Point of Origin Episode 20
Indigenous Foodways: The Decolonized Diet
On today’s episode of Point of Origin, we discuss Indigenous foodways in the United States. Today’s guests represent a cross section of the Indigenous food community, from the kitchen to the media.
We speak with Sean Sherman, of the Indigenous Food Lab, and author of the award-winning cookbook, The Sioux Chef. Plus, Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino of Cafe Ohlone, plus Andi Murphy of The Toasted Sister Podcast, and Brit Reed of the I-Collective all join the show today.
Sustaining a food culture nearly toppled by colonization, (and its many modern manifestations, like urbanization and gentrification), for our guests, has been a calling, a source of pride, and a continuous challenge.
Foremost it’s about their people. They’re working to keep them healthy, informed, and connected. Then there’s the rest of us. They need non-Indigenous allies to be connected to their history. They need us to understand the urgency of food sovereignty, or the right to access traditional food, foraging areas, and cultural culinary traditions. The calling is also about health. As is the case worldwide, in the United States, Indigenous communities face greater health disparities than any other population, due to displacement, subsequent poverty, and a generations of corporatized and hyper-processed food.
In some cases, like that of Cafe Ohlone, “the first Ohlone restaurant in modern times”, foraging keeps them connected to their traditional plants and herbs, like tulsi, mint, and willow, that have remained on their homeland even when they could not. Using food to connect future generations to language and tradition is what unites them all.
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“You look at the European diet, and it is so limited in its plant diversity, there’s so much more we can add to our diets by truly understanding the landscape we’re on, in North America, by absorbing some of these past knowledge bases.”
- Sean Sherman
Map of the Guests’ Tribes
“While we want our foods to be fully traditional, fully connected to these old ways, we also don’t want to shy away from embracing fact that we’re modern people. These foods aren’t locked in a museum, they’re not locked in one period of time, but rather they’re living, and they’re a part of 2020 too.”
- Vincent Medina
Blue Corn Mush
Recipe from tumbleweednutrition.com
Ingredients:
5 cups cold water
1 cup roasted blue cornmeal
1.5 teaspoons cedar or juniper ash
Image Credit: Quentin Lebeau
Instructions:
Combine cold water, blue cornmeal and ash in a medium saucepan over medium heat.
Bring to a boil and whisk frequently.
Once it has started boiling, reduce heat to low and simmer.
Simmer uncovered for 15 to 20 minutes and whisk constantly. Now is not the time to walk away as it will start to thicken, and you could risk it sticking to the bottom of the pan or burning.
Remove from heat and serve.
“ We just think, if you can control your food, you can control your future. There’s going to be a lot of strength and empowerment being able to create that food sovereignty.”
- Sean Sherman
Meet Our Guests
Sean Sherman
The Sioux Chef
Image/Text Credit: https://sioux-chef.com
Sean Sherman, of the Oglala Lakota Tribe, was born in Pine Ridge, SD, has been cooking across the US and World for the last 30 years. His main culinary focus has been on the revitalization and awareness of indigenous foods systems in a modern culinary context. Sean has studied on his own extensively to determine the foundations of these food systems which include the knowledge of Native American farming techniques, wild food usage and harvesting, land stewardship, salt and sugar making, hunting and fishing, food preservation, Native American migrational histories, elemental cooking techniques, and Native culture and history in general to gain a full understanding of bringing back a sense of Native American cuisine to today’s world.
In 2014, he opened the business titled The Sioux Chef as a caterer and food educator to the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area. In 2015 in partnership with the Little Earth Community of United Tribes in Minneapolis, he also helped to design and open the Tatanka Truck food truck, which featured pre-contact foods of the Dakota and Minnesota territories. Chef Sean and his vision of modern indigenous foods have been featured in numerous articles and radio shows, along with dinners at the James Beard House in Manhattan and Milan, along with teaching and sharing his knowledge to gatherings and crowds at Yale, the Culinary Institute of America, the United Nations, and many more.
Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino
Cafe Ohlone
Vincent Medina
Image/Text Credit: http://www.makamham.com
Louis Trevino
Image/Text Credit: http://www.makamham.com
Vincent is a member of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area. Louis is a member of the Rumsen Ohlone community. Ohlone culture is vast, varied, and always beautiful and both Vincent and Louis are proud of their Indian identities and active in the ongoing revival of their languages: Chochenyo from the East Bay, and Rumsen from the Carmel Valley. They work collectively with members of their communities to decolonize; stripping away layers of imposed identity.
Cafe Ohlone is a space where Ohlone culture and cuisine are respected and celebrated regularly, a place where the culture can thrive. At Ohlone people can see the culture and cuisine reflected in the public, and people outside the Ohlone community can experience the richness of the traditional food while seeing the vibrancy of contemporary Ohlone identity.
Cafe Ohlone is also a place for meaningful, boundary breaking dialogue, a meeting place for protecting our sacred sites, a launching pad for gathering trips with their family and tribe, a place of dialogue about decolonization, a place where they host open mics for poetry, and song in California Indian languages, and organize talks from leaders in the Ohlone community about their living story.
Andi Murphy
Toasted Sister Podcast
Image Credit: https://alibi.com/food/57410/Toasted-Sister-Radio-about-Native-American-Food.html
Andi Murphy is of the Navajo tribe from Crownpoint, New Mexico, where she lived in Albuquerque. She is a full-time radio producer for Native America Calling, a national, live, call-in show about Native issues and topics. She is also a freelance multimedia journalist, and host of the Toasted Sister Podcast.
As host, Andi is talking to Native chefs and foodies about what Indigenous cuisine is, where it comes from, where it’s headed and how it’s used to connect them and their people to their origins and traditions.
Brit Reed
I-Collective
Image Credit: https://www.bonappetit.com/story/brit-reed
Photo By Jessica Sargent of Ink & Paper Photo
Brit Reed, of Choctaw descent, credits her initial love of cooking and food to her parents. While working in their family's camp kitchen, she began learning from her aunt the importance of cooking.
These experiences led her to pursue learning about traditional foods & medicines. Throughout her time at The Evergreen State College earning her BA and MPA with a concentration in Tribal Governance, she focused her studies on tribal food (in)security, food sovereignty, tribal food policy, and the effects of food on the health of our tribal communities.
In 2015, she founded Food Sovereignty is Tribal Sovereignty - a native based group with a large membership base that are engaged in all facets of the the Indigenous Food Revitalization Movement throughout the Americas and parts of Europe.
She is currently attending Seattle Culinary Academy. Additionally, she is working with Choctaw Nation Historian, Ian Thompson and Choctaw Nation members to learn more about traditional Choctaw foods that were eaten pre and post contact. At this time she is working with the Tulalip Health Clinic's Diabetes Program to teach healthy cooking classes to the community.
