache Harvest Festival

    • Continued to collaboratively write grants with regional food pantries and mutual aid efforts and to distributions basic supplies throughout the region.

    • The Coalition formed in 2020 as a direct response to Covid and the need to organize regionally and across all political borders to support more equitable distribution of food, basic sanitary items, firewood, water tanks, herbal medicines, and money. 

    • Partnered with four relief efforts including Pine River Shares, Mancos FoodShare, Dolores Family Project, Good Samaritan Center, 4 Corners Mutual Aid & Ignacio Mutual Aid to collaboratively write grants and distribute food.

    • Hosted weekly regional calls to organize support and distribution efforts

    • Collaboratively pooled funding from direct donations and grants to offer financial and material supports to mutual aid and community groups across the Four Corners region through our Food and Funds request form.

Organizational Values

  • Indigenous Leadership: we are an Indigenous led organization that organizes with the land and Indigenous people at the center of all we do.

  • Cultural Integrity: it is our responsibility to uphold the traditional ethics of our people through ceremony, language, foodways, and culture overall as well as in the ways that we organize and engage with the nonprofit sector. 

  • Accountability to impacted community members: we are accountable to marginalized people in the region through specific partnerships with community based organizations that are also truly community led and have a demonstrated history of community accountability. We make decisions in community and in partnerships and we place trust in our leadership to guide our organization forward.

  • Place & Land Based Organizing: all of our work is rooted in the land and the places where we live. We are grassroots and place based. We operate with cultural and geographic specificity.

  • Reciprocity: we work to reestablish norms of reciprocity. We are anti-capitalist and leverage the non profit system to move resources from areas of inequitable concentration to areas of forcible extraction so that reciprocal lifeways can be nourished. 

  • Responsive: we remain flexible and responsive to our communities through our cultural practices as well as consistent and active community engagement. We are part of the communities we serve.