Before factory farming and mass food production, foraging, hunting and sustainable cultivation was the order of the day.

Free range, wild game like turkey, elk and bison was pretty much the typical diet for most of the original people of North America.

Well, you've probably seen several trends of people going organtic and returning back to nature.

Native people were already living this clean and healthy lifestyle long before it was something to post about on social media.

But knowing that there's so much misinformation out there in the pop culture landscape about native foodways, I'm curious.

What is Indigenous food sovereignty look like today?

I'm your host, Cheyenne Bearfoot and this is Sovereign Innovations.

How do our ancient practices translate into modern dishes?

I went to Wahpepah’s Kitchen in Oakland, California, to speak with owner and chef Crystal Wahpepah of the Kickapoo Nation in order to find out.

Food sovereignty, its just a university word, it’s really food is medicine.

It really takes place within this restaurant.

When it comes to traditional foods, when it comes to bison, this is like one of the first meats.

And so I really wanted to try to have all game meats in the restaurant only for a purpose is because I want people to see what meats are from this land.

For me personally, I always think about what the animal eats and what they represent and when it comes to the bison, they represent so, so many different tribes.

So I add a little dry blueberries in there.

Yes.

In Meatballs?

Yes.

Because if you think about what the animal eat.

So a lot of game animals, they love eating berries.

Oh I did not know that.

Yeah.

And so they love like there's times when you go foraging and things you see a lot of berries, Always leaves some for the animal.

Of course, culinary chefs can adapt the complexities of multiple food items into an exquisite dish.

But what if I told you that type of resourcefulness was embedded into every aspect of our communities.

Our ancestors, management of what today can be considered waste, bones, hides, eyeballs, guts, in part because of their understanding of the earth and its cycles, according to Indigenous environmental cosmology, Native people coexist with nature and living things and serve as stewards of the natural world.

That's not just some summer of love hippie mumbo jumbo that your grandparents were preaching.

Okay.

I mean, like, where do you think they appropriated that from anyway?

And specifically for bison.

John Lame Deer put it this way.

The buffalo was part of us, his flesh and blood being absorbed by us until it became our own flesh and blood, our clothing, our tipis, everything we needed for life came from the buffalo's body.

It was hard to say where the animals ended and the human began.

Prior to colonization, the Bay served as a channel of communication for various tribes.

Villages congregated along creeks systems and river mouths.

The Ohlone people would cross back and forth across the bay.

Today, the land looks much different, but the inhabitants are still here.

Growing up here in a urban native community, it's something where I felt it was very necessary to have.

My kids who are California native.

It's very important that they see this and they partake in this for the future generation.

So that's where the sovereignty takes play of us serving foods that are sourced from other native communities.

So I feel it's very important for people to see where our foods come from and that we're still here and we still exist and how vibrant and beautiful our foods are.

It's kind of like your your role is like the matriarch, you know, of the family to just provide that nourishment.

Now that my grandparents and, you know, I have one more living aunt that's left.

She's one of our cooks.

But a lot of family members were coming to me after they had passed to come make like our corn soups, you know, different dishes like that.

And that's where, you know, I felt like, okay, it was passed on to me.

When did you start cooking?

Like, how long have you been cooking?

Probably at age six or seven.

My grandfather, he was a hunter and so when my grandmother, she would always cook.

And so this is something where I kind of knew at a very young age what I would set out to do.

This one right here really reminds me of my grandma.

And so I always try to keep the Kickapoo Chili on the menu.

And even in the summertime, you'll be amazed how many people want chili in the summer.

I want chili.

I am one of those people.

I want Kickapoo chili in the summer.

And so it kind of like it's like having your grandmother here, you know?

And so this is an honor to her.

The deep connection between water, land and people creates an Indigenous diet that's composed of both cultivated and wild foods.

These foods vary depending on the landscape of the area and the relationship each tribe has that food item when it comes into flavoring, I feel that this accommodates that.

I just do things that I like to eat.

I really try to source all from Native American owned businesses.

And this is where the part where to me personally it gets really fun.

And because there's so many and they're not really recognized as much as we see other basic stuff that you see in the stores and things like that.

And I've been really fortunate to work with all of them because we're moving according to the season and according to what our farms offer.

On some levels, it has to be a little challenging to continually be shifting.

I didn't come from like a restaurant style background.

Then I would think it would be really, really challenging.

Instead it's something.

Yeah, it is.

And it's kind of like, okay, let's do this, let's do that.

So that's why sometimes if you come to Wahpepah’s Kitchen you'll see different things on the menu.

And I think that this is showing people what's in season and we're just not going to move into the part you know, we're going to provide stuff that are not in season because that's not healthy.

Eating by season helps maintain the ecological balance, which we know is part of that Indigenous environmental cosmology I mentioned earlier.

Food transforms beyond just a need.

It deepens the social, physical and emotional connections for many tribes.

It links food to ceremony and the natural cycles of the earth.

For example, in the Ohlone tribes, acorns are considered a staple dish.

This is in part due to their storability, and resource abundance because of the density of trees in California's landscape.

The most popular dish is acorn mush, which may not sound like mush to achieve a sweetness similar to peanut butter.

It goes through a leaching process to remove the natural tannins, which taste very bitter.

Acorns are ground into flour first and then soak under water to remove the tannic acid.

When it comes to knowing, I mean really knowing how to handle food and where it comes from, it impacts the communities it's being served to.

There's nothing like having a food runner to come and serve your food, knowing exactly where their food comes from and how it's served.

You know, sometimes we'll have we have acorns, for instance.

My kids are California native, They have a connection with that.

And you'll be served an acorn.

And they can actually fill you in where from the traditional parts of that.

If you notice, I have a lot of berries I love, I love foraging and I love picking berries going out there.

And it reminds me of the happy times as I'm growing up at the same time, It reminds me of just how beautiful our foods are.

Well, there were plenty of other game to hunt and fish, other foods needed to be gathered too: Berries, nuts, fruits, herbs.

Mix them all together and you get an amazing meal.

Indigenous communities that practiced were sure to not take more than what they needed because those foods that they gathered were also ingested by the animals around them.

And so this is where I find, especially here at Wahpepah’s Kitchen, where I find everybody does come here to gather.

If people don't have those connections, the berries or the blue corn or even the bison, for instance, or even the deer.

And when they do come, it really has those triggers, those beautiful memories, as if they were in their grandmother's place.

You know, you could be a home away from home, and that's why this place is here.

Initiatives like this kitchen here are just one effort to bring traditional recipes back to popularity, whether it's bluecorn mush, chokecherry pudding, smoked salmon or bison stew.

These recipes and these foodways are key to how Indigenous peoples have survived and maintained cultural connections throughout the centuries.

I guess for Indigenous communities, innovation starts in the kitchen.

Okay.

While I'd love to stay and drop some more food sovereignty knowledge on y'all.

I'm very hungry after watching Chef Wahpepah throwdown in the kitchen.

Until next time.