What’s something about the indoor urban farm that you look forward to?

Investing in our children, the future generations. I heard that there are plans for a coffee shop where the youth would be able to work, and I really like that. They could get jobs close by. It would give them experience and boost their self-esteem when they’re making money and learning at the same time.

What do you like about living at Little Earth?

We have a lot of people who go to sewing, beading, women’s group, our community coffee time. There’s Elders Group, there’s kids playing outside. We have cedar ceremony, sweat lodge, and the Little Earth farm, which employs about 70 children in the summer.

Sometimes people on our forum page will ask if anybody has extra Pampers and the neighbors say, yeah, come on over to my place and pick some up. That’s community, that’s people reaching out, caring for one another and that’s what I like about it.

What’s something hard about living here?

The air pollution from the traffic and diesel traffic. The big trucks coming through. And when traffic’s backed up, they’re all idling. There’s the fueling station right up the block. And then the two big factories puffing out chemicals. We smell them here. We can smell it when we drive by there. It’s like being behind an old bus.

How have you been impacted by pollution?

In the wintertime, my granddaughter was prescribed albuterol for asthma. She’s three years old. I have to hold her down so even if she’s screaming and crying, she breathes it in. I love my granddaughter with all my heart and it’s traumatizing for her, traumatizing for me.

So I started asking other parents and grandparents if anyone had any tips. And they were like, oh yeah, my granddaughter has asthma. Or, my daughter does and I have COPD. Little Earth wide, everybody has something — asthma, COPD, heart disease, triple-bypass surgeries, just all these things.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.