Case Study: Building a Unified Native Farm Bill Policy Platform
The Opportunity & Risk
The Farm Bill is one of the most comprehensive and complex pieces of federal legislation, shaping agriculture, nutrition, conservation, credit, rural development, and food systems nationwide. For Native producers and Tribal food systems, it represents both critical opportunity and longstanding structural barriers.
As the next Farm Bill approached, the Native Farm Bill Coalition had a pivotal opportunity:
Align more than 120 Native priorities across all 12 Farm Bill titles
Translate lived experience into actionable federal policy
Elevate Native food systems within national policy conversations
The risk was fragmentation, which has plagued Indian Country for far too long: inconsistent messaging, siloed priorities, and missed opportunities to influence federal decision-makers at a critical moment.
The challenge was not simply producing a report. It was building a unified, credible, and strategically positioned policy platform that could withstand scrutiny at the highest levels of government.
Strategic Communications Approach
My role centered on designing and executing a communications strategy that would:
Integrate grassroots feedback with legal and policy analysis
Ensure clarity across highly technical subject matter
Align multiple coalition partners under a shared message architecture
Position the coalition as both community-rooted and policy-literate
Rather than treating communications as an afterthought, we embedded it into the policy development process itself, ensuring that recommendations were not only legally sound, but compelling, accessible, and advocacy-ready.
This required close collaboration with attorneys, policy experts, communications directors, and leadership across coalition member organizations.
Stakeholder Engagement & Message Architecture
A core pillar of the work was national stakeholder engagement.
I helped plan and attend roundtables across the country, engaging Tribal leaders, producers, and food system practitioners.
Responsibilities included:
Coordinating communications and logistics
Documenting and analyzing feedback from both attended and remote sessions
Identifying recurring themes, barriers, and structural gaps
Translating qualitative input into policy-aligned messaging
From this engagement, we developed a message architecture that:
Elevated producer voices
Framed structural inequities within federal programs
Grounded policy recommendations in real-world impact
Ensured consistency across coalition partners
This alignment was critical to presenting a unified platform to policymakers.
Publication & Policy Translation
The culmination of this work was Gaining Ground, a comprehensive publication outlining Native priorities across all 12 Farm Bill titles.
I worked closely with attorneys and policy experts to:
Develop, write, and edit 12 individual chapters — one per title. I oversaw the content for the Energy Title specifically.
Coordinate photography
Provide background on existing federal programs
Integrate relevant legislative history
Clearly articulate Indian Country priorities for the next Farm Bill
Ensure tone balanced authority, clarity, and accessibility
This required translating more than 120 Tribal priorities and highly technical policy language into content that could serve multiple audiences:
Congressional offices
Federal agencies
Coalition partners
Media
Tribal leaders and producers
In parallel, I helped write, edit, and design a complementary publication in partnership with the Native American Agriculture Fund ahead of the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, positioning Native food systems within national hunger policy discussions.
Federal Advocacy & Visibility Strategy
To ensure the platform moved beyond publication and into action, I supported federal-facing advocacy and visibility efforts, including:
Developing talking points for DC fly-ins and meetings with policymakers
Creating briefing materials for coalition partners
Aligning messaging across member organizations
Managing website updates and policy resource pages
Writing blogs and press releases tied to legislative milestones
I also helped coordinate communications between coalition members, bringing together communications directors and senior staff to ensure unified outreach.
In addition, I supported planning and implementation for the first-ever Native Food Fair on Capitol Hill, an event designed to connect Native producers directly with policymakers and ground policy recommendations in lived experience.
Media engagement efforts included drafting materials, coordinating interviews, and building relationships with journalists to elevate Native producers and food system leaders as policy storytellers.
Impact & Long-Term Influence
This work resulted in:
A unified Native policy platform across all 12 Farm Bill titles
Stronger alignment across coalition organizations
Elevated visibility for Native food systems at the federal level
Clear, advocacy-ready materials for policymakers
Integration of Native food systems into national hunger policy dialogue
More broadly, this project strengthened the coalition’s communications infrastructure, ensuring that Native voices were not only heard, but strategically positioned within one of the most consequential federal legislative processes in the country.