Decolonize Your Diet
This Thursday is Thanksgiving. It’s a much-mythologized holiday that is rooted in colonialism, imperialism, and genocide. We recognize that this time of year is a perfect opportunity for reflection, mourning, and learning.
However, we also recognize that it is a four-day weekend for most people, which makes it a perfect time to gather with family and friends for fun, fights, and food. We at The Chapter House are excited to help you Decolonize whatever your dinner may look like with our favorite Native chefs, recipes, and more.
TCH (The Cooking House)
We asked a couple of our favorite home chefs to whip up some simple and delicious traditional dishes for your dinner table, too!
Navajo Tea with Shanna Yazzie
Blue Corn Mush with Isabella Robbins
More Chefs
Sean Sherman (Oglala Lakota) is the founder and CEO chef of The Sioux Chef, a team of Anishinaabe, Mdewakanton Dakota, Navajo, Northern Cheyenne, Oglala Lakota, and Wahpeton-Sisseton Dakota chefs, ethnobotanists, food preservationists, adventurers, foragers, caterers, event planners, artists, musicians, food truckers and food lovers. It is based in the St. Paul/Minneapolis area.
The Sioux Chef and Sherman have been featured on PBS Newshour, Time, and The Splendid Table. We recommend checking out this list of 10 Essential Native American Recipes on the New York Times. The official recipe book The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen makes a great holiday gift, too!
“We are committed to revitalizing Native American Cuisine and in the process we are re-identifying North American Cuisine and reclaiming an important culinary culture long buried and often inaccessible.”
M. Karlos Baca (Tewa/Dinè/Nuuciu) is an Indigenous Foods Activist from the Southern Ute Nation, founder of Taste of Native Cuisine, and a cofounder of the I-Collective. Taste of Native Cuisine was created alongside the Southern Ute Cultural Center and Museum to promote traditional Indigenous Foodways in the community. It has since grown over to include work with Tribal Nations across the country.
I-Collective has representation of Indigenous knowledge keepers of 18 tribes, from Oaxaca to First Nations, and uses Indigenous Foodways as a medium to combat structural white supremacy and continued warfare against Indigenous people.
This holiday season, we recommend this recipe for Coal Roasted Gete Okosomin Bisque.
Josh Nez (Diné) is the sous chef at Three Sisters Kitchen, a non-profit community food space in the heart of downtown Albuquerque and a place where delicious, affordable, and locally produced foods come together to nourish the community from the ground up. He cooks food as medicine for the people to feed their bodies and minds to live a strong and healthy lifestyle also known as hozho.
Lamb with Three Sisters succotash and blue corn mush by Josh Nez featured on Episode 36 of Toasted Sisters Podcast. (Photo by Andi Murphy).
Andrea Murdoch (Indigenous Andean) is the chef and owner of Four Directions Cuisine in Denver, CO. She centers her focus on food that connects her to her roots but also utilizes the local harvest. With education, experience and heart, Andrea creates dishes that tie together Indigenous ingredients of both North and South America while keeping a global perspective on food.
Make sure to follow Four Directions Cuisine on Facebook for more North/South fusions. For more information about Chef Andrea, watch HuffPost’s feature here.
Her recipe for Chilled Amaranth Corn Pudding is perfect for a decolonized dinner.
More Resources
Finally, we’ve compiled a list of experts, podcasts, groceries, books, and breweries that we love and you can follow for cooking resources all year round.
The Traditional Foods Program at Utah Diné Bikeyah is an initiative geared towards restoring Native American traditional food practices, including wild foods, hunting rituals, and traditional farming practices.
(Photo is from the second annual Indigenous Dinner hosted by Utah Diné Bikeyah. Photo by Elizabeth Hoover.)
The Toasted Sister Podcast is hosted by Andi Murphy. Each month, she talks with 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 communities to their origins and traditions. We especially liked Episode 67: Indigenous American + African American Food. Support her on Patreon!
Bow & Arrow Brewing Co. is a Native American woman-owned and managed craft brewery in Albuquerque, NM. While currently only providing to-go orders during the pandemic, you can still buy sweet Bow and Arrow merch for all your friends and family. (Photo from Bow & Arrow Brewing Co.)
The book that started it all, Decolonize Your Diet: Plant-Based Mexican-American Recipes for Health and Healing by Luz Calvo and Catriona Rueda Esquibel is more than a cookbook. It redefines what is meant by "traditional" Mexican food by reaching back through hundreds of years of history to reclaim heritage crops as a source of protection from modern diseases of development.
Ndée Bikíyaa, The Peoples' Farm is a farm and grocery store by and for the White Mountain Apaches. The mission of Ndée Bikíyaa is to restore personal and cultural health among the White Mountain Apache Tribe through agriculture. We love their Acorn Stew video and know you will, too!