in South Deerfield, Massachusetts. He now works on the Share Our Strength campaign, which helps feed children. Such assistance in and among Native people is nothing new. Duran points to a long tradition of commu- nities helping each other, whether to survive the winter or just get to the end of the month. After the pandemic hit, Duran organized
volunteers from the collective to pick crops at local farms. “There are a lot of farmers in west- ern Massachusetts,” says Duran. “They grow food for people to eat, not to spoil in the field.” The gleaners from the collective pick
crops the farmers can’t harvest themselves. People invest their time and labor, which builds trust between the farmers and the volunteers; no money changes hands. The crops—50,000 pounds of food in the organi- zation’s first year—go to community centers or food banks. “We can pick and transport crops quick-
ly, so people who must get their food at those places can get market-quality food the same day it’s picked, not poor quality, leftover food,” says Duran. “That maintains people’s dignity.” In Minnesota, Diné Chef Brian Yazzie
of the Gatherings Cafe at the Minneapolis American Indian Center works with volun- teers to develop #FeedingOurElders, a non- profit organization that provides healthy lunches using Native foods five days a week for Indigenous
elders. Last spring, this
organization and others became even more needed as Minneapolis took a double hit. “The pandemic ripped off the social safety
net and laid bare the disproportionate vulner- abilities of Native peoples,” says Dana Thom- pson (Wahpeton-Sisseton/Mdewakanton Da- kota,), co-founder and executive director of the North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NATIFS). Then, during the protests following the death of George Floyd during his arrest on May 25, 2020, in Minne- apolis, many grocery stores and pharmacies in the city were destroyed. Thompson says, “We jumped into action to fill the void.” Thompson and her colleague Sean Sher-
man (Oglala Lakota), founder of the res- taurant Owamni by The Sioux Chef and co-founder of NATIFS, have been working to turn out 7,000 meals a day for distribu- tion to elders and others in need in six tribal communities. Using local producers as much as possible, Sherman created and tested reci- pes. His team then developed packaging that would withstand freezing, thawing and trans- portation. When the food was delivered, they made sure that recipients had a two-week supply on hand should they test positive for COVID-19 and have to shelter in place. “During the current pandemic situa-
tion, we’ve witnessed first-hand how unsta- ble our industrial food system is and how quickly those systems broke down. Access to
nutritional foods is critical, especially during a crisis. But we’ve seen access to food itself become limited—making our efforts to pro- duce and distribute nutritional meals all the more important to our tribal communities,” says Sherman. “Our mission is to decolonize the food sys-
tem,” he says. “This means giving as many peo- ple as possible access to Indigenous foods and the knowledge needed to operate Indigenous food-focused enterprises. It also means a need for more traditional growers, foragers and oth- er culture bearers as demand increases.” With every meal provided, Sherman and
Thompson are also helping sustain Native knowledge by incorporating foods that each tribe traditionally used. They use only Native ingredients bought, as much as possible, from Indigenous vendors. That means eliminating foods derived from Europe and Asia—no wheat, dairy, beef, pork, chicken or refined sugar. Instead, they serve meats such as bi- son, rabbit, duck and turkey and plants like squash, beans, corn, wild rice, sweet potatoes and cranberries. They are also launching an Indigenous food lab and developing a curric- ulum to spread their knowledge of food and its preparation so that tribal members can make their own culturally appropriate foods. Those foods offer more than just a
connection with the precontact past, says Thompson. “They have lots of anti-inflam- matory flavonoids and low-glycemic con- tent, which can help reduce diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity.”
NOURISHING TRADITIONS
The varied responses of all of these Native chefs fit with tradition while making sense as business survival strategies, says Court- ney Lewis (Cherokee), an associate profes- sor of anthropology at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. “Any chef who works with hyper-localized ingredients has to be adaptive and creative,” says Lewis, who has studied Native small businesses and food heritage. Historically, winter’s food supply varied
with geography, says Lewis. American Indi- ans could gather food throughout the winter in the south, but farmers, hunters and forag- ers in all regions could dry or preserve food harvested from other seasons. Fish could be salted or smoked, meat dehydrated and corn, beans or squash dried. Even though potatoes were domesticat-
Sean Sherman, The Sioux Chef, forages for wild foods throughout the year for his Native recipes. Here is searching for ramps (wild onions) in Osceola, Wisconsin.
32 AMERICAN INDIAN WINTER 2020
ed in the Andes 4,500 years ago, they didn’t reach North America until the Spanish
PHOTO BY DANA THOMPSON
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