It is simply the way of life there, says Chef Fernando Divina of Terrace Kitchen in Lake Oswego, south of Portland in Oregon, who prepared a special lunch using native foods for a visiting press contingent in the US last week.
"Foraged foods usually began with spring fiddleheads, mushrooms and other up shoots of new, young plants," he says.
"Naturally, being raised on the Yakama reservation in Wapato, Washington and the eventual marriage to my wife (Marlena) of Annishinabe descent cinched my lifelong interest in a foodway that included indigenous food preparation, celebration and giving."
The food movement may be in full swing now, but there were many challenges faced by Divina when he first started working with indigenous foods.
"Consumers are influenced, deeply, by the media in addition to the foods brought to bear by governmental influences in the market place," he says.
"In the US, it was not until the 1990’s that acceptance of indigenous food products was made available to the general public through regional farmer’s markets. Now, as examples of the expanded indigenous foods to the public, one can purchase mesquite meal and tepary beans in the American Southwest’s central weekend markets.
"Here in the Northwest, while salmon, lamprey and a host of other water-based indigenous proteins have always been available they are only very recently being consumed and marketed in a context of “first people’s foods”.
"This basic awareness is low and continued marketing efforts to contextualise local, indigenous foods is a high priority."
There is yet to be a sustained “Native American food movement”, according to Divina; however, there is now a recognisable mutuality between tribes and the US government, though it remains slow in that area.
"In my opinion, there are strong indicators that the industry as a whole and a ‘movement’ is poised for expansion... establishing a basis of new Indian prosperity that will naturally extend beyond the reservations due to the interwoven political and economical ties that are bound through centuries of governmental intervention."
Divina says that interest in American Indian foods and foodway abroad, in his experience, may exceed that of the general populace of Americans.
"This is due to the historical elements of the global nuclear family in Asian countries, Europe and really, nearly everywhere except the US," he says.
"That is to say, that traditions of family participation in foodway is so much higher in other countries as compared to the US, and in my opinion only compares to the indigenous population of the US."
That said, there are parallels beyond the foods themselves that would attract a foreign market to these goods, he says.
For example, the wapato - a type of native potato - is widely cultivated in Asia, and considered a nutritious and healthy alternative to potatoes and other starchy foods.
While it once flourished in the American ponds, marshes, wetlands, and along riverbanks and streams, the wapato is now nearing extinction in North America. The native plant can still be found growing wild on Sauvie Island.
The traditional way to harvest wapato is to walk into chest-high water and feel for the bulbs in the mud with your bare feet (see picture of Divina harvesting for wapato himself below). Once found, the bulb is dislodged using either your feet or a stick, and when it pops up to the top of the water, you break the bulb from the stalk.
Wapato is attractive to the foreign market consumer, simply due to the consumer's approach to regional marketplace, and sourcing in that manner.
"This is opposed to America’s ‘world bread basket' approach or 'feed the world’ approach of monoculture and mass production. In essence, the US is finally taking a step “back” to a healthier (economically, sustainably, socially) lifeway practice of regional markets featuring regionally produced foods by its people, including Native Americans and their foods rather, than excluding them as was the habit for centuries in the recent past.
"Thus, when a Native American community reaches production levels that can sustain the “tribe” their surplus must find a market. The foreign market plays heavily in consuming that surplus."
Working hard to promote indigenous foods, Divina and Marlena have also worked with Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian to publish a cookbook focusing on Native American foods. The book, Foods of the Americas: Native Recipes and Traditions, has been awarded a prestigious James Beard Foundation award.
