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| Postcard:Indian Maiden,corn, turkey |
This mainly involves eating indigenous (Native American) foods. Yes, this doesn't particularly mean frybread or casino buffets. The blog 'A Week of Eating Indigenous Foods' covers this also, with some recipes which include wild turkey, corn, and peppers.
I love turkey, corn, and peppers. I've never had wild turkey, and am not sure to get it without hunting for it.
The first postcard image to the right is of a stereotypical Indian agricultural maiden figure (similar to what is still seen on a "Land of Lakes" butter box), and the one below is of more historic interest, likely from the 1920s, showing Pueblo women in Aguna, New Mexico grinding corn.
This project includes a mini-challenge: to eat only pre-contact foods during the first week of November. Well, it's a month late for that, but I only heard of this for the first time yesterday. A Thanksgiving dinner doing this might have been interesting, actually using the foods likely eaten in the early 1600s in barely-colonized Massachusetts.
Is this something any of my readers have tried? Or has anyone tried anything like this?
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| Postcard: Pueblo Indian women with corn, Aguna nm |
10 comments:
My first thought is that if very many people tried it, those food sources would be quickly depleted.
I have tried it, because I used to live in New Mexico and Texas where there are still Indian reservations, and yes, nothing compares to fresh bread and homemade tortillas baked outside in a horno, and yes, that is what they are called. Hee...
PJ: Wild turkey would get depleted for sure. Corn? I can't find anything to specify the proper corn yet, but I doubt the modified/copyrighted/ADM/Monsanto corn that is so common is considered helpful for this.
Leticia: We have reservations around here. Checking a casino menu, I don't see a lot indigenous or even specifically local other than the whitefish or "Michigan turkey". This place, Stella's, seems to put more effort into it.
But hardly anyone goes to a Native American casino/resort for any related to Native American tradition or culture: it's the gambling and entertainment.
I was thinking of wild rice, cattail tubers, etc. You are right on target about the corn, dmarks. How to find indigenous sources of corn? It's disappearing from most countries of the world, and what we get instead of greatly reduced in nutritional value and amped up in sugar. The movie "King Corn" is a real eye-opener.
Indigenous peoples make use of the
foods in their locale: Nez Perce
and other tribes along the Pacific streams depended on salmon and camus root; the plains people were
buffalo hunters and the Ojibway
consumed a lot of fish from netting and seining...and of course they all gathered berries
in season. I rather like walleye, salmon and buffalo but never having
tried pemmican...dunno.
Its an interesting project. In regards to corn, you can still get "heritage" seeds that are not genetically altered, but I think they are had to find unless you use a specialty seed company.
I think this project could work if you tailor it to your area or to just using foods that are not at all processed or engineered. You might even have to grow your own!
I seem to recall there being some tribe in Mexico that only ate rice, corn, beans, potatoes, tomatoes, and some starch that closely resembled whole grain pasta. With the proper assemblage of spices, I could probably handle it.
I don't know. I always think these sorts of diets seem like an interesting idea, but impractical for the long term.
I might just be spoiled by all we have available to us these days though.
New Mexico has a Laguna and an Acoma, but no Aguna.
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