Ologies with Alie Ward - Smologies #31: INDIGENOUS COOKING with Mariah Gladstone

Episode Date: November 11, 2023

Dig in for a bite-sized episode about how native foods aren’t just a part of a past, but an essential and exciting aspect of the future. We talk flower bulbs, acorns, sunflower butter popcorn, frybread debates, mushroom foraging tips, corn magic, puffball mythology, decolonized diets, Instapots and – most importantly – food sovereignty with the WONDERFUL Indigikitchen cooking show host and environmental scientist Mariah Gladstone.Mariah’s website, Twitter and InstagramA donation was made to FASTBlackfeet.orgFull-length (*not* G-rated) Indigenous Cuisinology episode + tons of science linksMore kid-friendly Smologies episodes!Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, masks, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramSound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio ProductionsMade possible by work from Noel Dilworth, Susan Hale, Kelly R. Dwyer, Emily White, & Erin TalbertSmologies theme song by Harold Malcolm

Oh, hey, hi, it's that mechanical pencil that's out of lead. Oh, wait! Quick, quick, wait, oh, look, there you go, alleyward. I hope you're hungry for a small bite-sized version of Indigenous cooking. So this is an episode of Smologies and Smologies are shorter edited episodes of longer full length episodes, but we cut out all the swear words and we make it safe for all ages. If you're looking for the full version, it's linked right in the show notes, but if you're here for smologies, you're in the right place. This episode's great. It's just a wonderful romp through time and identity and history and culture

and food, with someone who you may know as in-digit kitchen online, in-digitist digital kitchen, online cooking lessons, in-digit kitchen. Can you dig it? You can. So this guest is of both Pagani Blackfeet and Cherokee Heritage and is based on the 1.5 million acre Blackfeet reservation in Northwestern Montana. I was so excited to get to know her and I was nervous because she's very cool and I had a bunch of questions and I didn't want to be annoying. And you know what? After all that worrying, I was annoying. And I did ask embarrassing questions, but she rolled with it, because she's awesome. And that's what I'm here for. Okay, but let's get on with it.

Indigenous cuisinology, which is the study of a culture through its food. And Indigenous comes from a Latin root for indeed, Janus, which is sprung from the land or native. You're gonna love her. You're gonna love her work so much. Okay, so belly up, stuff a napkin into your collar, boy, howdy. Get hungry for stories involving fallen stars, mushroom dips, food sovereignty, squash, acorns, flour bulbs, bison, the wildest of

rice's, meditations on fry bread, and how cooking with native foods isn't part of a past, but an essential aspect of the future, with environmental scientist, engineer, cooking show host and advocate, Mariah Gladstone. Mariah Gladstone. Mariah Gladstone. Mariah Gladstone. Mariah Gladstone. Mariah Gladstone.

Mariah Gladstone. Mariah Gladstone, she, her. And now you're based in Northwest Montana? Yep, I'm on the Blackfeet reservation just south of the Canadian border. I'm about five minutes outside the Eastern entrance to Glacier National Park. Yeah, okay. You know, when you're coming up with recipes, are you really kind of basing it on rather than maybe hyper-local? Are you looking for seasonal types of foods that might be traditional to whatever season is coming up or how do you plan the recipes that you're going to film and shoot and disseminate?

That's a great question. Yeah, it's a combination of regional things, especially when I'm doing really old or ancestral recipes, things that would have been made very similar to the way that I'm showcasing them. And in that case, of course, you're looking for a whole bunch of ingredients that would have been found in the same area. We're thinking of foods that are in season right now. So of course, it is the time of winter squashes. And it's the time of pumpkins.

And it's hunting season. And there's all of these wonderful foods that are available now. It's after riceing. So people have fresh, parched wild rice. And it's fun to incorporate those all at the same time. Even though now, of course, we have ways of preserving food.

So I have picked berries from August, but I can pull them out at any time and use them for things because I have them in the freezer, or I have them dehydrated, or whatever that may be. But also, I recognize indigenous people are living in the 21st century with everyone else. And we have always used the tools that we have access to. And right now, maybe that's a big chest freezer.

Maybe that's an it's to pot. Maybe that is a coffee grinder that can blend sunflower seeds into flour at lightning speed. P.S. while we were recording this, I was like, oh, what recipe use sunflower butter? So I did want to interrupt her. But if you're stomach just Googled in curiosity, I looked it up, she has a sunflower butter popcorn recipe

that involves honey and maple syrup and the note that this stuff is addictive. I'm willing to take the risk. Whatever it is, we are able to recognize that ancestral wisdom and the indigenous brilliance of agriculture or harvesting or foraging or hunting or whatever it may be, along with our presence in this day. You mentioned a little bit about how the diets veered off based on what was

available and cheaper, less healthy foods. People here in Diginus food and they think fry bread. Does that just make you want to rage ever? To be honest, side note, fry bread is this pillowy oil bathed white flour comfort food and it's used as a taco base or even as like this honey drizzled dessert, but it's been in the hot seat. So how does an expert feel about its place on the food landscape? You know, as it's funny, because Fribert, of course, came from a period of time where native people were dependent on government rations, which were like shelf stable, processed boxes of food

that were distributed to households. And they were things we recognized as food. So we made something out of them because survival. And that's that's what where fry bread came from. So I will say that fry bread is a traditional food in that it's part of our history and it got us through a period of time that what of otherwise meant starvation. But there is a tendency of oppressed people to mistake our oppression for our culture. And I think that's kind of what people do with fried bread or commodity cheese or whatever thing that has become part

of these subsidized food systems. And so I don't spend a lot of time trashing fry bread. So rather than focusing on all this negative stuff, we just focus on all of the resources that we do have, the things that we do have access to, whether it be in our grocery stores or in our communities or in the lands that we can forge or the things that we can grow in our soils,

whatever it may be, those are the things that we can forge or the things that we can grow in our soils, whatever it may be, those are the things that I focus on. I really tie it all back to the incredible wisdom that has put those things in place that has helped us recognize corn, corn's edible, but the ways in which we eat corn now are not traditionally how they were eaten. Our ancestors recognized that corn had to be treated with this process of niche demolization. What is it? Nix demolization. It's called Nix demolization and it comes from the Indigenous Nahuatl Portmento, meaning lime ashes and tamal for corn dough. So, next demolization. This process of treating corn

with a highly alkaline solution that you make from adding wood ash to water and it chemically dissolves the hull of the corn and that transforms the bound deniasin into free niacin. And you have amazing indigenous chemistry happening while also recognizing that you've now added way more nutritional value to the corn and the wood ashes added calcium,

which is way more absorbable than the calcium in dairy, for example, and all of that has taken generations of indigenous knowledge to put in place. And when you are finding out about how food was processed and cooked and used, what kind of sources do you usually go for? Are you like pouring through biochemistry journals? What is it like when you when you find out something new that you you hadn't known before? Oh, it's funny because I'm, of course, I'm living on the Black Fiat Reservation, so I have cultural connections here. I have indigenous botanists that are super informed and have a lot of information themselves, but I also am a graduate student, and I occasionally approach things from an academic side.

Sometimes I get information just by reaching out to native chefs and asking questions, especially if it's from a community that I don't have knowledge of. So if you're talking with plant folks, they might say, oh, yeah, this plant is edible. Great. What part of the plant? When you harvest it, you know, camis roots, oh yeah, this plant is edible. Great. What part of the plant? When you harvest it, you know, camis roots, for example, camis bulbs are edible. What are these?

Okay, I'd never heard of them, but they are plant friends in the Asparagus family and their flowers sometimes carpet whole beautiful meadows with these lilac or white or deep violet blooms. And then the root, the bulb, tastes like a freakin' baked pear. So go find them just by blossom spotting, right? No. But it is more traditional for people to wait until after they've bloomed,

which makes them a little bit harder to identify. And then you also have to know what it could be mistaken as, like, death camis, which is a white flower versus a blue flower. But if they're not blooming when you're harvesting them, that's hard to tell. And then you have to know, of course, how to cook it. And for camis, it's really, really high in Inulin. Okay. Inulin is a fiber. And I'm going to read between our lines here and break the windy news. She's talking farts people. Delicious, creamy sweet Inulin has a price and it's ripping hot ones for days. And so you have to basically slow cook these or roast these for an extended amount of time.

And traditionally that was done in a big pit underground and they'd be roasted for up to 48 hours until basically the sugars are caramelizing and the Inulins been processed down so your body can digest it. That's not something that it says if you're like, Canvas bulbs are edible. So all of that information has to go along with it or else the resource is incomplete. Just knowing that something is edible doesn't necessarily help as a resource all the time because sometimes it can be dangerous. So for example, choke cherries are edible, but the pits and choke cherries contain cyanide. But the pits were traditionally eaten by blackfeet and Lakota and other people that have traditionally eaten choke cherries, because we took choke cherries, smashed them with a rock in their entirety

into little choke cherry pancakes, right? We basically made little fruit patties, and then we dried them until they were dehydrated. And then now they're dried out, they're very packable. They keep for a long time, but that drying process neutralizes the cyanide in them. So you can eat the pits because now they've been smashed into oblivion and also the cyanide is not going to harm you. Wow. What about some myths that you commonly encounter that you love to bust?

Is it flimflam that the North American indigenous diet is mostly acorns? It's not all acorns, maybe. Acorns. Acorns are all edible. Mm-hmm. I was gonna say, I mean, I don't come from any acorn eating people. That sounds weird. Okay, so I grew up in California and its golden foothills are studded with oak trees. I love them so much. I grew up collecting acorns for school projects. So I thought it was a national teaching

that indigenous foods were all acorn based. So that must be a myth. Turns out it's incredibly regional, of course, like, DUR, Ward. Did I embarrass myself? Sure a little bit. So go text your crush, cut some banks. Ask the questions to the stuff you don't know. That's really interesting to me, because I think that,

obviously, in Montana, so much of our education is Buffalo, by the same. And then on the east coast, where my partner's from, he's Haudenosaunee, on a dogger from New York, and so a lot of their discussions about indigenous food are about the three sisters, which is of course corn beans and squash, coming from a very different agricultural community, which is similar to how my mom's people of Cherokee traditionally grew food as well.

Up in the Great Lakes region, it's probably all focused about wild rice and rice and culture. And then down in the Southwest, you get more corn, beans, and squash, but also the sunflowers all over that people have incorporated as and bread specifically have very large edible seeds and cactuses. Cactuses don't get talked a lot about unless you're in Mexico in which case everyone's like oh yeah no palais but then we have prickly pear cacti in Montana and those produce the same edible fruit and that is a treat for black-feet people. It's so regional and that's the fun part of it. I don't know if people have a

lot of misconceptions about native food. I think probably most people think potatoes came from Ireland for example and that's a big South American indigenous food regardless of your type of potatoes. The Incan Empire had a massive agricultural Knowledge about potatoes and there were and still are thousands of varieties of potatoes Tomatoes of course are an indigenous food

Italians didn't have tomatoes until they were traded back to Italy with Columbus and future generations of folks. I can make spaghetti. Okay, so we have questions from listeners. If I may ask them. Yes. Okay, but before we do, we always shout out a cause of theologist choosing and this is for fast black feet It's food access and sustainability team which is a group of community leaders and health professionals and educators

Within the black feet nation who are dedicated to identifying food insecurity in their community offering effective solutions related to access to healthy food and nutrition education and related to access to healthy food and nutrition education and addressing food sovereignty. And so this week the donation went specifically to them. I'm so stoked that this podcast and the community of folks were able to make that possible, along with sponsors of the show, who I genuinely like, and then we take some of that money we give away. Okay, your questions. Dirty Dan wants to know, what role do mushrooms play typically in Indigenous foods? Oh, that's such a good question. It depends so much regionally, but here it's interesting because, you know, as I said, I'm up in Montana and so we have, we're really fortunately, have marels

that grow, especially in our old burnt forests, and so that's a really fun activity for folks to go out and do as harvest murals a few years after fires come through. But we also have puff balls and puff balls are of course these big mushrooms that grow mostly out on the prairies but there is actually a story There is actually a story that goes back that talks about a earth woman marrying a skyman. And when she came back down to earth and gave birth, there was a rule that her baby wasn't supposed to touch the ground for five days. And on the fifth day, his grandma, the girl's mother, was watching the baby and she wasn't really watching him that well. And so the mom came back into the lodge and was looking for her baby and she's oh he's under that blanket. She lifted up the blanket and instead of a baby being there, it was a puffball.

And the baby had been turned into a puffball and that's how we got puff balls. And so now on some black feet painted lodge designs, you'll see these circles and the bright white circles on a colorful background. And real quick, so a lodge is what most non-natives generally see and call a T.B. Although a T.B. is a word from a different nation, the Dakota folks. Now in Blackbeat language, it would be called a Nitali or a Lodge. But some individuals' designs look like a band along the bottom with this graphic row of big polka dots. But... They're puff balls. They're mushrooms is what they represent. And of course, there's so many other indigenous peoples with different types of mushrooms.

But we definitely have recognized mushrooms as part of traditional diets. I was just reading a Cherokee story from my mom's people the other day about a type of mushroom, and our Cherokee stories tell us they say, once you see the mushroom, it will stop growing. But if you put a stick through it, mushroom it will stop growing but if you put a stick through it then it will keep growing but it was interesting because I was reading this translation of this Cherokee text and they also said in other words if you see a mushroom with a stick through it it means it's already been claimed and you have to leave it alone but if it doesn't have a stick through it, then you can claim it and you can come back

when it's ready to harvest. Oh, okay, I see what you did there. And so I was like, oh, okay, that makes sense. But it's funny because they translated what that principle was. It was like, we don't actually think that mushrooms gonna stop growing. This is just how you claim it.

But like, that's what the story is and that's why it relates. And so it's cool, but it's a delicacy and then they talked about how you claim it, but that's what the story is and that's why it relates. And so it's cool, but it's a delicacy and then they talked about how to cook it up and you know fry it in a little bit of animal fat and bread it with a little bit of cornmeal or something. So there's definitely traditional stories with fungi. That's wonderful to think of paintings of just big puff balls. I thought this was a great question. This is from Stephanie Shirley, who is a first-time question asker and DNA.

How do you propose natives decolonizing our diet when most reservations are food deserts and lack of resources to fresh fruits and vegetables and planting crops in a drought is costly in an already economically disadvantaged community? So food deserts, of course, it's a term used by the USDA to define people's distance from a place where they can buy food like a grocery store. And of course grocery stores on reservations have their own challenges within the food distribution system, including, of course, the last mile transport costs, so a lot of high premiums added to fresh foods, like fruits and vegetables, for example.

So that, in itself, can be a challenge to navigate. That said, there are a lot of foods that folks likely do have within their communities. Wherever you're living, whether it's a true desert or not, there are foods that people have been eating there for thousands of years. And so sometimes it's just learning some of the plants in your area, even if it's just little plants that you know that you can harvest and dry and make tea out of later. That's something that can bring you connection to your landscape. So for example, here we have Yaro, which is a great plant, grows all over the northern hemisphere,

has a flavor profile similar to tarragon, so it could be used as a spice, or it can be dried and made into a tea. Lots of people grow in places that have wild mint. That's something to know. You learn to identify whatever wild onions are in your area. There's so many types of wild onions that grow all around. If you have any types of fruit trees, you know, berries, obviously nut trees, whether they're

black walnuts or hickory nuts, those nice beautiful, shelled tree nuts, like pecans, those are all indigenous foods acorns Learn how to process them. So there's foods that are out there and I love folks getting out and just connecting more with our landscapes learning to identify What plants in your area and what you can do with them how to prepare them so for more on that you can see the foraging ecology Episode of the Lexus Nelson aka black forager. I would just say that if you're lucky enough to know someone that has traditional medicinal or botanical knowledge, even if it's just someone that knows a few plants in your area, go learn those plants, go out with them, and then share that information. And last, listen to a question we got from a few people, Ali Vessels, Khenstead of Gibson, Ali V, Elise Hickman. And this is for non-native folks, cross-cultural implications.

How do non-indigenous friends do right by our indigenous friends when making and sharing your incredible food? Are there appropriation concerns we should consider? How do you feel is the best way for non-natives to appreciate and to participate in indigenous food? Yeah, that's a good question. to appreciate and to participate in indigenous food. Yeah, that's a good question. So I reiterate, learn about your plants. And that's just me as an ecologist thinking about,

how do you connect with your landscape? Whenever you get outside and you just learn a little bit more about those spaces, it can help inherently build that connection. If you go out berry picking, you also see the birds that are out there picking berries with you, yelling anchorly maybe, you might run into a bear, right? But you understand all of those other creatures that are part of that connection with the berries, too. And if something threatens the berries,

you suddenly know that it's not just your berry patch that's being threatened, but you know all of the other beings that rely on that too. And so you're more inclined to take care of that because of your vested interest in it. Last questions I always ask our, what your favorite thing about your job is. I get to spend all of my time educating and

teaching and working with foods, whether that be as a contractor that's developing educational materials, whether that be teaching cooking classes or being in the community, teaching folks how to harvest native plants, whatever it is, I get to grow and harvest and

hunt a lot of food. And that also helps keep me fed, but with delicious healthy things from here. There is new and exciting things every day. And sometimes I get frustrated trying to learn how to use video editing software and trying to clean my kitchen and all the other fun things. But honestly, it's, it is the most fun and rewarding thing I could be doing. So ask generous people, not genius questions, and just do it out of respect and curiosity

and everyone will walk away better for it. It's a huge, huge thank you to Amari Gladstone, I'm a giant fan of her and Intigic Kitchen. For more of Marais' work, huge thank you to Maria Gladstone. I'm a giant fan of her and in Digikitchen. For more of Maria's work, you can go to indigikitchen.com. She's at indigikitchen on Instagram and Maria Gladstone on Twitter and Instagram. We are at Alligies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Alliward with one L on both. Also linked is Alliward.com slash Smologies, which has dozens more kids safe and shorter episodes you can blaze through. And thank you Mercedes-Mateland of Madeland Audio and Jared Sleeper of Mind Jam Media for

editing those as well as Zeke Rodriguez-Thomas. And since we like to keep things small around here, the rest of the credits are in the show notes. And if you stick around until the end of the episode, I give you a piece of advice. And listen, I get it. Mornings are hectic. They're busy. Everyone's fighting to get out the door. You're forgetting stuff.

And so I like to film my water bottle the night before. That way it's not the thing that I go, forget it, have it filled and I grab it out the door. You can do it the night before, you can even put ice in it. And if it's an insulated bottle, it stays cool. So I do that on days when I know I have busy mornings. I hope that helps.

Okay, bye bye. I'm just... I'm just...