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Last year, 51���� invited some top North American Indigenous chefs to recreate the cuisine of their ancestors.

In honor of Native American Heritage month, see how these culinary artists put a modern spin on ancient food traditions.

Watch videos of the chefs in action:

Originally Published July 21, 2020

You can go to nearly any major American city and find a pizza, Chinese food, or burger restaurant. Other offerings may likely include French, Greek and Thai food. 

What you won’t often see is a restaurant featuring Indigenous food. That would be the fruits and greens, wild rice, turkey, bison and seafood that the country’s earliest inhabitants gathered, hunted and cultivated.

There’s a growing movement to change that, as Indigenous chefs from around North America—seeking fresh, local and healthy foods—channel their ancestors’ innovation for survival. 51���� recently invited some of the country’s top Native chefs to talk about their food and culture, and to cook some of their favorite dishes.

The seven-part “Resilience Recipes” series features chefs ranging from two-time James Beard winner Sean Sherman, who is Oglala Lakota Sioux, to former PBS cooking show host Loretta Barrett Oden, who belongs to the Citizen Potawatomie Nation. Each presents a dish from their regions, which include the Northeast, Midwest and Pacific Northwest.

Food allergy sufferers take heart: You won’t find gluten or dairy in most dishes. Wild mushrooms, berries and spring onions abound, as do corn, squash and beans, the “three sisters” of Native cooking. The meals include mussels from San Francisco; organic turkey meatballs from Minnesota and an elegant corn and berry dessert from Oklahoma.

 “One of the things we’re trying to fight is the historicizing and marginalizing of American Indians,” says Courtney Lewis, a Cherokee Nation citizen and 51����’s Andrew W. Mellon Visiting Professor of Justice, Equality and Community in Anthropology this past spring. “So many people see us as situated in the past. But there’s such vitality in Indigenous people and Indigenous food. There’s excitement today about what’s going on, and how innovative and delicious Indigenous cuisine is. This is very much a living practice.”

At a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has hit Native Americans, Black and Latinx communities especially hard, the chefs have provided their communities with healthy, immune-boosting foods. There’s a strong service component, from feeding homeless and newly unemployed people to taking care of elders—a tenet of Native values.

The chefs use ingredients gathered from back yard gardens, open fields and dense woods. Coastal chefs rely heavily on the sea. They buy their food from local stores, farmers markets and family farms. Sustainability—only taking what you need and replenishing—remains a core principle.

It’s real food, ethically sourced, meant for real people to cook.

“This is a conversation Native people have had for a long time,” Lewis said. “The weaknesses in the U.S. food supply chain that COVID-19 exposed are something Native people have long been aware of. By using local ingredients—including reclaiming some of the plants commonly called “weeds” in non-Indigenous society—we’re avoiding the breakdowns in the food supply, supporting ourselves and remaining resilient health wise.”

Reclamation and Resilience

Early in the spring semester, 51���� hosted in-person panelists for Lewis’s class, “American Indian Nations: Pressing Topics in Indian Country Today.” (Two subsequent panels occurred virtually.)

In February, she and Rose Stremlau, an associate professor in the history and gender studies departments, accompanied students on a trip to the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

Their group visited “The Great Inka Road: Engineering an Empire” exhibit. They also toured the Renwick gallery exhibition, “Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists.”