From frybread to pashofa, food is essential for preserving culture and history in Indigenous communities, but representation of this cuisine is sparse across the nation.
This lack of representation is present even in Oklahoma, which has the country’s second highest Native American/Alaska Native population, with 38 federally recognized Indigenous nations within the state. The Yuchi Tribe is headquartered in Oklahoma but is not federally recognized.
The 39 Restaurant, which uses traditional Native American ingredients and recipes, opened in July at the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City. Sarah Brown, front of house manager, said the restaurant keeps its menu as traditional as possible.
“We try to keep it precolonial, so we don't serve beef, chicken or pork and we try to keep all of our ingredients fresh,” Brown said. “We use a lot of farmers and producers, so everything kind of comes from the Oklahoma area. We even try to get a lot of our wines to be … at least native to America.”
Not only does the 39 Restaurant serve food, but Brown said they also hope to educate the public on Native American culture.
“We have a lot of student programs,” Brown said. “We even have a garden outside of the restaurant where students can come and they learn about the different plants that we grow.”
Farina King, a Navajo Nation citizen and OU Native American studies professor, said the Native American tribes in Oklahoma today include many different nations that were forced onto reservations far from their homelands. This removal complicates their identity, which is deeply connected to their environment.
“Oklahoma is complicated in that you have people who had their origin stories and their indigeneity tied to different lands, and because of upheavals, forced removals and impacts of settler colonialism, they're forced to leave their homelands,” King said. “Oklahoma has this gathering of many peoples, and in that way, they literally carry the seeds, the fires from their homelands and teachings.”
These identity struggles impact the foods and diet practices of Indigenous peoples, King said, as food practices are deeply tied to Native nations’ cultures.
“Indigenous peoples have had these deep relationships with the lands, the waters, since time immemorial, over all these generations,” King said. “These are people who know about sustainable ways of life and also have these ongoing relationships with ecosystems that food is a part of.”
King said Native identity and food are also connected to Indigenous people’s spirituality.
“(Indigenous foods) are essential to people's sense of identity, their well-being, who they are, and also connecting and understanding the ties to ceremony, to spiritual ways of these specific Indigenous nations and communities,” King said.
Within the past year, government funding cuts have added strain to Indigenous people attempting to carry on their food traditions, including the termination of a federal program to provide funding for tribal and territorial governments to buy food from local producers.
The grant program funded hundreds of food banks across the country including 90 that served Native nations, helping to supply fresh and nutritional food.
The halting of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits during last year’s historic government shutdown also disproportionately affected Indigenous populations in the U.S., with about 25% of households relying on federal food assistance.
While full SNAP benefits were restored in November, a large proportion of Indigenous people who live in low-income areas still struggle with food insecurity.
Still, King believes there needs to be more support for Indigenous food practices, specifically with individual production and sustainability.
“There needs to be a lot more support for Native food ways. But more than that, it's tied to where the food comes from, and what are the kinds of partnerships or the resources to support growing healthy foods,” King said. “And there's certain Native nations that are working on exciting initiatives.”
There are many programs in Oklahoma to aid in preserving traditional Native cuisine and fighting food insecurity, including those run by the Osage Nation and the Muscogee Creek Nation.
Despite having a large Native population, King said finding restaurants that serve traditional foods in Oklahoma is difficult outside of reservations.
“You would think for Oklahoma, we'd have a lot more (restaurants), and we do have a lot of upcoming newer chefs that are Indigenous, and they're getting their name out there,” Brown said. “But we definitely want there to be more inclusivity with Native American food, and we want everybody to be able to try it.”
One of the leading figures of this movement is Sioux chef Sean Sherman, who is working to popularize Indigenous food with his Minneapolis restaurant Owamni.
According to King, many Indigenous chefs have started indigenizing modern cuisine, blending traditional food practices with innovative new ideas.
“There's all these different Indigenous communities and their chefs who are being innovative. And they're knit. They're intertwining. They're interweaving ancestral practices of food ways with modern cuisine,” King said. “This is a big movement right now.”
Brown said the movement is meant to preserve traditional Indigenous food practices, and the loss of these customs would be a continuation of the loss of Indigenous culture and history. She said traditional cuisine is tied to tribes’ stories and history.
“If we lose traditional Indigenous food practices, you would lose that history for each tribe and all of the stories behind it for them because a lot of the dishes that we sell and everything (has) a story,” Brown said. “If we start losing those and that history for those cultures goes away, then people won’t know about the true beginning of what America was and how it was built.”
King said keeping these traditions also means being open to change and accepting the connection between food and the human experience.
“What it means to be a good relative for everyone is to continue these practices, even if they change in some way over time as they're influenced by various aspects, new foods being introduced,” King said. “We are dynamic.”
OU American Indian Student Association President Alexandra Murray said introducing students to traditional Indigenous food is a focus of the organization.
The organization hosts an annual event called Native Feast, catering Native American food from Oklahoma tribes.
“The feast is open to everybody on campus and we put it out to Indigenous communities off-campus as well,” Murray said. “We have tons of non-Indigenous people coming and trying different foods.”
For Murray, Indigenous food practices are more about community than the actual food.
“For our community, so much of food and food prep is about your own community, if that makes sense. We try to make sure that everyone around us is fed and taken care of,” Murray said. “There's a Native church in town who provides dinner for all of the Indigenous students on campus on Monday nights, and while that's not traditional food, it's still that practice of taking care of your community and making sure that everyone is fed.”
This tie to community is what makes Murray so worried about the loss of traditional Indigenous food practices.
“Without that, you kind of lose a sense of community,” Murray said. “Community is what we thrive off of. It's what keeps us going.”
This story was edited by Anusha Fathepure and Natalie Armour. Tori Pham, Hannah Lambert and Mary Ann Livingood copy edited this story.
