Indigenous Food: Spirit Plate and A Feather and a Fork

If you’re looking for something to watch or cook this weekend, there are two good Indigenous food options.

Vision Maker Media is streaming Spirit Plate free throughout September. The series follows award-winning chef Pyet DeSpain (Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation) as she visits Indigenous communities to gather, fish, hunt, and cook with local foods. The 15-minute episodes include spearing Pacific lamprey with the Yurok Tribe, a bison stew for the Potawatomi Gathering, a feast with Onondaga seed keepers and matriarchs, halibut cooked for Haida elders in a longhouse, a Hawaiian underground-oven pig roast, and Tlingit beach asparagus and salmon.

And if you’re ready to cook, Crystal Wahpepah (Kickapoo Nation) published A Feather and a Fork this year, with 125 intertribal recipes including sweet blue cornbread, strawberry-sumac salad, bison roast with chokeberry rub, and acorn muffins. Tommy Orange wrote the foreword.

Vision Maker Media, Spirit Plate link

A Feather and a Fork: 125 Intertribal Dishes from an Indigenous Food Warrior, Crystal Wahpepah