Speaker 1: The revival of our languages was a model for the
Speaker 1: revival of our foods. How possible it is to have
Speaker 1: aspects of our culture that were experienced by our living
Speaker 1: elders and by our elders who are recorded, but then
Speaker 1: being able to bring them out of that memory and
Speaker 1: making them lived experiences. Our foods are very similar. This
Speaker 1: is all done because of love, love that we share
Speaker 1: both for one another and for our cultures, for our families.
Speaker 1: It's all part of that momentum. Welcome back to Point
Speaker 1: of Origin Episode twenty, Indigenous food Ways. It is impossible
Speaker 1: to have a podcast, or a magazine, or even really
Speaker 1: a point of view at all on food origins without
Speaker 1: first centering Native communities. Today's guest represent a cross section
Speaker 1: of the indigenous food communities of North America, from the
Speaker 1: kitchen to the media. We begin with Seawan Sherman, who
Speaker 1: goes by the moniker of Sue Chef, which is also
Speaker 1: the name of his award winning cookbook of the same title.
Speaker 1: Sean is unquestionably the most visible Native American chef of
Speaker 1: the United States. He was raised on the Pine Ridge
Speaker 1: Reservation in South Dakota, and after becoming a chef in
Speaker 1: his twenties, he quickly came to the realization that he
Speaker 1: wanted to cook the food of his own ancestors and
Speaker 1: shifted his cuisine from European cooking to that of his
Speaker 1: Lakota ancestry. Now, with the creation of the Indigenous Food
Speaker 1: Lab in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Sherman is leading the development of
Speaker 1: a restaurant, educational and training center that will further his
Speaker 1: mission of reintegrating native foods into tribal communities and diets
Speaker 1: throughout North America. Here, Sean, I grew up on Pine
Speaker 1: Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, so I'm actually enrolled with
Speaker 1: Oglala Lakota Sioux tribe there. UM So I spent most
Speaker 1: of my youth on Pine Ridge Reservation, and I did
Speaker 1: high school and college in Spearfish, South Dakota, which is
Speaker 1: in the Black Hills, and then I moved to Minneapolis,
Speaker 1: which is where I currently am today. And what was
Speaker 1: your experience like growing up on a reservation? Oh, you
Speaker 1: know the Pineers Reservation. I think it's the third largest
Speaker 1: reservation in the US. UM it's a lot of land space,
Speaker 1: so it takes up a huge chunk of southern South Dakota. UM.
Speaker 1: The landscape is kind of rolling hills, kind of sparse grasses,
Speaker 1: so though. UM. And we're also really close to the
Speaker 1: Black Hills too, which is you know, kind of the
Speaker 1: spiritual center for Lakota. You know. Pine Ridge is also
Speaker 1: has been the poorest area of the United States ever
Speaker 1: since its inception, pretty much, so you know, sevent of
Speaker 1: the population living in poverty or so making less than
Speaker 1: six thousand dollars for the entire household. UM. And we
Speaker 1: saw a lot of issues for those of us who
Speaker 1: are unfamiliar. What would you want people to know about
Speaker 1: the Oglala Lakota UM. You know, the Oglala and the
Speaker 1: and the Lakota UM, all the groups UM in general,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty large group. There's quite a few different
Speaker 1: Lakota tribes across South Dakota UM in that region. UM
Speaker 1: and here in Minnesota, you know, are our relatives, the
Speaker 1: Duck Kota live out this way. A lot of the
Speaker 1: work that we do is really just raising awareness to
Speaker 1: some of the histories of these places, because you know,
Speaker 1: I wasn't really I wasn't researching ancient history. This was
Speaker 1: just my great grandfather's era when all of this harsh
Speaker 1: change was happening to my family. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: very there's very similar stories out there from many different
Speaker 1: tribes and many different families all across the US. And
Speaker 1: I got my first executive chef position in Minneapolis when
Speaker 1: I was pretty young. I was only like twenty barely
Speaker 1: twenty seven or something like that. And as a chef
Speaker 1: in the city, I had access to all sorts of
Speaker 1: great food and there's a lot of great culture around,
Speaker 1: so I learned a lot of different styles of cuisines
Speaker 1: um and then I one day just realized, you know
Speaker 1: that I knew very little about my own ancestry and
Speaker 1: my own heritage food. Could you know, name hundreds of
Speaker 1: European recipes and only a handful of Lakota recipes that
Speaker 1: I felt, you know, weren't tarnished or didn't have the
Speaker 1: influence of European colonizers in the recipes. So it really
Speaker 1: and plus, you know, just looking around like there was nothing,
Speaker 1: like there was no you can find food from all
Speaker 1: over the world, but no restaurants that represented the land
Speaker 1: that we're standing on. And that's kind of the status
Speaker 1: quote today. You know, you have giant cities like Manhattan, Chicago,
Speaker 1: l a zero Native American restaurants you know, in those
Speaker 1: in those metropolis and it's like that across the way.
Speaker 1: So it shot me on a path to really understand
Speaker 1: like what were my Lakota ancestors eating, and how are
Speaker 1: they preserving and storing foods and what kind of herbs
Speaker 1: and plants were they collecting. You know, today we really
Speaker 1: focus on North America, so we look at North American
Speaker 1: traditional food systems and really try to understand the diversity
Speaker 1: that sits out there and all these beautiful lessons that
Speaker 1: we can learn from Indigenous knowledge of how to live
Speaker 1: sustainably in our regions and how they live sustainably in
Speaker 1: their regions utilizing primarily plant knowledge. When it came down
Speaker 1: to it, it's an immense amount of stuff to study
Speaker 1: and to learn and bring back and help strengthen them
Speaker 1: through their own traditional foods. There's just so much health there.
Speaker 1: Hearing you talk about your your path to becoming u
Speaker 1: S chef, it's a story that is very reminiscent of
Speaker 1: chefs that we hear from marginalized groups, from people of color,
Speaker 1: and from other members of Native communities. And it's a
Speaker 1: really beautiful moment that we're in and I and I
Speaker 1: often do refer to this momentum in our work because
Speaker 1: it comes up so frequently when you are thinking about
Speaker 1: or talking about decolonizing your food, presenting cuisine that is
Speaker 1: really a pre colonial cuisine. Why is that such a
Speaker 1: central part of the narrative for you? And why is
Speaker 1: that such an important part of of what you're bringing
Speaker 1: forth in your work? You know, I mean there's a
Speaker 1: lot to that question, of course, UM, And a lot
Speaker 1: of our work was just discovering what happened in history,
Speaker 1: like how did we lose so much knowledge? You know,
Speaker 1: because I look at you know, my life one years
Speaker 1: prior to my birth, UM in eighteen seventy four, all
Speaker 1: of my Lakodd ancestors still had a hundred percent of
Speaker 1: their indigenous knowledge and education intact. So like, why why
Speaker 1: did we lose so much in such a short amount
Speaker 1: of time? UM? Was kind of the question I started
Speaker 1: asking and really researching that, UM and seeing the beauty
Speaker 1: and the diversity of it, because you know, even though
Speaker 1: our sites are set on understanding North American cuisines and
Speaker 1: food systems from Mexico through Alaska, really the work resonates
Speaker 1: on a global scale because you know, Indigenous families from
Speaker 1: everywhere from South America, from Africa, India, Southeast Asia, Australia,
Speaker 1: New Zealand, Hawaii, you know, went through a very similar
Speaker 1: history of being colonized and the loss and the damage
Speaker 1: of their indigenous knowledge. That dismantling of these cultures, you know,
Speaker 1: as is harsh. Having that history of surviving, you know
Speaker 1: so well and in these different diverse regions, utilizing what's
Speaker 1: around them, and how we can apply that in today's world.
Speaker 1: One of the things that we did was to you know,
Speaker 1: remove colonial ingredients and try to really focus on regional flavors.
Speaker 1: So cutting out things like dairy and wheat flour and
Speaker 1: cane sugar and beef, pork and chicken because those ingredients
Speaker 1: didn't exist in some of our and most of our
Speaker 1: regions not that long ago. We chose to only cook
Speaker 1: with this healthy indigenous food based. We only make healthy food,
Speaker 1: you know. You know, so cutting out fried bread, for example,
Speaker 1: was just kind of a statement of saying, you know
Speaker 1: that peace has been integrated into our indigenous communities and
Speaker 1: it's something that we love, but it's also not very
Speaker 1: good for us. And there's so much more to explore,
Speaker 1: so much diversity that we should be exploring and not
Speaker 1: allowing this one piece to identify us when in reality
Speaker 1: it has very little to do with us. Historically, you
Speaker 1: mentioned something that is astonishing and I think bears repeating,
Speaker 1: which is that in major metropolitan cities in the US,
Speaker 1: like Chicago, like New York, Uh, there are no Native
Speaker 1: American restaurants. Tell me about your restaurant, how it came
Speaker 1: to fruition, and what your hopes are for it. Well,
Speaker 1: this very first restaurant that we're preparing to open this
Speaker 1: year is called Indigenous Food Lab, and it's a part
Speaker 1: of our nonprofit we created a few years ago. So
Speaker 1: we started a nonprofit called Natives dot org, which is
Speaker 1: an acronym for North American Traditional Indigenous food Systems, and
Speaker 1: through that UM we created this brand, Indigenous Food Lab.
Speaker 1: So Indigenous Food Lab is a five O one C
Speaker 1: three restaurant concept where the public will be able to
Speaker 1: come in and try a lot of creative indigenous foods
Speaker 1: that will be able to offer UM. But really it
Speaker 1: was about creating a space where we can have a
Speaker 1: classroom and be able to teach UM. The just have
Speaker 1: the offer create an you know, accessible indigenous education. So
Speaker 1: we want to be able to teach about Native American
Speaker 1: agriculture and seat saving and farming and wild food and
Speaker 1: ethnobotany and plant identification, medicinals, culinary applications, food preservation, language arts,
Speaker 1: history crafting, and just create a really safe and accessible
Speaker 1: space for that Indigenous focused education and UM utilizing this
Speaker 1: education and training center UM to work directly with tribal
Speaker 1: communities in our vicinity and help them to develop their
Speaker 1: own healthy indigenous kitchen that's particular to their tribe and
Speaker 1: their community and their history and their land and region
Speaker 1: UM and being a support system for them. Knowing how
Speaker 1: hard food service operations can be, but creating that food
Speaker 1: access in these much needed communities where sometimes these small
Speaker 1: communities can have upwards to sixty type two diabetes because
Speaker 1: of their food access situation and surviving off a commodity
Speaker 1: food program and things like that. And our hopes and
Speaker 1: goals are to replicate this entire process and open up
Speaker 1: indigenous food labs and urban areas all around the entire
Speaker 1: nation to help UM and work with tribal communities and
Speaker 1: its vicinity and help strengthen those communities through food. Why
Speaker 1: do you think it is that we have not seen
Speaker 1: more Native American restaurants open in this country. It's just
Speaker 1: the history of how indigenous people have been treated. Of course,
Speaker 1: so you look at um. You know, if you read
Speaker 1: a book like An Indigenous People's History the United States
Speaker 1: by Rock sand dunbar Or, it's you know, she um
Speaker 1: walks through those histories really carefully and thoroughly, and it
Speaker 1: talks about how much damage was done throughout the entire
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds. You know, you look at the start of
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds where what the United States was was
Speaker 1: a very young government and country. But we see this
Speaker 1: massive push through the eighteen hundreds and this massive of
Speaker 1: loss of indigenous land and culture, and we see a
Speaker 1: huge and horrible atrocities happening. In genocide is happening. You know,
Speaker 1: there's bounty systems on indigenous people's you know, California has
Speaker 1: got an extremely ugly history, Minnesota's got an ugly history.
Speaker 1: But it's kind of like that across the board. And
Speaker 1: then we see the nineteen hundreds, after the reservation systems
Speaker 1: are set and assimilation and dismantling of indigenous cultures of
Speaker 1: all across our nation. We weren't even American citizens until
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties. UM, we couldn't celebrate our own religion
Speaker 1: until the nineteen seventies. We weren't able to vote until
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, right, and just so much poverty was
Speaker 1: created through these reservation systems. So we just crawled out
Speaker 1: of that of the nineteen hundreds um and into the
Speaker 1: two thousands, where we're seeing a lot more Indigenous youth
Speaker 1: being empowered and becoming highly educated, and becoming highly skilled
Speaker 1: and being able to raise awareness to these stories. And
Speaker 1: you know, we're going to see a lot more Indigenous
Speaker 1: presence um and a lot more understanding of our history
Speaker 1: as times forward is kind of what we see. You know,
Speaker 1: if there's five seventy six tribes in the US six
Speaker 1: Center in twenty two in Canada, I think, and you
Speaker 1: know of Mexico identifies as indigenous, and there's just a
Speaker 1: lot of indigenous cultures and diversity still alive today. And
Speaker 1: you know, with indigenous diversity, we can really showcase what
Speaker 1: true regions are, true North American flavors are. And you
Speaker 1: look at the European diet and it's so limited and
Speaker 1: its plant diversity, and there's so much more that we
Speaker 1: can add to our diets by and really truly understand
Speaker 1: the landscape that we're on in North America by absorbing
Speaker 1: some of these past knowledge bases. So it's really important
Speaker 1: that could just continue on this path and we continue
Speaker 1: to grow, and we're hoping as we open up these
Speaker 1: indigenous restaurants that we really make a change. We want
Speaker 1: to see a future where Indigenous kids in the future
Speaker 1: will grow up having access to their foods, knowing exactly
Speaker 1: what they are, knowing the names of those foods in
Speaker 1: their language, is how they feel when they eat those
Speaker 1: foods compared to some fast foods. We just feel like
Speaker 1: if you can control your food, you can control your future,
Speaker 1: just like our ancestors used to. And there's going to
Speaker 1: be a lot of strength and empowerment um and being
Speaker 1: able to create that food sovereignty out there. Our next
Speaker 1: guest are Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino, owners of Cafe
Speaker 1: Alone in Berkeley, California. Both Louis and Vincent are members
Speaker 1: of the Alona Tribe, the indigenous people who for twenty
Speaker 1: thousand years and at California central Coast from San Francisco
Speaker 1: to Monterey, from Monterey through the Salinas Valley, Lewis in
Speaker 1: Vincent's work centers on the revival of a lonely food
Speaker 1: traditions and using their cafe as an archival project to
Speaker 1: keep tradition alive and accessible. Porsche Tuki macom So, good
Speaker 1: day to you all. Ka. Vincent Medina, So, my name
Speaker 1: is Vincent Medina and I'm a member of the Makoma
Speaker 1: Alonei tribe. My family is indigenous to the East Spay
Speaker 1: So the eastern shores of San Francisco Bay, the area
Speaker 1: that today encompasses Berkeley, Oakland, Hayward, Castra Valley three months
Speaker 1: down to about San Jose. Our family has lived in
Speaker 1: this area consistently. We've never left and we never will.
Speaker 1: Knowing that we where we come from, and knowing that
Speaker 1: our community has been able to stay put in this place.
Speaker 1: It's a testament to the strength of our elders and
Speaker 1: our ancestors who also experienced a lot of pain during colonization.
Speaker 1: Colonization that's still unfolding today in front of us, just
Speaker 1: in different ways. I'm the co founder of Cafe Aloni
Speaker 1: and makom Hum which my partner Lewis Trivino, He's also
Speaker 1: the co founder of this and we grew up here
Speaker 1: in this area where of our identity, aware that we
Speaker 1: come from this place, that we're indigenous to this place,
Speaker 1: and that this land also shapes our culture as well.
Speaker 1: Because of how hard colonization hit us here in the
Speaker 1: East Bay and throughout Metro California, it meant that much
Speaker 1: of our culture couldn't be carried on the organic way
Speaker 1: it was meant to. That wasn't because our elders or
Speaker 1: those before us didn't care about our culture. That's not
Speaker 1: true at all, but it was because there was systematic
Speaker 1: roadblocks that try to stop us from practicing our culture outright.
Speaker 1: And also in spite of that, there was resistance that
Speaker 1: happened in our communities to the theft of our coal
Speaker 1: sure into the suppression of our culture as well. Our
Speaker 1: ancestors are elders, are great grandparents, all of those before
Speaker 1: us have consistently been working to keep alive the things
Speaker 1: that matter, keep our culture going, and in some cases
Speaker 1: when things couldn't be carried on, there's thousands of pages
Speaker 1: of information on the form of archives in our collective
Speaker 1: communities that allow us to revive practices with our elders.
Speaker 1: With my partner Lewis Trivino, we started an organization called
Speaker 1: macom Home first, macom Hom entreprennial language, which is the
Speaker 1: indigenous language of the East Bay. It means our food
Speaker 1: and the entire focus of this work is to revive
Speaker 1: our food traditions along with every other aspect of our
Speaker 1: traditional culture that as that was suppressed but also documented
Speaker 1: to be brought back. We started this organization because we
Speaker 1: wanted to see these foods become commonplace in our families again,
Speaker 1: on the dinner tables in our community again. And then
Speaker 1: in September of two thou eighteen, we opened Cafe Alone,
Speaker 1: which is the first Aloni restaurant in modern times, and
Speaker 1: it's over in Berkeley and it's a way for us
Speaker 1: to teach the public about our story, but more importantly
Speaker 1: to provide a space for our community in Kutel macom
Speaker 1: cut up to Louis Travino it my cochland Takachiste p today.
Speaker 1: Hello everyone. My name is Louis Travino and i'm room Similoni.
Speaker 1: My family comes from the Carmel Valley and the Monterey area.
Speaker 1: And this work we started by the guidance of our elders,
Speaker 1: both those who were recorded and those who are still
Speaker 1: with us, to revitalize our traditional Aloni foods as part
Speaker 1: of a broader revitalization of culture that our communities have
Speaker 1: gone through for the past few decades um and part
Speaker 1: of the efforts that our families have had since colonization began.
Speaker 1: I think what makes in your work notable in this
Speaker 1: larger movement of moving towards or indigenous or native food
Speaker 1: ways is that Cafe ALONEI is that really the very
Speaker 1: first modern alone restaurant? As you say, do you all
Speaker 1: feel because European cuisine and because of the infrastructure of
Speaker 1: formal restaurants in dining, has been so far away from
Speaker 1: spotlighting in native cuisine and ingredients an additional burden for
Speaker 1: you all in doing this kind of reclamation work given
Speaker 1: how absent indigenous cuisine has been in this country. That's
Speaker 1: a that's a good question because growing up, when we
Speaker 1: would talk about our culture, people would have complete unfamiliarity
Speaker 1: with with us as as a people. And so if
Speaker 1: they didn't know who we are as a people, they,
Speaker 1: by the nature that aren't going to know about our
Speaker 1: foods or any other aspect of our culture. The thing
Speaker 1: that this this concept of being indigenous to this place
Speaker 1: is that these foods even if people didn't know that
Speaker 1: they were a lonely ingredients, they were often still many
Speaker 1: of them are still in use, things like hazel nuts,
Speaker 1: things like watercress, things like these decadent mushrooms. But when
Speaker 1: people would often think about these ingredients, they're often thought
Speaker 1: about as being these hugely luxury ingredients that often there's
Speaker 1: no cultural context to understanding that these are indigenous foods.
Speaker 1: By reinforcing and by teaching people at Cafe Alone that
Speaker 1: our community has never left our homeland, that our culture
Speaker 1: is beautiful, and that these foods that are indigenous to
Speaker 1: the East Bay into Carmel or Lewis's families from that
Speaker 1: these foods are also delicious as well. Many of them
Speaker 1: are our foods that people have eaten in their lifetime.
Speaker 1: But by showing the way that we eat as ALONEI people,
Speaker 1: the way that our ancestors traditionally have eaten, we are
Speaker 1: able to dispel a lot of negative stereotypes just by
Speaker 1: the nature of how our food is served, how it tastes,
Speaker 1: the ingredients that it are being prepared, and also how
Speaker 1: it looks. The food that we make. It's seasonal food, um,
Speaker 1: it's it's food that much of which we gather. We
Speaker 1: gather much of it in the old village areas here
Speaker 1: in the East Bay that our family has always lived in.
Speaker 1: An example of this is just earlier this week on Monday,
Speaker 1: we went to gather the yar baboina, which is a
Speaker 1: native mint that's familiar to our ancestors, which we call
Speaker 1: chatty shmen. And also when we went to gather bay
Speaker 1: and nuts, and we went to look for some mushrooms.
Speaker 1: And as we were out there, we were in an
Speaker 1: old area where our family has always lived. But it's
Speaker 1: also an old area that our family has lived before colonization. Now,
Speaker 1: when we gather these foods in this place and we
Speaker 1: prepare them in the way that we know our ancestors
Speaker 1: made them, which is having multiple different dishes together served
Speaker 1: where you get these flavors of what's growing at the time,
Speaker 1: what's seasonal, but also you get these different flavors of bitter,
Speaker 1: of sweets, of salty, of savory, all these different tastes
Speaker 1: going together at the same time. When people eat our food,
Speaker 1: they'll often ask is this indigenous? Is this the way
Speaker 1: that it's always been prepared? And for our most traditional
Speaker 1: foods will say yes, this is the way it's always
Speaker 1: been prepared. But then for our contemporary foods, we teach
Speaker 1: people this is what contemporary Aloney foods look like in
Speaker 1: the twenty one century, and by people learning about these
Speaker 1: ingredients and getting to see Aloney food, and just by
Speaker 1: the nature of us having this restaurant where for everybody
Speaker 1: that's dining with us, except for a lonely people, it's
Speaker 1: their first time generally having food that's been prepared by
Speaker 1: alonely people, and also food that's being prepared in the
Speaker 1: in the way that we have it at home. They
Speaker 1: get to see directly the sophistication that we eat with,
Speaker 1: the beauty that we eat with, the meaning that we
Speaker 1: eat with, and that destroys a lot of negative stereotypes
Speaker 1: that are out there because it lets us steer the
Speaker 1: conversation on our own terms. And also it gets to
Speaker 1: destroy those stereotypes because people get to see sophistication and
Speaker 1: elegance and beauty, and that pushes back against what's been
Speaker 1: said about our community through negative textbooks, through anthropology, through
Speaker 1: university studies of often we were painted as being this minimalistic,
Speaker 1: simple people that kind of just barely got by, you know,
Speaker 1: hunter and gatherers. They called us. And the truth is
Speaker 1: that our ancestors didn't just barely get by, but they
Speaker 1: lived in a world full of abundance and they ate well.
Speaker 1: There's been reasons for over two hundred and forty years
Speaker 1: that our family has been consistently trying to get back
Speaker 1: to that old way, and it was because our elders
Speaker 1: and us as results of that, know the value of it,
Speaker 1: know how you know how meaningful it is, and know
Speaker 1: that it's worthy of being protected and fought forth. Now,
Speaker 1: even though many of these ingredients aren't common, and even
Speaker 1: though and some of them are, but for many of
Speaker 1: these ingredients like acorn, like veniceon, like our quail that
Speaker 1: we serve, you know these often these ingredients and the
Speaker 1: way that they're prepared unfamiliar to people, but once they
Speaker 1: taste it, we hear are so often these foods are delicious.
Speaker 1: Often people will say that they're eating something that feels clean,
Speaker 1: that feels rooted. And by being able to teach people
Speaker 1: about this again on our own terms, we can steer
Speaker 1: this conversation to let them know that these ingredients are indigenous,
Speaker 1: that these are ingredients that have been loved for generations
Speaker 1: by our people, and that we loved in the future
Speaker 1: as well, and then they think about these foods in
Speaker 1: a different way and associate them more with us in
Speaker 1: our community, which is what we want. I want to
Speaker 1: ask you about land because it isn't possible to have
Speaker 1: intellectually honest conversations about native people or cuisine without talking
Speaker 1: about land. How do you source for the restaurant um
Speaker 1: and how do you all think about uh land and
Speaker 1: of course agriculture and food that comes from the land.
Speaker 1: How do you think about the of land in your work? Well,
Speaker 1: once again just going back to how how long are
Speaker 1: people have lived here and how deep the love for
Speaker 1: this land that we come from is. You know, the
Speaker 1: East space a relatively small place. You know, every bit
Speaker 1: of our existence comes from here. Our language was shaped
Speaker 1: by this place. Our our foods, you know, and our
Speaker 1: our culinary ways come from this place and have provided
Speaker 1: the foods that have nourished our our ancestors for generations.
Speaker 1: We have to be good stewards, We have to be responsible.
Speaker 1: We can't over gather, but we also have to consistently
Speaker 1: advocate for this place, Advocate for the protection of this land,
Speaker 1: advocate for a clean bay, for clean waterways. First salmon
Speaker 1: and steelheads return back to our watersheds to advocate, to
Speaker 1: make sure that our ancestors who are also in the ground,
Speaker 1: that they're protected, that our shell mountains are mortuary monuments.
Speaker 1: Knowing that every bit of who we are as a
Speaker 1: people comes from here, that we can't just pack up
Speaker 1: and move somewhere else, and we never want to either.
Speaker 1: This is this, this place is part of our of
Speaker 1: our bodies, you know, it's part of our soul. Ever
Speaker 1: moved from here, and we would never wants to, will
Speaker 1: be here till the end, but knowing that that this
Speaker 1: place also has provided all of this abundance for our
Speaker 1: people for generations. And the way that the East Bay
Speaker 1: is composed, it's composed with a series of valleys and
Speaker 1: micro climates and huge amounts of biodiversity and a massive
Speaker 1: ridge line which goes down into the East Bay flat
Speaker 1: lands into these massive marshes which then go into the
Speaker 1: Bay where salt is gathered. Now, in the old days
Speaker 1: before colonization, for thousands of years, our ancestors managed this
Speaker 1: area and through a series of controlled burns, and those burns,
Speaker 1: what they would do is they would take out the
Speaker 1: overgrowth which today leads to these big wildfires that we're
Speaker 1: seeing ever more prevalent than than we can never remember.
Speaker 1: You know, but these wildfires that are catastrophic wouldn't happen
Speaker 1: back then. They would be managed through these controlled burns
Speaker 1: which to take out the overgrowth. At the same time
Speaker 1: it stimulates the plants that our people would want to
Speaker 1: see come stronger, those oak grows, those seating plants, those
Speaker 1: being able to have those nut plants, hazel nuts and
Speaker 1: black walnuts, being able to have every type of food
Speaker 1: imagine a bold And then these micro requirements in this
Speaker 1: huge amount of biodiversity that allowed different foods to exist
Speaker 1: relatively close to one another, just within a few miles
Speaker 1: meant that meant that there was never shortages, There was
Speaker 1: never a famine in those old days when colonizers came in,
Speaker 1: when when Europeans came in and tried to change our
Speaker 1: our way of doing things and then later tried to
Speaker 1: change us or in some cases I always described me
Speaker 1: given physically kill us. Our people during that time were
Speaker 1: outlawed from doing those controlled burns, an outlaw also from
Speaker 1: gathering in that traditional way. My great grandmother, who was
Speaker 1: born on the old rancheria, she would gather. She would
Speaker 1: gather as much as she could, and we still know
Speaker 1: some of her favorite plants that she liked to gather,
Speaker 1: and we serve them at Cafe alone. So in spite
Speaker 1: of those challenges, are people also are courageous and braved
Speaker 1: and they refuse. Now, if you can imagine, you know,
Speaker 1: let's fast forward to two thousand twenty and the East Bay.
Speaker 1: It's still our home. We've never left, but it also
Speaker 1: looks much different in many areas than it did two
Speaker 1: hundred years ago, that it did even fifty years ago,
Speaker 1: than it even did ten years ago, because of all
Speaker 1: of the development that's happening, because of tech, because of gentrification,
Speaker 1: because of their vanity that's constantly encroaching on these open spaces,
Speaker 1: which in many cases are home to those village areas
Speaker 1: that our ancestors have always lived in. Because of this,
Speaker 1: we can't gather everything that our people did before. We
Speaker 1: can't go and burn those old areas, and often up
Speaker 1: until recently, when we would go up and gather, it
Speaker 1: would be even illegal for us to do so as
Speaker 1: the first people. Technically, even if people weren't being caught
Speaker 1: by cops, often people just standing there looking at us,
Speaker 1: like if we're doing something wrong, like if we're criminals
Speaker 1: just for being in our own place, and if you
Speaker 1: could imagine the disc comfort that comes from other people
Speaker 1: looking like that. But in spite of that, you know,
Speaker 1: we find the same courage that those before us did,
Speaker 1: which is not to not to stop doing these things
Speaker 1: because these ways are valuable. An example of this is
Speaker 1: when Lewis and I were gathering last Monday. We were
Speaker 1: gathering in this old area that our family has always
Speaker 1: lived always like from before colonization to now to you know,
Speaker 1: be there tomorrow too. But as we were there, there's
Speaker 1: all of these rich connections that come from being in
Speaker 1: that space. The air smells sweet of Mincia abuna and
Speaker 1: spicy bay Laurel and Tooli that's in the background in Willow.
Speaker 1: You get to be able to get these bits of
Speaker 1: clarity to how that world was back then, even if
Speaker 1: it's much more overgrown than it was two years ago.
Speaker 1: And in those bits of clarity you see the beauty,
Speaker 1: you know, and you see the meaning of all of that.
Speaker 1: It makes sense. But then going back into the flat
Speaker 1: lands of the urban area, we're also part of that
Speaker 1: world too, you know, I grew up right here. And
Speaker 1: this is also the urbanity of the East Bay also
Speaker 1: shaped who I am as well, you know, and that's
Speaker 1: part of my identity also. And so while we want
Speaker 1: our foods to be fully traditional, fully you know, connected
Speaker 1: to those old waves, we also don't want to shy
Speaker 1: away from embracing the fact that we're modern people. These
Speaker 1: foods aren't locked in a museum, they're not locked just
Speaker 1: one period of time, but they're living and they're part
Speaker 1: of two thousand twenty two. When chocolate was introduced here, um,
Speaker 1: it was something that was embraced by our community and
Speaker 1: people took a liking to pretty quickly, and people traded
Speaker 1: for it. It's um it's something that that you know,
Speaker 1: is chocolate is just good as well, you know, so
Speaker 1: you can see why like chocolates. It's something that we
Speaker 1: still love in our community today. But one thing that
Speaker 1: we wanted to do is when we're making these traditional foods,
Speaker 1: to occasionally add something that wasn't here two hundred years
Speaker 1: ago that fits the taste of our living community. The
Speaker 1: chocolate that we serve at Cafe alone, it comes from
Speaker 1: Zapotech chocolate makers from a Zapotec pueblo and in Central Mexico,
Speaker 1: San Javier de Zura. And it's a way for us
Speaker 1: to be able to keep those connections going with other
Speaker 1: indigenous communities, you know, across North America, and and also
Speaker 1: to be able to embrace something that was introduced here
Speaker 1: that wasn't here you know, before colonization, but also that
Speaker 1: is loved by our people today. You know, sometimes will
Speaker 1: make things in a modern way instead of you know,
Speaker 1: using the traditional way. But sometimes will will make the
Speaker 1: will make whatever dish we're making in the most traditional
Speaker 1: way as well, using old baskets for an example, to
Speaker 1: to be able to do the work instead of ovens
Speaker 1: and and stovetops. And this is what contemporary and learning identity,
Speaker 1: you know, what it looks like today we're talking about
Speaker 1: land increasingly difficult as there's this you know, movement by
Speaker 1: some people to go out and many people call it foraging,
Speaker 1: you know, into our our homeland without much thought and
Speaker 1: taking resources that alening people are out there looking for
Speaker 1: as well, and often it will mean that something has
Speaker 1: already been depleted by other people without those same cultural connections,
Speaker 1: and often just trying to sell it or a profit
Speaker 1: or something like that, which can of course be very
Speaker 1: very frustrating, but we still, in spite of that, you know,
Speaker 1: we we persevere and we gather as much as we can.
Speaker 1: We gather our salt from the Bay shore, from the
Speaker 1: same salt ponds that our ancestors that they shape directly
Speaker 1: with their own hands, salt ponds that were later used
Speaker 1: by Leslie and Salts and Morts and Salts to make
Speaker 1: a profit off of East based salts. But we go
Speaker 1: out there and we gather the same salts that we
Speaker 1: we know our ancestors have gathered from those same places,
Speaker 1: even if we find a big patch. Again, you know
Speaker 1: about reciprocity and relationship and doing the right thing, and
Speaker 1: when we're gathering, it would be wrong for us to
Speaker 1: over gather more than what we can, so we never
Speaker 1: over gather, and if we do gather from an area
Speaker 1: that only has a few we will gather the smallest
Speaker 1: amount possible just to savor and taste of it, not overgather,
Speaker 1: and make sure we're being responsible. Our foods are traditional
Speaker 1: foods are completely inseparable from all other aspects of our culture.
Speaker 1: Foods are given to us at our creation time. That's
Speaker 1: how it's taught to us. So those foods are deeply
Speaker 1: embedded in the specific places that we come from. So
Speaker 1: as we work with our languages, I thinks that I
Speaker 1: am both very active in the traditional languages of our families,
Speaker 1: the revival of those languages. Our languages were both not
Speaker 1: spoken for at least two generations, but we're heard by
Speaker 1: our great grandparents and spoken by that generation. But today
Speaker 1: those languages are spoken too, Keno being the language of
Speaker 1: the East Bay and that's his family and rooms, and
Speaker 1: being the language of Cormel Valley. So the revival of
Speaker 1: our languages was a model for the revival of our foods.
Speaker 1: How possible it is to have aspects of our culture
Speaker 1: that were experienced by our living elders and by our
Speaker 1: elders who were recorded, but then being able to bring
Speaker 1: them out of that memory and making them lived experiences.
Speaker 1: Our foods are very similar. This is all done because
Speaker 1: of love, love that we share both for one another
Speaker 1: and for our cultures, for our families. It all part
Speaker 1: of that moment um. So another note about land access,
Speaker 1: because obviously it's always been central to conversations about sovereign diets,
Speaker 1: and it still is today. For Vincent and Lewis sourcing
Speaker 1: ingredients from their Native land has different stakes than their
Speaker 1: other chef counterparts. Much of what they're looking for has
Speaker 1: already been taken or over gathered by non indigenous and
Speaker 1: soul for profit. Instead, they have to be creative about
Speaker 1: how they source in order for their food to tell
Speaker 1: the story they wanted to tell, like finding a quail
Speaker 1: egg farmer in a nearby county that they can develop
Speaker 1: a relationship with, or varietals of heirloom potatoes that merely
Speaker 1: approximate their own. And when they do gather, they are
Speaker 1: mindful not to take too much, to not deplete the
Speaker 1: crop so that some is left for others. In Navajo food,
Speaker 1: some of those ingredients are corn, beans and squash, and
Speaker 1: you're going to see that in a lot of other
Speaker 1: Native communities. To the Three Sisters, because those were things
Speaker 1: that you could eat pretty much all year. We have
Speaker 1: a variety of different soups and and it's kind of
Speaker 1: like to Molly's corn packed up in it's in a
Speaker 1: corn husk and baked underground. Andy Murphy is the host
Speaker 1: of the Toasted Sister podcast, a podcast that highlights the
Speaker 1: chef and farmers who worked to preserve indigenous food heritage.
Speaker 1: She's also a member of Navajo Nation. She and I
Speaker 1: discussed how displacement and poverty impediments to connecting with indigenous ingredients.
Speaker 1: As Andy tells us, she didn't grow up in a
Speaker 1: home where traditional Navajo recipes were cooked. Instead, like many
Speaker 1: households in the United States, she ate things like spaghetti
Speaker 1: and mashed potatoes. But one of my favorites, and I
Speaker 1: think it's like every every other Navajo favorite is um
Speaker 1: blue corn mush. But that's something that I didn't eat
Speaker 1: a lot when I was a kid. We didn't have
Speaker 1: a lot of that in our house. But lately since
Speaker 1: I've been really paying attention to need the food, and
Speaker 1: it was curious about, you know, the different ways you
Speaker 1: can prepare blue corn. I have bluecorn mush, and you know,
Speaker 1: every every week, a couple of times a week. You know,
Speaker 1: it's about an ingredient being really that versatile to our
Speaker 1: our palates today, inviting these ingredients and these flavors back
Speaker 1: into our our pantries. Like right now, you know, I
Speaker 1: thinking about foods now and thinking about the kind of
Speaker 1: foods that I had, you know, growing up, prepackaged. It's
Speaker 1: because we were poor. We were we were really poor,
Speaker 1: and um and I kind of feel bad for the
Speaker 1: little girl I was and and for my family back then.
Speaker 1: It's because we struggled a lot. But at least we ate,
Speaker 1: and I think that's where a lot of Native people
Speaker 1: come from. At least we ate, at least we we
Speaker 1: have food for the next day, where maybe some some
Speaker 1: people don't even have that. But yeah, because a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't make the connection between first of all,
Speaker 1: the poverty and the diet, um, with the displacement and um,
Speaker 1: and with the genocide of Native American people. But as
Speaker 1: it relates to the diet, it in particular when when
Speaker 1: people are living, you know, on reservations, they are not
Speaker 1: allowed to practice traditional food ways. They don't have access
Speaker 1: to foraging, they don't have access to hunting, they don't
Speaker 1: have access to the same types of agriculture and those
Speaker 1: eating customs, those traditions that the intergenerational knowledge is supplanted with,
Speaker 1: like McDonald's, and of course for children who grow up
Speaker 1: in this country, we all no matter what our ethnic
Speaker 1: backgrounds are or what our means are, that's like a
Speaker 1: universal thing. So there's a lot of complex factors I
Speaker 1: think in that inform the diets of Native American people,
Speaker 1: and yet now we see really disproportionately negative health outcomes
Speaker 1: as a result of this. A lot of these issues
Speaker 1: with health health disparities in in Native America are because
Speaker 1: of access to food. So it's a really big challenge
Speaker 1: and it's it and it's a challenge in a couple
Speaker 1: of ways. You can have lack of access to actual
Speaker 1: food and actual stores that have food, whether that's a
Speaker 1: convenience store, some kind of gas station, like a flea market,
Speaker 1: or like supermarket. You know, a Navaja nation, some people
Speaker 1: have to travel, make a whole day out of it
Speaker 1: just to get to the nearest grocery store. You can
Speaker 1: have that lack of access to knowledge, cooking knowledge. A
Speaker 1: lot of people really don't know how to cook, or
Speaker 1: you know a lot of people like myself, aren't connected
Speaker 1: to like the traditional food waste can't really cook some
Speaker 1: of these traditional things in my own kitchen, but you know,
Speaker 1: I'm trying. You know, some people on the Navajo nations
Speaker 1: still don't have water and electricity. I can imagine how
Speaker 1: hard that is to cook. Some people are living in
Speaker 1: a household where there's three families living there and trying
Speaker 1: to produce a really click easy foods. So one very
Speaker 1: important thing that I've learned from all of my work
Speaker 1: is we need to cook and learn how to cook
Speaker 1: and find value in that, and we need to bring
Speaker 1: these ingredients into our own kitchen. It comes down to
Speaker 1: like an individual person's food sovereignty a man I wholeheartedly
Speaker 1: agree and could not agree more. The bulk of my
Speaker 1: work for me personally as someone that's shock saw is
Speaker 1: trying to learn and understand like what is my cuisine?
Speaker 1: And I've been really thankful and very blessed to have
Speaker 1: different anties people I consider aunties or that helped me
Speaker 1: to learn more about our traditional food. Brent Read works
Speaker 1: for the two Lala Health Clay Nick, a training program
Speaker 1: that assists Native communities in reclaiming their local food systems.
Speaker 1: Is a member of the Eye Collective, a coalition of
Speaker 1: Indigenous chefs, cooks, artists, culture keepers, and savers, all dedicated
Speaker 1: to the preservation of Native food ways. She cites the
Speaker 1: origin of the Collective to an incident in two thousand
Speaker 1: seventeen when some white ladies from Portland went to Mexico,
Speaker 1: stole some recipes, and obtusely proceeded to come back to
Speaker 1: the United States and brag about what they had just
Speaker 1: done as part of the promotion for their new business venture.
Speaker 1: The business didn't last, but the audacity sufficiently ignited an
Speaker 1: already burgeoning reclamation movement in Native and Indigenous food communities.
Speaker 1: I'm a member of the Eye Collective. It was founded
Speaker 1: in two thousand and seventeen and it's essentially a collective
Speaker 1: that has Indigenous chefs, books, activists, knowledge keepers, and savers
Speaker 1: an artist. What we started off as initially there was
Speaker 1: an instant that happened years ago where these girls from
Speaker 1: Portland had famously gone down to Wahaka and had through
Speaker 1: the media kind of touted how they straight out like
Speaker 1: stole um these Aboila's recipes for tortillas and other things.
Speaker 1: And at the same time here in Seattle, there was
Speaker 1: an incident with this upper scale restaurant who had gone
Speaker 1: ahead and a culturally appropriated a bunch of close salege
Speaker 1: foods and was selling them a hundred dollars per ticket
Speaker 1: or more without actually bringing up anybody that was native
Speaker 1: to the whole process. And so they went on Twisted
Speaker 1: sister podcast um Annie Mercy's podcasts and has had this
Speaker 1: episode called not So Gental Indians Part one where they
Speaker 1: were talking about all these different things, and then after
Speaker 1: that kind of formulated the Eye Collective and our first
Speaker 1: clip series was in New York City and the initial
Speaker 1: concept of that was to be able to address the
Speaker 1: miss of Thanksgiving and also to be able to showcase
Speaker 1: our traditional suits and talk about different issues. I want
Speaker 1: to ask you about your own journey on this path
Speaker 1: because you mentioned that you are a descendant of Choctaw nation,
Speaker 1: but you weren't actually born in a tribal community. So
Speaker 1: what was it that brought you to this I guess
Speaker 1: enlightenment that you wanted to use your identity and food
Speaker 1: specifically as a as a means of returning to your
Speaker 1: ancestral homeland so to speak. Yeah, for me, um, I'm
Speaker 1: an adoptee. And for people that don't know what that
Speaker 1: means and they give like water context Essentially, starting back
Speaker 1: in the eight hundreds, there was movement in the United
Speaker 1: States to of course like remove Native people from native
Speaker 1: land um, and then to reinforce that they wouldn't be
Speaker 1: on their lands anymore. A part of that was putting
Speaker 1: them in boarding schools. In general Pratt, who was a
Speaker 1: famous general, had said that the boarding schools. The reasoning
Speaker 1: for that was to to kill the Indians staves the man.
Speaker 1: And when we talk about u S history, especially like
Speaker 1: in the past years, people are appalled that the government
Speaker 1: is imprisoning kids and taking them away from their families,
Speaker 1: and they say, this is in America, that's a d
Speaker 1: percent in America. Um, we've been doing this since the beginning.
Speaker 1: And so they would take the children away from their communities,
Speaker 1: oftentimes shipping them across the country so that if they
Speaker 1: ran away, they had no way of getting back. Because
Speaker 1: there's also a lot of kids that did run away
Speaker 1: and died trying to get back home along the way,
Speaker 1: and they literally like be and abused out in every
Speaker 1: form of abuse. UM to assimilate them. And we have
Speaker 1: a lot of issues in our communities still from that time.
Speaker 1: But starting in the forties or fifties, the government had
Speaker 1: a meeting and that meeting they said that they wanted
Speaker 1: to shift to adopting out Native kids instead of putting
Speaker 1: them in boarding schools as the money staying measure, and
Speaker 1: that it would still do that best basically do the
Speaker 1: same thing of assimilating kids into like white like euro
Speaker 1: American society. And so like as I was like digging
Speaker 1: into like rejoining native community up here, reconnecting folks back
Speaker 1: home in Oklahoma, and then all like other Chalktaw people
Speaker 1: that happened to be up here in the Seattle area,
Speaker 1: because there's actually like quite a bit of Chalktow people
Speaker 1: here in the Northwest. I started wondering, I feel like,
Speaker 1: what is the food tradition here? You know, like I
Speaker 1: do my little like Google or whatever, um like chalktok
Speaker 1: sees and of course like Tonto logo and never come
Speaker 1: up or like well actually like grape dumplings and wild
Speaker 1: onions and and eggs and banaja, which is essentially kind
Speaker 1: of like one of the tomorrow Liza they have done
Speaker 1: the wakaka, the rss beans and like corn milan. And
Speaker 1: then as I was going along, I started looking into
Speaker 1: traditional foods and food sovereignty and what it means for
Speaker 1: our communities. But never really we've unfortunately removed from our
Speaker 1: traditional foods. It really concerns me when the UN says
Speaker 1: that by twenties fifty they expect for the world food
Speaker 1: supply to completely collapse. But thinking of like Talila right now,
Speaker 1: like I went around like the nutritionists when um back
Speaker 1: when we had were here, and they have several markets
Speaker 1: here on the reservation, but when we went to every
Speaker 1: single one of them, the only thing that was fresh
Speaker 1: produce on the reservation outside of Walmart was one banana. Really,
Speaker 1: that's that's really all the fresh produce yact. This is
Speaker 1: the only non process being So that conserves me as
Speaker 1: someone that works for the diabetes program, right, and also
Speaker 1: I know I ten us relationships around food and trying
Speaker 1: to access food that to that people have had its
Speaker 1: drastic measures that can in the day to just try
Speaker 1: and send people into like get food, but there's still
Speaker 1: some pain hand in the community around that. Remember last
Speaker 1: spring in June, the salmon berries were out, my nephew,
Speaker 1: I think like two and a half and four at
Speaker 1: the time, something like that, walking them around and showing
Speaker 1: them with bushes, and I remember how excited it's how
Speaker 1: much they live up seeing those salmon berries and me
Speaker 1: like can I eat it? And we're like yeah, they
Speaker 1: would just taken off a bush. You can eat it.
Speaker 1: I swear to God there in like that candy room
Speaker 1: and Willy Wonka, And I think that's such an important memory,
Speaker 1: like something I super want to drive towards to make
Speaker 1: sure that the people where I live, are you able
Speaker 1: to have that same experience, especially kids, and have those
Speaker 1: relationships with the plants, and that way too, should something happen,
Speaker 1: that they have that knowledge of this is a plant
Speaker 1: here that will take care of us and we'll provide
Speaker 1: for us and that we can eat, or that whole
Speaker 1: sovereignty as well. One last thought from today's episode, You Know,
Speaker 1: over and over I am reminded of the absurdity of
Speaker 1: discussing Native food in antiquity. The magic of Cafe Alone
Speaker 1: in Berkeley, for instance, is that Vincent is not only
Speaker 1: in the land of his ancestors, but he also grew
Speaker 1: up in Oakland, so he is equally part of that
Speaker 1: native story and a contemporary food story happening in the
Speaker 1: Bay Area. The more we resist the urge to conflate
Speaker 1: indigenousity with antiquity, the less likely we are to perpetuate
Speaker 1: the language of erasure. And lastly, if you're a forger
Speaker 1: or have friends who are into such activities, I would
Speaker 1: encourage you all to see if there are existing efforts
Speaker 1: by Native American communities in your area who you're foraging
Speaker 1: could help support and even for those of us who
Speaker 1: don't forage. I hope we realize that penalizing of population
Speaker 1: that has always relied on wild foods is very, very wrong,
Speaker 1: particularly when we supplanted those diets with industrial food systems
Speaker 1: on reservations all across the United States that have spread
Speaker 1: illness and death to these same communities. The industrial food
Speaker 1: system continues to grow without oversight, with impunity, and with subsidies.
Speaker 1: As we are now all thinking more than ever about
Speaker 1: our diet and its origins, I hope that we can
Speaker 1: use this moment as a way to advocate for food
Speaker 1: sovereignty for native communities all throughout the United States. M
Speaker 1: Thank you to the sushi chef Shawn Sherman, Andy Murphy,
Speaker 1: host of the Toasted Sister podcast, Louis Trevino, and Vincent
Speaker 1: Medina from a lone A Cafe in Berkeley, California. And
Speaker 1: Britt Reid, chef at two Lallap in Marysville, Washington. Thank
Speaker 1: you to Simon Lavender for creating the music feature in
Speaker 1: today's episode. This is our last episode of Point of
Speaker 1: Origin season two. We will be back very soon with
Speaker 1: Point of Origin Season three, but in the meantime, why
Speaker 1: not go backwards? Catch up on the entire catalog the
Speaker 1: previous nineteen episodes. You can also follow us on i
Speaker 1: G for the very latest of all things wet Stone.
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank our I Heart Radio team for
Speaker 1: another great season, thanks to the amazing wet Stone team
Speaker 1: and our co founder Mel she I'm Steven Saderfield, the
Speaker 1: origin Forger. We'll be back soon with more from wet
Speaker 1: Stone Point of Origin podcast. The World of Food Worldwide
Speaker 1: m Hey