This Week in Native American News (6/19/2020): Traditions, Food, and History
June 19, 2020
Carrying on our traditions
Jonah Hurst shows his little brother, Bear, how to pick spruce tips in Wrangell. (Courtesy Photo | Nikka Mork)
Nikka Mork, Cháas’ Koowú Tláa, doesn’t let the pandemic stop her from harvesting traditional foods. One of her favorite foods is spruce tips, an important part of her Tlingit culture. For Nikka, harvesting spruce tips is about teaching respect and educating her children about the medicinal and nutritional value of plants. “Harvesting teaches the ways and values of our Tlingit ancestors.”
Nikka has been harvesting spruce tips for food for the last decade. She recalls as a child walking through the woods while spruce tips were budding. “I’d pick a couple and eat them as I explored the woods. Some were sweet, some were citrusy, and some tasted woodsy, meaning they were too big to be picking. It was fun to pick the needles off to eat the tart center as a refreshing snack.”
Adjusting to harvesting in a pandemic means there’s less help from extended family and friends who are sheltering or keeping their social bubbles small. “Some days it’s hard to make myself go out and get things like spruce tips. I’m used to my mom and my grandpa saying they’re ready to go. It motivates me to get out there with them.”
Read the Full Story Here
In similar news… Gambell Seamstress Keeps Knowledge of Traditional Siberian Yupik Sewing Alive
A St. Lawrence Island artist and educator seeks to reintroduce the art of dried skin sewing into Alaskan schools. Published by Lydia Apatiki of Gambell, with support from Kawerak Inc., “Sivuqam Kelugwi: A St. Lawrence Island Traditional Sewing Curriculum” uses a symbiosis of technology and traditional knowledge to revitalize a forgotten art.
These Arizona Native food experts appear in Hulu's new series starring chef Padma Lakshmi
Phoenix healer Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz sits on her back patio with a bowl of black eyed peas cooked with onion, carrots and herbs and featuring fresh lemon juice. (Photo: Courtesy of Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz)
All across the United States, what is known as American food culture is inexorably tied with the influence of immigrant groups — but this culture lies on a bedrock of Native American traditions that some may have never seen or tasted.
In the new Hulu series 'Taste the Nation' that debuts June 18, Padma Lakshmi, cookbook author and host of 'Top Chef,' tours the country in the name of culinary and cultural education. Lakshmi explores the diverse food cultures of various immigrant and indigenous groups, from Japanese food in Hawaii to Persian food in Los Angeles.
In an episode shot in Arizona, Lakshmi visits two women at their homes to learn about the traditional Native American food of the Southwest.
Read the Full Story Here
In similar news… Navajo ranchers are raising premium beef
Yazzie on a rural expanse of the Navajo Nation, which stretches for 27,000 square miles across Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. The wide-open land – Yazzie’s closest neighbor lived about 30 miles away – lent itself easily to livestock. Yazzie’s grandparents kept 80 sheep and more than 50 cows.
“In the Navajo Diné traditional way of living the livestock is one of the main values,” Yazzie said. “It’s taught if you have these things, you’re going to continue to live a good life, you're going to do great things and you’re going to succeed.”
Inman and Yazzie are trying to grow a beef brand – Navajo Beef – with a community of Navajo families, Yazzie’s included, who’d been relocated to this stretch of desert as part of the 1974 Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act. Most brought livestock during the move, much of it without papers, vaccines, or marketable genetics. Inman and Yazzie are helping them transform those animals into premium beef. It’s a way to grow people’s incomes in an area with few economic opportunities. The federal agency managing the relocation has bolstered their efforts, but after 40 years of existence it’s expected to shutter, threatening to dismantle progress.
Today’s History Lesson:
To fully understand the mission of Lutheran Indian Ministries, we must know the history and the story of the Native peoples. By understanding the past, we can better serve today and in the future.
Disease Has Never Been Just Disease for Native Americans
The spread of COVID-19 is reminiscent of previous disease outbreaks that have ravaged Native American communities. Many of those outbreaks resulted in catastrophic loss of life, far greater than even the worst-case scenarios for COVID-19. Even the 1918–19 flu pandemic, in which an estimated 650,000 Americans died (0.6 percent of the 1920 population of 106 million), pales in comparison to the losses Native Americans have suffered from disease.
100 years ago, Spanish flu devastated Alaska Native villages
At the dawn of the 20th century, 15 people lived in the village of Point Possession on the northern tip of the Kenai Peninsula, according to census data. After the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic reached the small settlement and killed 10 people, a single family was all that was left of the Point Possession population.
Simply for your enjoyment: The Origin of My Laugh
It’s hard to fit all the news in a little space.
To read all of this week's news, visit the LIM Magazine.
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