Steven Roach, MA (he/him/wiila)

Steve Roach (he/him/wiila) is an enrolled citizen of the Shawnee Tribe. He is an active participant in the Shawnee Tribe’s language reclamation program and is in his fifth year as a language instructor. He is also an apprentice in the Shawnee Tribe Shawnee Language Master-Apprentice program. Steve participate in activities at the Shawnee Ceremonial Ground in White Oak, Oklahoma. Steve was raised in Virginia and did not have contact with Shawnee people outside his family until he was an adult. He is glad that his two children have been raised participating in Shawnee cultural practices.

 

Steve is the Director of the Safe and Healthy Food Program of the advocacy organization Food Animal Concerns Trust. FACT works to make sure that all food animals are raised in a humane and healthy manner and that everyone should have access to safe and humanely produced food. Steve’s work focuses on getting government agencies and corporations to adopt policies that protect public health.

 

Steve has Master degree in Anthropology from Iowa State University. He lives in Iowa City and enjoys reading, running, and gardening. He grows Shawnee traditional crops in a plot at the Global Food Project in Iowa City though the raccoons always eat most of the taami (corn).