03/02/2025
This is true. When humans stop eating their traditional foods they become ill.
Destany "Sky" Pete, a high school student from the Shoshone and Paiute Tribes, made a groundbreaking discovery at the 2017 Elko County Science Fair by scientifically proving the cancer-fighting properties of a traditional Native American recipe, chokecherry pudding. Sky noticed her tribe’s health issues were linked to a lack of traditional foods, including toishabui, or chokecherry pudding.
With the help of Dr. Ken Cornell, a biochemistry professor, Sky tested various chokecherry samples on uterine sarcoma cancer cells. Remarkably, the traditional chokecherry pudding, made with crushed chokecherry pits, successfully inhibited cancer cell growth, causing the cells to die within 24 hours.
Sky’s discovery earned her the First Grand Prize at the science fair, beating over 440 projects. She believes modern health problems, like diabetes, are due to the loss of traditional foods. Sky plans to further investigate the pudding’s effects on other types of cancer cells and continues to explore the medicinal value of ancestral remedies, offering hope for natural cancer treatment and traditional medicine.
