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I know I usually save my secrets for the end of the episode, but I'm going to tell you my secret favorite candy. It's Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.
It's really Reese's anything. But Reese's peanut butter cups are the thing that I'm like, have I had a bad day? I get these. Have I had a good day? I get these. Chocolate, salty peanut butter, the textures. I love everything about them. Also that there's two. So I'm like, oh, I get this one for later, which is one second later. Anyway, Reese's peanut butter cups. I love you. That's all. If you're me, you can shop Reese's peanut butter cups now at a store near you. Found wherever candy is sold. And I am.
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Oh, hey. Hi. It's that mechanical pencil that's out of light. Oh, wait. Click, click. Wait, wait. Oh, look. There you go. Alley word. I hope you're hungry for a small bite-sized version of Indigenous cooking. So this is an episode of Smologies, and Smologies are shorter, edited episodes of longer, full-length episodes. But we cut out all the swear words, and we make it safe for all ages. If you're looking for the full version, it's linked right in the show notes. But if you're here for Smologies, you're in the right place.
This episode's great. It's just a wonderful romp through time and identity and history and culture and food with someone who you may know as Indigit Kitchen Online. Indigenous digital kitchen, online cooking lessons. Indigit Kitchen. Can you dig it? You can. So this guest is of both Pagani Blackfeet and Cherokee heritage and is based on the 1.5 million acre Blackfeet Reservation in northwestern Montana. I was so excited to get to know her. I
and I was nervous because she's very cool, and I had a bunch of questions, and I didn't want to be annoying. And you know what? After all that worrying, I was annoying, and I did ask embarrassing questions, but she rolled with it because she's awesome, and that's what I'm here for. Okay, but let's get on with it. Indigenous Cuisinology, which is the study of a culture through its food, and indigenous comes from a Latin root for indigenus, which is
sprung from the land or native. You're going to love her. You're going to love her work so much. Okay, so belly up, stuff a napkin into your collar. Boy, howdy. Get hungry for stories involving fallen stars, mushroom dibs, food sovereignty, squash, acorns, flower bulbs, bison, the wildest of rices, meditations on fry bread, and
and how cooking with native foods isn't part of the past, but an essential aspect of the future with environmental scientist, engineer, cooking show host, and advocate, Mariah Gladstone. ♪ Small G's ♪ ♪ Small G's ♪ ♪ Small G's ♪ ♪ Small G's ♪ ♪ Small G's ♪
My name is Mariah Gladstone, she, her. And now you're based in Northwest Montana? Yep, I'm on the Blackfeet Reservation just south of the Canadian border. I'm about five minutes outside the eastern entrance to Glacier National Park.
Yeah, okay. You know, when you're coming up with recipes, are you really kind of basing it on rather than maybe hyperlocal? Are you looking for seasonal types of foods that might be traditional to whatever season is coming up? Or how do you plan the recipes that you're going to film and shoot and disseminate? That's a great question. Yeah, it's a combination of regional things, especially when I'm doing
really old or ancestral recipes, things that would have been made very similar to the way that I'm showcasing them. And in that case, of course, you're looking for a whole bunch of ingredients that would have been found in the same area. We're thinking of foods that are in season right now. So of course, it is the time of winter squashes. And it's the time of pumpkins and
It's hunting season and there's all of these wonderful foods that are available now. It's after ricing, so people have fresh parched wild rice and it's fun to incorporate those all at the same time, even though now, of course, we have ways of preserving food. So I have picked berries from August, but I can pull them out at any time and use them for things because I have them in the freezer or I have them dehydrated or whatever that may be. But also I recognize, you know, Indigenous people are...
living in the 21st century with everyone else. And we have always used the tools that we have access to. And right now, maybe that's a big chest freezer. Maybe that's an Instapot. Maybe that is a coffee grinder that can blend sunflower seeds into flour at lightning speed. P.S. While we recorded this, I was like, oh, what recipe uses sunflower butter? So I didn't want to interrupt her. But if your stomach just gurgled in curiosity, I looked it up. She has a sunflower butter popcorn recipe that involves honey and maple syrup and the note that this stuff is addictive.
I'm willing to take the risk. Whatever it is, we are able to recognize that ancestral wisdom and the indigenous brilliance of agriculture or harvesting or foraging or hunting or whatever it may be, along with our presence in this day. You mentioned a little bit about how
The diets veered off based on what was available and cheaper, less healthy foods. People hear indigenous food and they think fry bread. Does that just make you want to rage ever, to be honest? Side note, fry bread is this pillowy, oil-bathed, white flour comfort food. And it's used as a taco base or even as like this honey-drizzled dessert. But it's been in the hot seat.
So how does an expert feel about its place on the food landscape? You know, it's funny because fry bread, of course, came from a period of time where Native people were dependent on government rations, which were like shelf-stable processed boxes of food that were distributed to households. And they weren't things we recognized as food. So we made something out of them because survival. And that's where fry bread came from. So...
I will say that fry bread is a traditional food in that it's part of our history. And it got us through a period of time that would have otherwise meant starvation. But there is a tendency of oppressed people to mistake our oppression for our culture.
And I think that's kind of what people do with fry bread or commodity cheese or whatever thing that has become part of these subsidized food systems. And so I don't spend a lot of time trashing fry bread. So rather than focusing on all this negative stuff, we just focus on all of the resources that we do have, the things that we do have access to, whether it be in our grocery stores or in our communities or...
In the lands that we can forage or the things that we can grow in our soils, whatever it may be. Those are the things that I focus on and really tie it all back to the incredible wisdom that has put those things in place that has helped us recognize, you know,
Corn, corn's edible, right? But the ways in which we eat corn now are not traditionally how they were eaten. Our ancestors recognized that corn had to be treated with this process of nixtamalization. What is it? Nixtamalization. It's called nixtamalization, and it comes from the indigenous Nahuatl portmanteau, meaning lime ashes and tamal for corn dough. So nixtamalization.
This process of treating corn with a highly alkaline solution that you make from adding wood ash to water and it chemically dissolves the hull of the corn and that transforms the bound niacin into free niacin. And you have amazing indigenous chemistry happening while also recognizing that you've now added way more nutritional value to the corn and the wood ash has added calcium, which is way more absorbable than the calcium in dairy, for example. And all of that has taken place.
generations of indigenous knowledge to put in place. And when you are finding out about how food was processed and cooked and used, what kind of sources do you usually go for? Are you like pouring through biochemistry journals? What is it like when you find out something new that you hadn't known before?
It's funny because I'm, of course, I'm living on the Blackfeet Reservation. So I have cultural connections here. I have indigenous botanists that are super informed and have a lot of information themselves. But I also, I'm a graduate student and I can occasionally approach things from an academic side. Sometimes I get information just by reaching out to people
native chefs and asking questions, especially if it's from a community that I don't have knowledge of. So if you're talking with plant folks, they might say, oh yeah, this plant is edible.
What part of the plant? When do you harvest it? You know, camas roots, for example, camas bulbs are edible. What are these? Okay, I'd never heard of them, but they are plant friends in the asparagus family. And their flowers sometimes carpet whole beautiful meadows with these lilac or white or deep violet blooms. And then the root, the bulb, tastes like a freaking baked pear. So go find them just by blossom spotting, right?
But it is more traditional for people to wait until after they've bloomed, which makes them a little bit harder to identify. And then you also have to know what it could be mistaken as, like death camas, which is a white flower versus a blue flower. But if they're not blooming when you're harvesting them, that's hard to tell. And then you have to know...
Of course, how to cook it. And for camas, it's really, really high in inulin. Okay, inulin is a fiber. And I'm going to read between her lines here and break the windy news. She's talking farts, people. Delicious...
creamy, sweet inulin has a price and it's ripping hot once for days. And so you have to basically slow cook these or roast these for an extended amount of time. And traditionally that was done in a big pit underground and they'd be roasted for up to 48 hours until basically the sugars are caramelizing and all the inulin's been processed down so your body can digest it. That's not something that it says if you're like,
camas bulbs are edible. So all of that information has to go along with it or else the resource is incomplete. You know, just knowing that something is edible doesn't necessarily help as a resource all the time because sometimes it can be dangerous. So for example, choke cherries are edible, but the pits in choke cherries contain cyanide.
But the pits were traditionally eaten by Blackfeet and Lakota and other people that have traditionally eaten chokecherries. Because we took chokecherries, smashed them with a rock in their entirety into little chokecherry pancakes, right? We basically made little fruit pancakes.
And then we dried them until they were dehydrated. And then now they're dried out. They're very packable. They keep for a long time. But that drying process neutralizes the cyanide in them.
So you can eat the pits because now they've been smashed into oblivion and also the cyanide is not going to harm you. What about some myths that you commonly encounter that you love to bust? Is it flim flam that the North American indigenous diet is mostly acorns? It's not all acorns, maybe. Yeah.
Acorns. Acorns are all edible. I was going to say, I mean, I don't come from any acorn eating experience.
People. That sounds weird. Okay, so I grew up in California, and its golden foothills are studded with oak trees. I love them so much. I grew up collecting acorns for school projects. So I thought it was a national teaching that indigenous foods were all acorn-based.
So that must be a myth. Turns out it's incredibly regional, of course. Like, duh, Ward. Did I embarrass myself? Sure, a little bit. So go text your crush. Cut some banks. Ask the questions to the stuff you don't know. That's really interesting to me because I think that obviously in Montana, so much of our education is buffalo, bison. And then on the East Coast, where my partner's from, he's Haudenosaunee, and
Onondaga from New York. And so a lot of their discussions about indigenous food are about the three sisters, which is of course, corn, beans, and squash coming from a very different agricultural community, which is similar to how my mom's people, Cherokee, traditionally grew food as well. Up in the Great Lakes region, it's probably
all focused about wild rice and rice and culture. And then, you know, down in the Southwest, you get more corn, beans, and squash, but also there's sunflowers all over that people have incorporated as, and bread specifically to have very large edible seeds and, and,
Like, cactuses don't get talked a lot about. Unless you're in Mexico, in which case everyone's like, oh, yeah, nopales. But then we have prickly pear cacti in Montana, and those produce the same edible fruit, and that is a treat for Blackfeet people. It's so regional, and that's the fun part of it. I don't know if people have a lot of misconceptions about Native food. I think probably...
Most people think potatoes came from Ireland, for example, and that's a big South American indigenous food. Regardless of your type of potatoes, the Incan Empire had a massive agricultural economy.
knowledge about potatoes. And there were, and still are thousands of varieties of potatoes. Tomatoes, of course, are an indigenous food. Italians didn't have tomatoes until they were traded back to Italy with Columbus and future generations of folks. I can make spaghetti. Okay. So we have questions from listeners, if I may ask them. Yes. Yes.
Okay, but before we do, we always shout out a cause of theologist choosing, and this is for FAST Blackfeet. It's Food Access and Sustainability Team, which is a group of community leaders and health professionals and educators within the Blackfeet Nation who are dedicated to identifying food insecurity in their community.
offering effective solutions related to access to healthy food and nutrition education and addressing food sovereignty. And so this week, the donation went specifically to them. I'm so stoked that this podcast and the community of folks were able to make that possible, along with sponsors of the show, who I genuinely like. And then we take some of that money and we give it away. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. And as I record this, my dog, Gremmy, is snoring. Snoring.
Sometimes you gotta stop and smell the roses. Sometimes you gotta stop and record the snoring. Even when we know what makes us happy, it's hard to make time for it. And when you feel like you have no time for yourself, non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever. So if you were thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online. It's designed to be convenient and flexible. I love everything about it.
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I've used BetterHelp. It has helped me through some really tough stuff in my life and has really taught me to stop, let myself relax, pet my dog, go to bed early, that I'm worth those things, I deserve those things, and it'll make my life better in the long run. So never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash ologies today to get 10% off your first month. So that's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash ologies. Grammy says it's okay to nap too.
This episode is brought to you by Merrick Pet Care. And y'all know I have a little dog named Gremmy, which is short for Gremlin. And y'all helped me name her. And there's nothing that we like more than seeing her happy, which means tasty dog foods. And Merrick has been crafting high quality dog food for over 30 years. They were founded in Hereford, Texas.
But Grammy doesn't care about that. She cares about smushing her face in it and then licking the bowl. And I don't blame her because they use real ingredients and home-style recipes like real Texas beef and sweet potato or Grammy's pot pie. Grammy's like, Grammy's pot pie. Get away from it. It's mine.
mine. I also like that on the bag, they show what's in it and they always use deboned meat, fish, or poultry as the number one ingredient. And I think Remy appreciates that. So check out Merrick online or in your local pet store and look for their new packaging with real ingredients shown on the bag and inside it. Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum. Okay. Your questions. Dirty Dan wants to know, what role do mushrooms play typically in indigenous foods?
Oh, that's such a good question. It depends so much regionally. But here, it's interesting because, you know, as I said, I'm up in Montana. And so we have, we're really fortunate we have morels that grow, especially in our old burnt forests. And so that's interesting.
A really fun activity for folks to go out and do is harvest morels a few years after fires come through. But we also have puffballs. And puffballs are, of course, these big mushrooms that grow mostly out on the prairies, but
There is actually a story that goes back that talks about a earth woman marrying a sky man. And when she came back down to earth and gave birth, there was a rule that her baby wasn't supposed to touch the ground for five days. And on the fifth day, his grandma, the girl's mother was watching the baby and she wasn't
really watching him that well and so the mom came back into the lodge and was looking for her baby and she's oh he's under that blanket and she lifted up the blanket and instead of a baby being there it was a puffball and the baby had been turned into a puffball and that's how we got puffballs and so now on some black feet painted lodge designs you'll see these circles and
They're bright white circles on a colorful background. And real quick, so a lodge is what most non-natives generally see and call a tipi, although a tipi is a word from a different nation, the Dakota folks. Now, in Blackfeet language, it would be called a nyatawi or a lodge. But some individuals' designs look like a band along the bottom with this graphic row of big polka dots. But...
They're puffballs. They're mushrooms is what they represent. And of course, there's so many other indigenous peoples with different types of mushrooms. But we definitely have recognized mushrooms as part of traditional diets. I was just reading a Cherokee story from my mom's people the other day about a
type of mushroom. And our Cherokee stories tell us, they say, once you see the mushroom, it will stop growing. But if you put a stick through it, then it will keep growing. But it was interesting because I was reading this translation of this Cherokee text. And they also said, in other words, if you see a mushroom with a stick through it, it means it's already been claimed and you have to leave it alone. Right.
But if it doesn't have a stick through it, then you can claim it and you can come back when it's ready to harvest.
Oh, okay. I see what you did there. And so I was like, oh, okay. That makes sense. But it's funny because they translated what that principle was. It was like, we don't actually think that mushroom's going to stop growing. This is just how you claim it. But like, that's what the story is and that's why it relates. And so it's cool, but it's a delicacy. And then they talked about how to cook it up and, you know, fry it in a little bit of animal fat and bread it with a little bit of cornmeal or something. So...
There's definitely traditional stories with fungi. That's wonderful to think of paintings of just big puffballs. I thought this was a great question. This is from Stephanie Shirley, who is a first-time question asker, and Denae, how do you propose natives decolonizing our diet when most reservations are food deserts and lack resources to fresh fruits and vegetables and planting crops in a drought is costly in an already economically disadvantaged community? So
Food deserts, of course, it's a term used by the USDA to define food
people's distance from a place where they can buy food, like a grocery store. And of course, grocery stores on reservations have their own challenges within the food distribution system, including, of course, the last mile transport costs. So a lot of high premiums added to fresh foods, like fruits and vegetables, for example. So that in itself can be a challenge to navigate. That said, there are...
a lot of foods that folks likely do have within their communities. Wherever you're living, whether it's at
true desert or not, there are foods that people have been eating there for thousands of years. And so sometimes it's just learning some of the plants in your area, even if it's just little plants that you know that you can harvest and dry and make tea out of later. That's something that can bring you connection to your landscape. So for example, here we have yarrow, which is a
Great plant grows all over the Northern hemisphere has a flavor profile similar to tarragon. So it could be used as a spice or it can be dried and made into a tea. Lots of people grow in places that have wild mints. That's something to know. You learn to identify whatever wild onions are in your area. There's so many types of wild onions that grow all around, um,
If you have any types of fruit trees, berries, obviously, nut trees, whether they're black walnuts or hickory nuts, those nice, beautiful shelled tree nuts like pecans. Those are all indigenous foods. Acorns, learn how to process them. So there's foods that are out there. And I love folks getting out and just connecting more with our landscapes, learning to identify what plants in your area and what you can do with them, how to prepare them.
So for more on that, you can see the foraging ecology episode with Alexis Nelson, aka Black Forager. I would just say that if you're lucky enough to know someone that has traditional medicinal or botanical knowledge, even if it's just someone that knows a few plants in your area, go learn those plants, go out with them, and then share that information. And last listener question we got from a few people, Allie Vessels, Consetta Gibson, Allie V., Elise Hickman. And this is for non-native folks.
Cross-cultural implications. How do non-Indigenous friends do right by our Indigenous friends when making and sharing your incredible food? Are there appropriation concerns we should consider? How do you feel is the best way for non-Natives to appreciate and to participate in Indigenous food?
Yeah, that's a good question. So I reiterate, learn about your plants. And that's just me as an ecologist thinking about, you know, how do you connect with your landscape? Whenever you get outside and you just learn a little bit more about those spaces, it can help.
inherently build that connection. If you go out berry picking, you also see the birds that are out there picking berries with you yelling angrily, maybe you might run into a bear, right? But you understand all of those other creatures that are part of that connection with the berries too. And if something threatens the berries, you're,
You suddenly know that it's not just your berry patch that's being threatened, but you know all of the other beings that rely on that too. And so you're more inclined to take care of that because of your vested interest in it.
Last questions I always ask are what your favorite thing about your job is. I get to spend all of my time educating and teaching and working with foods, whether that be as a contractor that's developing educational materials, whether that be teaching cooking classes or being in the community, teaching folks how to harvest native plants, whatever it is, I get to grow and harvest and hunt a lot of food and that's,
That also helps keep me fed with delicious, healthy things from here. There is new and exciting things every day. And sometimes I get frustrated trying to learn how to use video editing software and trying to clean my kitchen and all the other fun things. But honestly, it is the most fun and rewarding thing I could be doing. Oh, awesome.
So ask generous people, not genius questions, and just do it out of respect and curiosity, and everyone will walk away better for it. So huge, huge thank you to Mariah Gladstone. I'm a giant fan of her and Indigikitchen. For more of Mariah's work, you can go to indigikitchen.com. She's at Indigikitchen.
Indigikitchen on Instagram and Mariah Gladstone on Twitter and Instagram. We are at Ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Allie Ward with one L on both. Also linked is AllieWard.com slash Smologies, which has dozens more kid safe and shorter episodes you can blaze through. And thank you, Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio and Jared Sleeper of Mindjam Media for editing those as well as Zeke Rodriguez-Thomas.
And since we like to keep things small around here, the rest of the credits are in the show notes. And if you stick around until the end of the episode, I give you a piece of advice. And listen, I get it. Mornings are hectic. They're busy. Everyone's fighting to get out the door. You're forgetting stuff. And so I like to fill my water bottle the night before. That way it's not the thing that I go, forget it.
I have it filled and I grab it out the door. You can do it the night before. You can even put ice in it. And if it's an insulated bottle, it stays cool. So I do that on days when I know I have busy mornings. I hope that helps. Okay, bye-bye. Small G's. Small G's. Small G's. Small G's. Small G's. Small G's.
