Indigenous Foods Day

A letter to Fry Bread readers, from publisher Valerie Vande Panne

Kind Reader,

Many years ago, esteemed Chef Nephi Craig (White Mountain Apache and Navajo) proposed telling the truth about Thanksgiving through food, to get us away from a myth that has been regurgitated for generations, that Thanksgiving commemorates peace between pilgrims and Indians.

That first Thanksgiving never happened, and was rather a myth created by propagandist Sarah Josepha Hale. T’was Abraham Lincoln who, in the midst of the Civil War, proposed the national holiday as a way to heal the divided, war-torn United States. Craig noted the fourth Thursday of November has ended up celebrating something else uniquely Native American: The food.

Turkey, pumpkin, cranberries, squash, and corn are all Native to North America. The Indigenous peoples of the Americas have been cultivating these foods, and so much more, for thousands of years. 

Let us call the fourth Thursday of November Indigenous Foods Day, he suggests.

Let’s not feel guilty about it either. Every day is a day for which to be grateful.

Let’s keep taking the day off, and keep on eating delicious food. Let’s celebrate and highlight the truth: The bounty of Indigenous foods that were here when the Europeans arrived are still here. 

And they are delicious.

Craig recommends that we think regionally: Lobster in Boston, salmon in the Pacific Northwest, snapper in Florida. Nopales in the Southwest. Think about what is Native and Indigenous to where you live, and treat all that local Native food in a special way, in the same revered way we do with the “traditional” foods of Thanksgiving.  

Native foods of what is now known as the Americas deserve reverence as they have changed the world: Tomatoes in your Italian pasta ? Native. Chiles in the Asian foods section of your local market? Native. Potatoes? Native.

Chocolate? Native.

Don’t know where the food on your plate came from? Do a little homework, and share your new found knowledge with your family. It beats the heck outta talking about politics.

Let Indigenous Foods Day remind us where our food comes from, and what was here long before us.

Let it uplift local plants and farmers, and educate on the power and importance of local agriculture and the sharing of ideas and cuisine.

And let it remind us that Creator provides for us, abundantly, right where we are.

I believe Indigenous Foods Day can unite us, and it can heal our differences, serving as a balm to the fresh wounds of misunderstanding and intolerance.

Truth, and good food, can heal.

Wishing you a Happy Indigenous Foods Day,

Valerie and the Fry Bread team