Native American Food Sovereignty, Explained
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- Опубліковано 1 жов 2024
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Today, many Native Americans live in food apartheid and insecurity.
But it wasn't always this way. Once, their lands were abundant with nutritious food sources-corn, bison, potatoes, squash, and more.
So… what happened?
Forced relocation meant that entire Indigenous food systems were ripped away. This triggered a public health crisis and forced a dependence on government rations that just can’t compare.
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to an Irish-American whose family came to the americas because of the potato "famine" the term food apartheid is really perfect and should be more widely used.
From what I understand, Ireland is only now recovering it's pre-famine population.
Yeah it's only through learning about Palestine that I found out that "famine" is just a word to make "intentional starvation" sound like some natural phenomenon rather than a colonial weapon
@@evanbelcher my knowledge of the potato famine made that connection for me as well when they started saying "famine" in Gaza.
@@TomTasker oh thank god the "" representend that. When you put those things ob famine i thought you thinked that event was fabricated or aomething, just like what tankies do with the starving people under urrs
@@naolidecomisso4108 i know english is hard but i'm glad you tried your best there little buddy, here's a gold star for you 🌟
I really appreciate Indigenous people preserving their history and showing off their cuisines. In Oakland CA, there is a restaurant called Wahpehpah’s kitchen that highlights Native American cuisine to share and teach about the food systems of Indigenous people. The food there is really tasty too.
Thank you for the mention, I am going to have to check that place out one of these days
Hilarious, as the founding of the Bay Area is based upon the “49ers” literally committing genocide on the natives of CA. Hundreds of thousands murdered. The history is there if you bother to care.
in Berkeley there’s also mak-'amham/Cafe Ohlone, run by members of the Ohlone nation, the original stewards of the Bay Area
Indigenous to what? Earth? Like all of us? You think they sprung up out of geysers like magic with some sort of special right over the continent? It was tons of different tribes, peoples, even other races, all killing each other for land for thousands upon thousands of years on these grounds. What preserved history are you talking about? There’s no written records from them, they don’t even know the names of the tribes before them, it’s all lost history, so much war and death with no records… all they can speak to is recent times and speculation on what things used to be like, which seems to be conveniently “we are spiritually superior, we understand the universe and life, we’re so nice and awesome and honorable and oh by the way the whole continent is ours cause chief Smokey nuts did a rain dance over a mountain or wtf ever.
“Indigenous” ha. They killed for and took their land like everyone else on Earth. We are all indigenous to Earth and if you give up ground you only get it back by taking it. Welcome to Earth.
“Preserving history” yeah that didn’t start til white people showed them how to. It was all word of mouth and trippy looking cow drawings in caves.
There was no “indigenous cuisine”. It was whatever the earth provided in that location and time and was subject to change constantly, methods of preparing food varied wildly and changed constantly.
OOH I’m close by I have to go check it out thank you
That 'Ecocide' of the now critically endangered River Cane (which was bamboo!) was one of the reasons for dust bowls, habitat loss for keystone predators like red woves and panthers (especially Florida panthers, a critically endangered subspecies of mountain lion) major flooding and soil erosion. There were so many things about Turtle Island that made it a literal paradise and the Colonists just decimated it then raized what was left, burned it, salted it and deficated all over it to mark it as theirs.
There have been so many ecosides thanks to white settlers and white authorities over the past 500 years..... I wonder if we'll ever be able to make up for it
There have been so many eco-cides over the past 500 years in North America . I hope it's not too late to turn them around. It will probably take at least another 200 years to do so.
There was definitely some sort of twisted power and gratification that the colonists felt when decimating those things.
Not only that, but Cane Break ecosystems were home to the Carolina Parakeet, which despite the name was common throughout the south and up into the Great Lakes region :( absolutely stunning bird
This is ongoing to this day. Consider how prairies in central North America are up to 95% lost, in many cases for farmland. This ecological devastation is then used as a reason why these places are “less beautiful” than mountainous or coastal regions. People who live here have very little pride or affinity with their natural environments, making it much easier for companies and governments to continue destroying our ecosystems. People can’t love what they don’t know.
I have so much admiration for Native American agricultural practices. We’ve shot ourselves in the foot by trying to turn the Americas into Europe instead of learning.
Worse, these days non-American agricultural studies tend to think of pre-colonial America as a whole equivalent of stereotypical Mongolia, where the people aren't working the land at all
oh my god that’s so cruel. thank u for the information.
I am Slavic and from now on whenever I will make Ukrainian Vareniki with potato filling I will be more aware of the native American heritage of this crop. i can not imagine my slavic cuisine with out foods that originally have been cultivated by indigenous people
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Slava Ukraine! I am Croatian American. You can't have ajvar without peppers that originally came for the North American continent. Your vernikie are the best. Better than polish perogies.
@@jenniferbrdar4605 without ajvar I don't think I would be the same...
What a kind comment!
I am Ukrainian on my mom’s side and Métis on my dad’s side in Alberta and the history of Ukrainian settlers here in western Canada and their relationship and exchange of culture with the indigenous peoples is very fascinating. Ukrainians were widely discriminated against by the predominantly English colonizers after already fleeing discrimination and conflict in their homes, but many found acceptance living and farming near First Nations and Métis communities that could empathize with that experience.
That bison photo absolutely broke my heart, it is so disgusting
I'm glad I'll never understand that grotesque mindset. I feel bad for having to move a spider's web. Imagine enjoying butchering an entire species almost into extinction. It boggles the fucking mind.
Yeah, I had to pause for a bit after that.
As an indigenous woman reconnecting with my culture (food is actually what helped me feel more connected to my ancestors), I'm so glad I found these videos 🪶🧡✊🏾
I was wondering if u have any resources for how I could learn about indigenous foods. Or resources that helped in food and healing journey.
I am not Native American but I have used their knowledge of farming to grow my food.
I live in Southern Arizona in the foot hills. We do not have enough water to mindlessly irrigate our gardens nor do we want to use pesticides and herbicides.
We practice "regenerative farming" as the indigenous people who lived on this land before we got here did. It is a great and natural was to fertilize, mulch, and conservative water.
It was very hard at first but now that I have developed my land it is very efficient.
I hope that we can all learn from each other so we can stop using toxic waste to grow our food.
be aware that "Regenerative farming" is a greenwashing term pushed by large farming corporations and ranchers to make their practices seem less harmful. It's like the phrases "clean coal" or "green natural gas". They're marketing terms. Regenerative farming is a myth, basically. You're practicing sustainable agriculture. There is a difference.
@@CRneu
The word regenerative should only apply when improving the fertility of bad land.
Thanks for bringing up Native American agriculture. When people think of Native Americans they just imagine nomadic warriors, however I tell people that most native Americans were foremost farmers and that through their agricultural science developed the most important food crops that we have today. The three sisters or the “ Milpa” as it’s called in Mexico is one of the most successful farming techniques developed by man. Years ago I read an article on how one doctor that treated American Indians was shocked because of poor health of his native American patients. He traced the problem to the poor diet of processed goverment foodstuffs. He had his patients eat a diet that was more like their ancestral diet and his patients showed a dramatic improvement.
Exactly. The warriors of our tribes (I'm Ojibwe) were originally farmers and hunters, until the invasion from France and England (and Spain before them). There were occasional intertribal spats over hunting territory that would be solved through treaty and trade negotiations (there are thousands of years of wampum shell belts symbolizing tribal peace and cooperation), but there were no widespread wars requiring an entire warrior society before the European invasion. Our hunters became warriors when France and England were manipulating us against each other. North America (and Central and South) were full of farming and crafting cultures with continent-wide trade. The US highway system is built on top of intertribal trade routes predating most European countries.
I grew up on them commods too, lol! I know I'm in the minority here, but that cheese is nasty. My mom still tries to pawn blocks off on me when I go visit, haha. I'll take all that ground bison, though. ᏩᏙ for sharing Indigenous culture and history with the world.
Send that cheese to me! Lol. My family was too proud to take commodities, but we definitely qualified. My friend across the street got it, and I was so jealous of that cheese
When I was still able to garden, I always used the 'three sisters' method, with the corn, beans, and squash. It was not only a way of producing good food, it also saved space for other vegetables and fruits. That said, what we Western Europeans did to Native Peoples (and continue to do) is beyond criminal.
❤
There is no excuse for any human being to go hungry, to not eat well in this world we live in.
Every starvation, every malnutrition is a choice. And someone is doing it on purpose
This statement is completely disconnected from reality.
@@michelecox5241 Not really. They just are skimming a very deep and complicated problem.
Excuse? "Every starvation"? What are you talking about
@@michelecox5241Not really. Retailers waste over 4 million tons of edible food per year. We produce enough for everyone, but it's cheaper for rich companies to waste a full third of it instead of making sure people don't starve. Hunger, as an extension of poverty, is a policy choice
ohmigosh, I wish there were more Native restaurants around the country!
At a large scale the European colonization turned much of the north American continent into a beef and grain factory. We are all still entrenched in that fully extractive system, exported to the entire world. We have a limited amount of time to learn from these mistakes
Will there be an episode on how the TransCanada rail destroyed the plainlands natives? I think people should know about that, and residential schools.
The control of food has taken away the ability of people to self-govern.
American Resiliency on youtube just awarded Amber Lightfeather their June Community Resilience Award for her work with wild rice (manoomin) restoration! Highly recommend their channel and understanding how indigenous lifeways are helpful to our ecosystems and being connected to the land we inhabit with all other beings! Thank you for your work in helping us all learn!!
Thanks for the recc!
@@Reichukey What is their channel?
Thank you for sharing! I'll have to check it out!
@@Reichukey Thank you for that information! I watched one of the videos, and it was marvelously information packed, well explained, and promises to deliver much more. I was happy to subscribe!
It would be cool if you guys did a series on the main groups of native peoples in the Americas
For instance, a video on the coast Salish tribes, a video on the groups on the east coast, a video on the groups in the southwest etc.
All of these cultures are very unique from each other and it would be interesting to see the similarities and differences
That would be great. I'm Ojibwe (northeast/"midwest" around Lake Superior) and while I love any Native representation, like the show Rez Dogs, that's specifically southern/Oklahoma cultures, and shows about "out west" are usually Pueblo cultures, Plains based things are always Lakota, and all of that is great but there are so many tribes with completely unique cultures. We're not usually the topic of media and there's a lot never covered.
3:59 so made tribes dependent on the government for food. Wow. Now we’re all dependent on the market for food. BRING BACK COMMUNITY AND SUBSISTENCE FARMING!
So my right wing conservative religious mom has one thing that she is totally left wing political about, and it's related to this video, she won't eat quinoa. No, not because she doesn't like the taste or think it's too trendy, and she will eat it if it's offered to her, but she won't buy it and make it for herself. And the reason is she heard that when quinoa started to become extremely popular, it made so the indingenous people in the Andes that had it as a staple crop were no longer able to afford it to eat it, quinoa became too expensive, they were growing it, but mostly for profit and there was very little if anything left for themselves.
Man! To think that in the in the areas of California where a good portion of produce is grown is also food deserts says A LOT
That is really sad for a type of food that is kinda just OK.
This is absolutely true. As is the same for corn. As a kid it was 5 to 10 cents American per ear. My grandfather(born in 1912) said as a child it was about 10 cents per bushel. That's a giant bucket of corn.
For a long time, this was sort of the case with corn in Mexico as well - corn grown in Iowa was WAY cheaper to buy in Mexico, than Mexican-grown corn was. Because of the NAFTA agreement, and the heavy, heavy subsidization of the corn industry in the US. Which is wild, absolutely wild, considering corn was "invented" in Mexico!
@@TheRusty Basically all "Fair Trade certified" products fall under this, falling under FTA rather than specifically NAFTA. Trade organizations will ship produce, dairy, meat, grains halfway around the world to undersell local (usually significantly poorer) producers and stamp a label on their packaging that they're "Fair." And don't forget the costs and waste produced by shipping, the degradation of the nutrition of the product from being picked unripe and sitting in transit, the products that have to be thrown out from damage/spoilage which would've been fine if they'd been used more quickly...
My family are subsistence hunters of British and Central European ancestry, and I was mortified to learn recently that it's easier for us to access wild game in our area than it is for Indigenous communities. That HAS to change. Hell, Texas periodically does culls to curb the whitetail population, which likes to get out of control every few years. My dad was once invited to participate in a HELICOPTER HUNT for destructive feral hogs - he refused because all of the animals were to be left to rot where they fell.
I know the problem is much deeper and more complex than "just let people hunt," but that aspect of it sure is needless.
it's degenerated humans that are out of control
If it makes you feel any better, feral hogs in Texas generally have parasites and wouldn’t necessarily be fit for human consumption anyways.
Do a Co-Op with PBS-Terra Hungry Planet and go on a reservation and show us how a transition back to traditional food sources is happening. Thank you.
they should also use the proceeds from videos like these to fund the transitions and help indigenous people on reservations be able to afford to take the time to rekindle those relationships with the soil and train up new stewards.
@@autumnstoptwo Not too sure there is much in the way of "proceeds". Reasonably popular channels generally make enough to keep the fire burning. But yes, generally I like your idea. 👍
“not a commodity or a fad.”
that.
as a non-Native i think about this. whether my interest, and how i do or don’t exercise it.
is going to help or hurt.
i think buying Native made cookbooks is probably good, but when it comes to things like sourcing ingredients it becomes trickier.
on one hand my interest could help Native farmers sell more of their produce but on the other hand it cann tax their ability to produce enough - which can mean Native people themselves again loose acess to the produce & etc.
there’s also likely a lot of other ways my attention positively and negatively affects systems Native folks are currently trying to (re)create that i’m not even aware of.
Government cheeeeeeeeese 😭😭😭
LMFAOAOAOAO My favorite 🤤 😂😂
My maternal grandmother was cherokee, and my paternal grandmother was Sioux. They taught me so much about my Native heritage and I couldn't imagine life without the knowledge and traditions they passed down.
Bish u whiter then me
Thank you Tai and PBS Origins for the important history lessons!
It’s crazy how we( society at large) are so familiar with the foods that originated in the Americas and many dishes that we see as essential European dishes, but we don’t know any Native American dishes.
Must say when I've learned about indigenous food it really helped build a curiosity for what my ancestors must've eaten the Pembina Anishinaabe (plains ojibwe) I experimented and read multiple cook books from the sioux chef to retro cook books that utilized more common house hold ingredients. I even visited owamni in Minneapolis twice and was blown away at what delicious high quality meals were made from ingredients found in North America
Why are the Amish, people not even native to the Americas, get to continue their traditions uninterrupted but indigenous peoples still cannot? I mean we know why but still..
@@Thenewboidahlia Maybe because the Amish accepted capitalism and paid for the land? They also eschew violence.
@@grovermartin6874 I know those are seemingly valid reasons but you know they’re absolutely not right? And your bit about them eschewing from violence isn’t the subtle dog whistle you think it is 🙄
@@Thenewboidahlia What dog whistle? That's a part of their religion.
@@Thenewboidahlia Ayeap, all those trails of tears and broken treaties and attempting to work within *THE U.S.'s OWN LAWS* and being backstabbed anyway, and somehow the naTIVES are the ones "initiating the violence"
I would personally love to learn as much as I can about what Native Americans knew about the lands they cared for, about the foods they grew and foraged and hunted for... Especially with everything being, well, like it is. I'm told that spider-wort (a "weed" that grows in huge abundance in my yard in spring and summer) is edible. Except - I've got no idea how to prepare it, and most of what I've found online has to do with making the flowers into a drink (or into dye). Which is nice but NOT the use I was told about by an older neighbor of mine.
I obviously don't want to disrespect or appropriate anybody's culture. But even ONE food item that I can consistently get my hands on, that isn't full of preservatives, that *I* can grow and care for... I'm a rotten gardener, native plants are the only way I'll ever manage to grow any of my own food, y'all.
I'm in the Southwest, and so much of our agriculture is wholly dependent on irrigation. Meanwhile, plants that were part of indigenous food traditions (mesquite, prickly pear, etc.) either grow wild or are used in landscaping, and people choosing between rent and groceries walk right past them, because none of us know how to use what's right in front of us.
(The mining history doesn't help, either. Harder to trust the plants in your backyard with a Sunperfund site in the next town over.)
i love tai and his videos on pbs origins so much!!!! as a native, it makes me so happy to see another native taking up space & representing us and our beautiful native cultures, while also be such a good intelligent educator!!!! thank you for posting these videos with tai :)
Imagine the health of the human population being linked to the health of the environment 😂 wish this knowledge was as instinctual for others as it was for me.
This was a dope episode PBS. Y'all always been chill af.
"Not to supplement nutrition but to stave off starvation" is so well put. I'll be using that in the future when I need to explain an experience I had.
Ancient cultures like Native Americans have so much to teach us in these out of balance times. Thank you for sharing,
The ABSOLUTE BEST spot on the National Mall, IMHO, to get fantastic food at a reasonable price, is the cafeteria at The National Museum of the American Indian. The food hall is separated into geographic 'regions' featuring classic indigenous dishes from all over the continent. It is WONDERFUL. Ever since the museum opened I've been recommending it to anyone who will listen. The whole place is lovely.
I hope things can still improve, especially with the given climate concerns.
My late aunt was Cherokee, and would give my mom or any commodities so I’ve had that cheese and it was a lot like the boxes they used to give low income families.
Or Senior Citizens. We get that 'cheese,' and I'm trying to find ways to use it and not mess with my diabetes or high cholesterol. I have NO IDEA what it is made from - there usually are no lists of ingredients on the package.
aside from the loss of life, language, culture and all of that, what depresses me the most is the loss of all of the cumulative knowledge about the land that all of our First Nations (and my Inuit ancestors) possessed.
intricate understandings of all of the animals and plants across ALL of the americas that our western ways of thinking have only begun to scratch the surface of.
that there was so much medicine out n about, all around, and only a handful of that knowledge has survived to this day.
anyway thank YOU for helping to spread hope and reeducation ♥️
This is such a fascinating topic that I'm shocked I haven't heard talked about before. I have always wondered about the relocated indigenous people and how they adapted. Imagine the people from the New England region or the Seminole people in Florida getting relocated to Oklahoma. It's a totally different place different climate different locally accessible food.
Also food etymology is such an interesting topic to me. Everything is so global now but so many foods came from so far away and weren't introduced until as recent as 300 years ago. Tomatoes in Italy, potatoes in Ireland and Russia, capsicum in... well everywhere!
We're doing alright, considering. We got free healthcare, unlike the rest of the US, cuz our tribal government is civilized enough to know to take care of its people. ua-cam.com/video/mJaqNht3K7o/v-deo.htmlsi=rTnNAgM1tswsACrd
I love the videos you host, man!
Ha, that intro was wonderful!
This is probably another good reason to support land back huh
So thats where govt cheese ended up! I joke bc i grew up on those foods. I'm not native but grew up poor in hud housing. Food shelves and food stamps are what i knew as a child. Didnt bother me at all bc thats all i knew. Now at almost 40, it says so much to me that the most in need end up being fed garbage. Food deserts in marginalized communities are rampant now. Omg i could go on forever it makes me so mad!
Great Video! For those in the Southwest there is a book called The Pueblo Food Experience Cookbook. Its a great read and talks about the challenge they did to go back to native foods and how their health was revitalized even reversing diabetic symptoms.❤
I've read a similar anecdote about an Australian Aboriginal man, who dealt with diabetes symptoms in town, but was able to function without insulin when he went into the bush and hunted and gathered traditional foods.
@@Eloraurora Yes! There was a great short documentary on coca-cola and the town people. And how diet changed everything. I can't remember the name.
@@Eloraurora Our family is the typical half Spanish half Pueblo here in New Mexico and I haven't figured out how we can go to a natural diet when we're split right down the middle. Like how do you incorporate both?? I'm going to have to study more on the Spanish natural foods.
Native American culture is so fascinating and sad at the same time. Thanks for the great videos Tai
Thank you for this cooking show! 👏🏽
Conection to the land is so important! I highly recommend gardening, and if your local law allows, foraging for invasive species! What we have done in a lot of the US is turn it into a mediterranean microclimate, theres a lot of european and middle-eastern plants that ADORE human development like cheese-weed, stinging nettle, raspberries, fennel and nasturtium. In a way these plants have followed our european ancestors and settled right alongside us. We could eat them not only as a way to conserve the native wild habitats (hopefully we'll gently exteripate their invasive population without needing excessive herbicides) but to make them safe to eat we would be FORCED to take care of our local land, better waste management, stricter rules around herbicides and pesticides. Again, its a pipe dream, and the restoration of wild habitats should be prioritized. But I think that conscious observation of what our local ecosystem even contains with the possible treat of free leafy greens is a good starting point.
This is so interesting, i dejectedly have to say that i watch a lot of videos about history, but mostly from europe, where i am from.
I am very excited to broaden my knowledge with this channel, thank you!! :)
Unrelated to the video but I love when UA-cam added the changing comments but I wish it would bring up the one it’s showing when you clicked on it
What gets me about the Three Sisters as a Czech is that I was reading some letters from 19th century (I am pretty sure it was Božena Němcová, one of our most prominent 19th century writers, though I'm not 100% sure) describing fields in Southern Slovakia or Hungary... somewhere where corn fields are likely to be a thing... and it was the Three Sisters. They were growing the crops together. We picked that up together with picking up the crops. It's a great system of raising them.
Then I guess mechanisation rolled in and we completely forgot that we had learned that.
I want more indigenous content 😊 I love learning about their culture. I’m studying ecology and we have so much to learn from them in this field.
I feel the same about Native/Indigenous culture.
I've always wondered about what traditional recipes indigenous North Americans ate. We learned what crops they ate in a few different regions when I was in school (northern Virginia isn't great on history, but my elementary school social science classes went over local history in far more depth than I think most places ever teach in schools). A lot of how the tribes in Virginia lived is very well documented because of collaboration and trade with early English settlers, but one of the things I never really learned is about *how* they used the crops that they traded over to Europe!
Let’s never stop talking about this
Or let's do.
Thanks for bringing this out great vid strength honor and protection be with you family !
I love this series, keep up the great work!
We desperately need more Native American law and policy makers. Even on a level of complete detachment from human lives being at stake, it is logical to replace commodities with agricultural support. It would save so much money and cut through so much expensive red tape to just give every penny earmarked for commodities directly to the community to be spent on the production of food for the tribe. Job production! Lower taxpayer spending! Government butting out of people's pantries! Removing thousands of pages of onerous legal wrangling! You'd think powers that be would be in favor.
There is also a reservation in maine lines up well with the food desert map
2:07 I grew up in the Central Valley, a place where a lot of produce is grown. Even surrounded by agerculture, many locals are ignorant to how all it all works. They compain about rain in the winter, and heat in the summer, oblivious it's good for the plants, thus more affordable food.
What natives ate, was dependent on the land and area where they were. Weather land resources are different in different regions.
As a Mongol, I feel at my best when I stick mostly to my ancestral diet of meat and dairy.
Enjoy those rickets.
@@obsidianjane4413 Ah yes, Inuit and other Indigenous Nations of the Polar north live and have lived perfectly just fine subsisting off of seal meat and fat for literally thousands of years in a climate where little to no plants grow or exist :)
@@Rugged-Mongol As a Mongol, you should realize that you decedents didn't live at the pole. Feel free to look up and educate yourself on the health problems that came with that diet.
Great video!
I am Ukrainian, and for all of us Ecocide hits close to home. It's really eye-opening, to see that colonizors are always the same - taking away not only land, but the connection with that land alltogether. Bolsheviks took our grain, fruit and berry cultures from us, to stop nationals from growing our own food,causing the desappearance af that cultures, with no way to restore them, so it's really heartwarming to see your culture slowly regaining your own crops and technicks. Best wishes for you
Did you know native Americans invented everything and if America wasn't here they would've been like native American wakanda?
But of course.
The world owes us , unfortunately. 🌍✌️🌎
It's really good to see programs that highlight Native American traditional foods. My family continues to pactice traditional Cherokee farming methods with native heirloom seeds, no-till companion planting, permaculture, and dispersion of foraged plants.
Our homestead has stands of perennial sunchokes, groundnuts/potato beans (Apios americana), and more. We nixtamalize and prepare parched corn. Our "fry bread" is flatbread made from parched cornmeal.
I know how to soak acorns in a stream and turn them into a survival meal, or harvest and process the inner bark of pine trees for meal. I still make nut soup like my grandmother taught me. Of course we have access to and use modern foods and domestic livestock. My grandmother kept a huge flock of free range, self-perpetuating chickens in the early 1900s. It was called "the Columbian Exchange", after all.
As a native Coahuilteco, one of my long term goals is to work to educate and inform the community and all peoples of our rich food traditions which form modern Tex-Mex today.
I’ve broken down our cuisine into 4 distinct periods including pre-contact, post-contact with/Canary islanders and Tlaxcalans, post-contact w/ Anglos, and modern Tex-Mex.
Each period gives truly distinct insights to our culture and resourcefulness.
Tlax-Mex
A new piece of information for me was the government rations. It's super fucked up to move people off their land, stick them in a new place where they don't have cultural knowledge of how best to survive, and then make them dependent on you for processed "commodities"
Yes, history was savage.
I was raised on harvesting, gathering, and eating wild meat. I am connected to my food and to Earth. It’s totally weird to me to think that anyone could live otherwise.
I see so much overlap with that of our First Peoples here in Australia. Colonisation still follows us to this day.
This is what I am doing today on July 4th. Watching this and Native American on PBS. Is it truly human to believe that one group of people has more rights to life and liberty than others. I don't think so. Some religious beliefs make some people believe they are more entitled and superior to others, having every right to dominate and look down on other people unless they "join" them. The diversity of the world and all of its varied living beings, plants, animals, people, was created by God in order for us all to truly live.
As you covered here, you did miss the detail that most of us Native folks actually live in urban areas just like any other ethnic groups & not reservations despite the historical reasons for reservations (which are basically nightmares on earth) being around. That said, the Native food representation (save for certain cases like Mexican & Peruvian food, which both have significant Native input) is a tiresome & unfunny meme as the representation of Jewish food kinds is almost just as bad as it's basically limited to such delis, bad food memories, & the occasional eastern Mediterranean spots (a less obvious, but still severe kind of lacking is European food kinds save for the most iconic of dishes). Bottom line, while us Native American people & the Jewish people kinds have more in common than often thought despite the differences, it is interesting to find sundry efforts in getting through struggles they both face (often similar in nature)
if I'm overstepping, by all means, feel free to tell me to eff off. but I think a warning is warranted about comparisons between Natives and Jews. avoid saying things like that if you think there are Mormons in the room, as it were. because they think Natives *are* Jews. and they have a lot of incredibly racist and antisemitic doctrine following from that false belief.
we have nothing in common with them, dont group us as one, we have in common with Palestinians
I was recently on a trip abroad with several French friends, and one of them asked me “what are truly American foods, that aren’t just adaptations of different European dishes?”
Honestly, it’s so difficult to imagine what food was like on either side of the Atlantic before colonization, because so many things have become extremely widespread even among the poor that didn’t exist there or here before 1500. But I did immediately think of grits
👍🏿👍🏿👍🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿
In the 90's I drove on the trail of tears to school daily. It was a regular urban road with stoplights and by 4th grade I went to Andrew Jackson elementary school and never learned about he did as president. Other than the 'good' things. This was the early 2000's. I also grew up in Hermitage TN. I never learned anything about wha really happened but I knew I was trapped in the area surrounded in such dark and evil history.
My mom's half native. She told me that a lot of the food that Europeans eat can't be eaten as much by native americans. I only have a little native ancestry from my mom and even less from my dad's side of the family and I have struggled my entire life to keep from gaining too much weight. I think the American diet in general is horrible and not for the stereotypical reasons. Look at the food pyramid, the biggest portion on it is carbs and grains.....which when digested by the body turns into sugar...think about the fact that we are told a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice is what constitutes a "healthy breakfast". Cereals are pure carbs covered in sugar and when digested the carbs convert to sugar and then you have that sugar along with the added sugars for flavor. Fruit juice is portrayed as healthy because it comes from fruit but fruit juices take everything healthy out and just leave behind water and sugar....the fiber is removed. Let me tell you right now a plate of bacon and eggs with a cup of coffee is far more healthy than a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice.
Also I just want to say that things might never be like they used to be but native americans can eat beef and cows are related to buffalo so the meat should be similar.
Do you believe it is appropriate for non-indigenous individuals to utilize indigenous agricultural practices and recipes? If so, what are some respectful ways they can honor the wisdom and knowledge of the indigenous cultures they are drawing from?
Don’t forget the Paw Paw, Oak, Maple, Sumac, Chestnut, and Apios. Etc. They were also cultivated by Native Americans as important food sources. Actually quite a bit more to mention but I would need to write a book about it 😅.
Wow, this seems so obvious now, but I was taught as a kid that they killed the bison because they were dumb and wasteful, not to starve the native people. But that is so so much worse and also like DUH. 😢 damn I feel dumb for never questioning that.
I think it was the other video that said TEK was taught as a humanities and not a science, and I can vouch for that. At the University of Arkansas I studied both Medical Anthropology and Environmental Anthropology. Do you know what those classes were? Not Western "Hard" science.. They were TEK essentially and much more. We studied so many indigenous cultures around the world and how they ate, what they ate, how they handled illnesses and diseases using what was local to them. I must say, beautiful classes.
We learn our diets from our parents and when they lived on commodities, that is what they pass down. A few years ago I tried to find Native American recipes; all I could find was fry bread.
Y'all didn't even talk about how Jefferson Squares were based off existing indigenous plats. Our entire deed and ledger system is based off indigenous tribal federation systems, mainly the Iroquois League/Federation. Honestly most of our core democratic values came from those federations.
Growing up, I ate muskrat, deer, fish, dandelion greens, duck, rabbit, and corn. Never milk. Non-Native people
were shocked that I ate dog meat during certain ceremonies. My grandparents tried to keep a traditional diet.
But, moving to the city changed all that.
Hello from Greece, i am sad about your experience....we are lucky Mediterranean people that food exchange with asia and africa was peaceful process, famous bazaars with products were something spectacular! Today we consume a lot of your agricultural products and i would to thank you for this ❤
Thank you for teaching me about the food apartheid and the systemic issues surrounding food scarcity. Very curious to learn and understand more 😊
My grandma and my aunt taught me how to make a lot of different foods, we had a vegetable garden, fruit trees, and we would let other tribal members take what they needed for their families and in return, they would give us deer meat, rabbit, pork, beef. I was about 10 when I had my first bologna sandwich. I never saw the difference but she had both laying hens and chickens for frying or baking. Even as a little girl I didn't like rabbit, pork, cheese or egg yolks they always make me gag.
So glad you could share this!
On the internet, via a computer and camera, across oceans via fibreoptic cables on the seafloor (that were mapped and explored by ocean-going ships and radar technologies), while you wear industrially produced garments in the european style, while surrounded by some cool cooking gadgets, in an insulated multistory building with a semi-permanent foundation engineered to last more than 1 winter - all the while referencing meticulous documents archived from observations by people with the technology to keep information for centuries and maintain and evolve a written language used to transfers complex concepts, like the wheel!
Cool beans and potatoes!
I’m half Italian American and I grew up with pasta and tomato sauce. It blows my mind that the quintessential Italian sauce ingredient didn’t originate with the Romans, but with indigenous Americans. It’s poetic. The dish itself is like me. I’m neither indigenous to America but not born and raised European either.
There are common issues for us here in Australia with our First Nations peoples - except the food wasn’t commodified, though it’s starting too, mostly by Aboriginal companies but not all- like art and culture generally is appropriated by white settlers.
In the kitchen of my people, there are many plants that we owe to the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Your people have experienced terrible things, and that is while you basically saved thousands of poor people around the world from starvation, and bring them joy of delicious food. World owe you so much.
I hope that, when you're done with reinventing your cuisines, a few chefs make it over to Germany and open up restaurants.
Also, I find it hard to wrap my around the existence of food deserts existing at the same time and place as modern supermarkets. I couldn't have imagined such a thing.
I want to try some meals
Indigenous populations in Australia; the ones who still live remotely being extremely limited to being restricted from hunting and collecting bush tucker by the government and making them rely on grossly overpriced western food and those of us that live in cities or suburbs...yeah pretty much non-existent access to traditional foods
My struggles with my lactose intolerance ended up being the driving force in reconnecting me to my mestizo ancestry and my current exploration of my grandmother’s native cuisine.
Years ago a group of anthropologists visiting the Pima tribe [I think it was] noted that HALF of the tribe were diabetic. One of them wondered if that owed something to their eating the white man's food that they had not lived with for thoussnds of years. A group of them were persuaded to live for a while on the diet of their tribe before the white man came.
I don't remember all of the substitutions, but one sticks in my brain. Instead of wheat, they ate seeds of a goosefoot plant, like amaranth, maybe. Amaranth seed is much harder to digest, so slower and lower in sugars, than wheat. No sugar, instead of salt, they used the ash of certain foraged herbs that were burned, no dairy. As I recall, every participant in the experiment not only became free of diabetes, but were no longer obese.
Lmao the 80% lactose intolerant makes sense why my sisters and I all can’t seem to handle dairy while my mother grew up on a dairy farm… though I agree with Tai, the stomach cramps can’t stop me 😂
This hurts to watch. Thank you for this video. I would be more conscious about the food I am eating.
For a split second I thought you were the Old Country Buffet carving station guy.
In Alaska the Native Alaskans are allowed to hunt and fish in a ton of ways that your average non-native cannot. Native Alaskan food is very much a thing and it varies from the delicious smoked salmon to the unfathomably foul stinkheads which are fish buried in the ground and left to rot before you eat it.
Do you know where I could find any keto friendly cook books? My wife is Dine, I cook, and I think if I make stir fry one more time she might eat me. Cheers from the food desert!
Really appreciated this video it was so full of information and well explained i had to subscribe. More on this please
Keep making videos like this!! Thank you so much for the information!!