The fight for Native food sovereignty is more than just a return to traditional diets — it's an act of resistance, resilience and reclamation. Centuries of colonization, which methodically dismantled Indigenous food systems, have left lasting scars, which is one of the reasons food sovereignty can mean multiple different things: from reclaiming local food systems, to creating food policies that enhance community health, to targeting food as a mechanism for entrepreneurship and economic development.
Films, cookbooks and even competitive cooking shows are spotlighting this revival, honoring the land and the traditions that have sustained Indigenous communities for generations.
In honor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, here are a few essential resources to deepen your understanding of the movement.
"Gather"
When speaking about his 2020 film “Gather” on Duke University’s “Leading Voices in Food,” director Sanjay Rawal said that the film was really made for those people taking “pride in reestablishing the food systems that were, in effect, destroyed by colonization.”
“And when I say destroyed, I mean directly,” Rawal said. “By the mid-1800s, it became really clear to the US government that the expenditure of military force on Native people was too perilous, and it was euphemistically much more efficient to subjugate Native people by destroying their food system … Native Americans are one of the only populations in the modern world to have had their entire food system destroyed as a tactic of war.”
“Gather” turns its lens on multiple sets of characters, all of whom are citizens of different tribal nations across what is now the United States, who are dedicated to efforts that promote Native food sovereignty. There’s Twila Cassadore, a San Carlos Apache woman who educates her community about Apache diets before people were forced onto reservations. In Whiteriver Arizona, Chef Nephi Craig, a citizen of the White Mountain Apache and Navajo Nations, opens an Indigenous foods cafe on the White Mountain Reservation.
Rawal also features Sammy Gensaw, a Yurok youth leader of the Ancestral Guard nonprofit who grew up on the Klamath River as its salmon were fished to near extinction, and Elsie DuBray, a young Lakota woman of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe whose father, Fred, started the Intertribal Buffalo Coalition with the aim of revitalizing buffalo as a source of spiritual and physical nourishment.
“Through these interwoven stories I believe we present a very compelling narrative of a movement happening in tribal nations right now to reassert their sovereignty by reestablishing food ways that were taken away from them by the colonial extractive government of the United States,” Rawal said.
“Gather” is currently streaming on Netflix.
“Chími Nu’am: Native California Foodways for the Contemporary Kitchen” by Sara Calvosa Olson
The Karuk phrase “Chími nu’am” roughly translates to “Let's eat!,” making it the perfect title for Native writer Sara Calvosa Olson’s first cookbook. In “Chími Nu’am: Native California Foodways for the Contemporary Kitchen,” Olson shares dishes like elk chili beans, nettle tortillas, blackberry-braised smoked salmon and nearly a dozen recipes featuring acorns.
In speaking with Civil Eats in 2023, Calvosa Olson said she wanted to guide readers through integrating more traditional ingredients into our “oversimplified modern palates.”
“When I had children of my own, I wanted to connect my sons to these family recipes and to being Karuk, as we were living away from Karuk community and traditional lands,” she said. “By intentionally establishing this connection, I discovered a love for developing new and colorful recipes based on our old family recipes and traditions. Gathering wild foods, sharing, teaching, cooking, and tending have all been an opportunity to grow and heal in the nurturing way I didn’t know I needed.”
“The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen” by Sean Sherman
Similarly, in his work, James Beard Award winner Sean Sherman reimagines Indigenous cuisine, bringing ancestral foodways to the forefront of the modern culinary conversation. Many may know Sherman through his Minneapolis restaurant Owamni, which the James Beard Foundation declared the best new restaurant in America in 2021 — quite a feat for a kitchen that eschews wheat flour, dairy, cane sugar, black pepper or any other ingredient introduced to the continent through colonization.
“The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen,” which was released in 2017 from University of Minnesota Press in Minneapolis, allows readers to explore Sherman’s work anc culinary a little closer to home.
“Sherman dispels outdated notions of Native American fare — no fry bread or Indian tacos here — and no European staples such as wheat flour, dairy products, sugar and domestic pork and beef,” the book’s description reads. “‘The Sioux Chef's’ healthful plates embrace venison and rabbit, river and lake trout, duck and quail, wild turkey, blueberries, sage, sumac, timpsula or wild turnip, plums, purslane and abundant wildflowers.”
It continues: “Contemporary and authentic, his dishes feature cedar braised bison, griddled wild rice cakes, amaranth crackers with smoked white bean paste, three sisters salad, deviled duck eggs, smoked turkey soup, dried meats, roasted corn sorbet and hazelnut-maple bites.”
“Top Chef: Wisconsin”
In the “Top Chef: Wisconsin” episode titled “The Good Land,” the culinary competition shifted focus to Indigenous cuisine with guest chef Sean Sherman. Much like in Sherman’s book and at Owamni, the cheftestants were introduced to a pantry of Native ingredients such as wild rice, venison, sumac and corn, while European staples like dairy, wheat and sugar were notably absent.
As Salon’s Michael La Corte wrote, the chefs were asked to craft dishes that showcased a deep respect for the land and its resources, all under the watchful eye of Sherman and the judges.
“While the cheftestants’ dishes weren't all wins, there were some real standouts,” he wrote. “Savannah's winning and inspired squash-and-maple "jelly cake" dessert with an array of sauces made from aronia, grapes and plum jelly; Soo's wild rice and huitlacoche "dumplings;” and Dan's incredibly inventive sunflower-chokes treated like artichokes.
“Spirit Plate”
From Whetstone Radio, “Spirit Plate” is a multi-part podcast hosted by Shiloh Maples featuring conversations about how Indigenous communities are working to preserve and revitalize their ancestral foodways. Maples has a deep personal background in the realm of food sovereignty, especially within urban communities. When speaking with the University of Michigan’s Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum, Maples detailed how her career has focused on food systems since graduating.
“I worked in partnership with the Native community in Detroit to start a food sovereignty initiative, which we called the Sacred Roots program,” she said. “It focused on creating space and opportunities for Indigenous people to practice and preserve their ancestral foodways in the urban landscape.”
Maples continued: “Many Native food initiatives that I was seeing at the time were based on reservation lands or trust lands and were initiatives started by Tribal communities. Those communities have a land base, legal systems or systems of governance, and other structures in place to think about what food sovereignty means to them. But as an urban Native community, we didn't have a land base or a governing structure. This program became a space for us to be in conversation as a community about what food sovereignty looks like as an urban, Indigenous community.”
According to the series description, “through interviews with seedkeepers, chefs, farmers and community members, this podcast will share what food justice and sovereignty looks like for Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island.”
