That's their warning to get food, huh?

There's no bells or... just honking the horn.

It's time to eat.

Oh my gosh.

I have to get this with my phone.

Here they come.

They're coming.

Oh my gosh.

This is insane.

I'm Chef Pyet Despain.

From winning the Next Level Chef to cooking for A-listers.

I've made my mark with Indigenous fusion cuisine.

I chased my dreams to LA but hit roadblocks.

I spent a year couchsurfing, searching for identity and direction.

What grounded me was food, the traditional Native American and Mexican recipes of my ancestors.

Now I'm on a mission across the Americas to reconnect with Indigenous foodways and bring their bold, beautiful flavors back to the table.

This is as close as I've ever gotten to a live bison.

Today, I'm in Kansas visiting the Prairie Band Potawatomi nation, home of the Native American side of my family.

First stop, our tribe's bison ranch, where the animal at the heart of our past is charging back into our future.

Randy Pool is our bison wrangler-in-chief.

He's taking me out to the ranch to meet the herd up close and personal.

These bison are raised to supply meat to our tribe's casino, and more importantly, to feed our elders and families.

It's delicious, nutritious, and a powerful way to reconnect with our foodways.

They came running to the truck like house cats, but don't be fooled - they're still wild.

Gorgeous, massive, and little unpredictable.

He's not going to bother you, but he's just curious.

He's curious about what we're doing and why we're here.

I treat them like the wildest cow I've ever seen.

So, you know when one is upset, and you know when one's just going to be just like this and not care.

I grew up a cowboy and I started cowboying, and it's just in my blood.

We might watch some conception happen today.

These are all bulls.

Oh they're all bulls.

So they're just prancing around.

They're just playing.

And how many pounds of meat can you get per bison?

So we take those to the locker, and a mature buffalo will bring about 400 pounds.

In the 1800s, American bison were almost completely wiped out.

This was a part of the U.S.

army's strategy to starve the tribes by slaughtering our food source.

You know, the bison have a long lineage of resilience and repopulation.

And, like, a similar story to our people.

With only 150 left, some ranchers save the bison by crossbreeding with cows.

Turns out the ones I'm looking at are about 1% cattle.

These bison support the tribe's sustainability program, orchestrated by community manager Maggie Adame-Wood.

She's donating some bison that I can cook to fundraise for the Boys and Girls club at tomorrow's Powwow.

Maggie is someone who I can tell takes her job seriously.

And her working in a place where she can educate others on how to utilize bison and how to cook it and how to source it, and be a provider of that, I think for her is her way of reconnecting with her roots.

And giving that knowledge to other people.

Well, again, thank you for agreeing to donate some of your inventory to the Boys and Girls Club so we can cook it up for tomorrow.

Yeah, that's going to be really special.

To be able to taste your cooking at the Powwow.

So is this the vault?

Yes.

This is where we keep the bison.

So this is like a chef's dream right here.

You can tell the difference on the bison and the beef.

Oh, it's different color.

So this is bison.

Yeah.

Oh you see that richness?

Okay.

This is the beef.

So this is all the donation here.

Yep.

Oh, nice.

Okay.

Awesome.

So, hey, I'm so excited - 50 pounds of bison!

I plan to use this bison to prepare a traditional meal to serve to the community tomorrow.

This feels like a homecoming for me.

The Potawatomi Reservation in Kansas is where my family's indigenous roots are.

But for my mom, she wasn't always connected.

She was adopted by a Mexican and Croatian couple, far from tribal life.

It wasn't until she was pregnant with me that she found her way back to the rez and back to her roots.

I live all the way in Los Angeles you know.

And I get to come back every once in a while throughout the year to spend time here at the Boys and Girls Club or at the Elder Center.

And, and just being in that environment, is very special.

You want to want this apron to put on?

Yeah.

Here, I'll put it over you.

Today, my family is helping me in the kitchen.

Grandpa.

My mom.

Grandpa's the hunter and the butcher in the family.

So he gives us all kinds of goodies during the buck season and doe season.

He's got all kinds of furs and teeth and skulls all over his house.

We're cooking for 150 people here at the Boys and Girls Club.

And I get to come back here and feed some traditional food to our tribal members at a Powwow, when typically you only have frybread or a bunch of hot dogs and hamburgers and sugary things.

This isn't just any Powwow.

It's the biggest of the year: 16 tribes, over 500 competitive dancers.

Cooking for 150 people is going to take all day.

And we actually get to offer something that's full of nutrition, full of culture, heritage that comes from our own backyard.

You can just do them like this.

Okay.

That's nice.

Yeah.

And.

Yeah.

And then do more like an angle.

Okay.

And you'll have to make less cuts.

Okay.

Great.

I won't make you cry this time.

Don't make me cry, Chef Ramsay.

During around elementary school, She would put these pasta salads together.

I know one in particular wasn't very good.

But we ate it anyway.

We pretended it was good.

Yeah.

Oh.

What?

It wasn't good?

(laughing) Ouch.

The main thing that people don't understand is that, that silver looking meat?

That's membrane.

And it's tough.

And I take it and I fillet it off.

And that's why everybody says, "man, your meat's so tender."

I said, well, that's the reason.

Get rid of that membrane.

Many Potawatomi people today don't know how to cook with bison.

And that's part of what we're doing here is to bring back that ancestral knowledge.

It means a lot because I'm learning a lot from her.

So, like you said, it comes into a circle where I taught her the basics, you know, boiling water and things like that.

And now she's teaching me how to cook.

I didn't even know how to cook a steak.

And then she was telling me how to do the garlic and what temperature to have the oil, and I never knew that stuff.

I just threw it in there.

Bam, bam, bam, bam.

That's a lot of bison.

I love cooking with bison because you get more protein per ounce than you would with beef.

There are differences in cooking it because it is lean.

And you do have to think about if you're going to cook it.

You can't apply it the same way that you totally would, the same way as beef, because it will dry out a lot faster.

So we're going to do low and slow, make it nice and tender.

Get that flat top super hot.

So it's going to give us a nice good sear.

Bison meat is delicious.

But you could totally do this with chuck beef, if that's what you have.

Once it sears, it's able to lock in some moisture.

It'll make it nice and tender.

You can see some of it already kind of browning on the corners.

Now, like I said, I don't want to cook it too much because we're going to cook this in the oven as well.

So I might start taking it off the heat.

I owe all of my strength and courage, I have to say, I get a lot of that from watching my mom be strong and confident in courage.

And she may not see it in herself sometimes, but I have seen her pick herself up time and time and time again.

I am who I am today, because of her.

This homecoming is an especially emotional one for us.

We lost my biological grandmother earlier this year.

Back when my mom was pregnant with me, they found their way back to each other.

And it was my grandmother more than anyone who helped guide us home, to our people and to our way of life.

My mom shared how happy and proud she was.

Having her help me raise my daughter, made things so much, I don't know, it was really special to be able to share that with my mother.

Having my dad here to be a part of it, it makes my my heart just swell with joy.

Family makes everything richer and this stew is no exception.

Tomorrow at the Powwow, it won't just be food we're sharing.

It'll be a piece of home.

I really want these onions to become nice and translucent.

Nice little brown on it.

That's flavor.

And then I'll do the same process with our other veggies.

These have a natural kind of sugar and sweetness to them that comes out when you cook them on high heat like this.

So I like to toast my spices a little bit.

So this is rosemary, beef bouillon.

It really just brings out like a little toasty flavor and fragrance to them.

Next I'm going to add in some tomato paste.

I'm adding some water to this.

We're moving along.

We're moving along.

Things are coming together.

I'm 100% sure tomorrow we're going to see the community smiling and happy that they're going to go to the Powwow and be able to eat a good meal.

And also, it's free.

And it was harvested on our tribal land.

They're going to be like, whoa, this is so cool.

Yum.

Dang.

Yay!

We done did it!

So I have some wild rice.

And wild rice isn't actually a grain.

It's an aquatic plant that grows from water from the Great Lakes, which is the region my tribe is originally from.

So I think, you know, incorporating it in today's dish was super special and important because we get to marry the bison in with this wild rice.

And hopefully we'll reawaken some of those ancestral cravings, that I know some of our elders will probably have.

Now, to finish up that stew.

We'll add water to make a rich broth from all the bouillon that I put in with the spices.

Then it's into the oven for four hours to cook, and it'll be ready to serve at the Powwow tomorrow.

How are you doing today?

How about you?

You eat bison?

Yeah, I was really excited to serve you all today.

How you doing today?

My love language is, the gift of food, obviously acts of service.

And so I was really looking forward to connecting with the community again, spending quality time with my family.

They've got three of them, Grandpa.

And just seeing all the familiar faces that I usually see throughout the year.

This is like, you know, my one big opportunity to feed the community.

Free for the community.

Thank you!

So we are giving this out for free, but we are accepting donations for the Boys and Girls Club.

Thank you so much for your donation.

Do you like to cook at home now, or no?

Well, I hope you guys enjoy this.

Thank you so much.

Wow.

The wild rice is really good.

So tender.

And then the bison is really tender.

The meat.

Bison is hard to get tender.

Down in the dance arena, 500 dancers are about to kick things off with what's called grand entry.

I'm happy to be joining with my family to watch.

We welcome each and every one of you here to the grand entry.

It is time.

Ladies and gentlemen.

It is Saturday night live.

Little soldiers!

Grand entry!

On every episode of Spirit Plate, I learn something new about other tribes.

But I also learned a lot about myself.

And there are a lot of moments of reflection that I have along the journey.

And my moment of reflection during this visit was definitely how strong our community is, and how important community is.

And how important it is to feel like you're a part of something bigger.

And I find that in my roots of my family, my community, and they're always going to be there to help put me back on the right direction.

For me, the prayer and the meaning behind this particular visit was community, and reflection and making sure that I am utilizing both of those to keep me grounded.