If you stop at a roadside restaurant anywhere between North Dakota and Oklahoma, you might not immediately get a sense of culinary diversity. Many menus in rural and small-town middle America consist…
There has been a concerted effort by the US Govt to remove as much Indian culture as possible. Moving tribes from their homelands to reservations where the plants used in dishes are different, forbidding native languages, taking kids and schooling them to be white while they’re a thousand miles away from home to prevent cultural passing down, all adds up to a loss in recipes and traditions.
Indian tacos, while delicious, aren’t exactly traditional because they’re made with flour and other ingredients supplied by the US govt.
However, there are other things that have lasted - wojapi (berry sauce), kanuchi (nut soup), and some others. Mainly things that could translate between regions and be orally retold until they could be written down. Now it just takes a Google search to find them.
But overall, it’s hard to build a menu on pre-contact food. There’s a few restaurants, but it’s not easy.
There has been a concerted effort by the US Govt to remove as much Indian culture as possible. Moving tribes from their homelands to reservations where the plants used in dishes are different, forbidding native languages, taking kids and schooling them to be white while they’re a thousand miles away from home to prevent cultural passing down, all adds up to a loss in recipes and traditions.
Indian tacos, while delicious, aren’t exactly traditional because they’re made with flour and other ingredients supplied by the US govt.
However, there are other things that have lasted - wojapi (berry sauce), kanuchi (nut soup), and some others. Mainly things that could translate between regions and be orally retold until they could be written down. Now it just takes a Google search to find them.
But overall, it’s hard to build a menu on pre-contact food. There’s a few restaurants, but it’s not easy.