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It has been a minute. I went on a tiny hiatus due to school, my job, and grad school applications. Last semester got very chaotic and busy super fast. However, I continued to cook and have so many amazing posts coming up for you all! I apologize for my absence and I am excited to be back. This blog revolves around Cherokee art, culture, and food. My university resides on Indigenous land. Where a Cherokee mound once was, is now an education building. Where a village was, is now a residence hall. My university has slowly been working on doing this over the past 15 years through offering a Cherokee studies program, providing Cherokee language classes, dedicating buildings to the Cherokee, obtaining Cherokee artwork into their museum's collection, and hosting events regarding Indigenous culture. While doing so, they have built a relationship with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI). A thirty-minute drive down the road will lead you to Cherokee, North Carolina. With Cherokee being so close and my school being on their land, our Anthropology Department, Cherokee Studies Department, Cherokee Language Department, Health Department, and Art Department have been building a relationship with the Cherokee Nation. They have been aiding in educating our students on their history, revitalization, and cultural practices such as basket weaving. I major in Anthropology and have taken a plethora of Cherokee and Native American culture classes. Alongside my department teaching accurate Native American history (if you are interested, the book Heartbeat of wounded knee is a good place to dissect that), they also host events with the EBCI. An event I recently went to was called the Rooted in the Mountains Symposium.
It was truly wonderful. I love learning especially about different cultures and the theme for this year was Seeding Sovereignty: Sustainable Agriculture, Sustaining Culture & Health. The sessions were
Local Food and Nutrition: Utilizing Ancient Food Practices to Address Modern Chronic Disease
EBCI: Using Language and Culture to Promote Nutrition and Health
Incorporation of Traditional Foods for Chronic Disease Prevention
Importance of Traditional Agricultural Methods of the Cherokee People
Wild Plants, Lost Crops, and Resilient Agriculture in Ancient Appalachia
Representing Indigenous Foods, Creativity, and Wellbeing in Appalachia
Settler-Colonialism on the March: American Chestnuts, GMOs, and the Eastern Cherokee
The Using Language and Culture to Promote Nutrition and Health session spoke about a site, Tribal Food Distribution Program, that the Cherokee created. This site has different recipes, their food pyramid, videos, and resources surrounding food and nutrition. The site is run by the Cherokee Tribal Food Distribution Program. They use it to aid in the education of nutrition and as a way to help revitalize the Cherokee language also known as Cherokee syllabary. On the site, there are a plethora of Cherokee recipes that you can make at home! You can also hear how different words and phrases are pronounced and written in Cherokee syllabary. I suggest checking the website out and seeing which recipes you would like to try:
Along with these sessions was a Cherokee dinner made by the North American Indian Women’s Association (NAIWA). They made bean bread with grease and salt on top, fried chicken, potatoes, hominy and beans, cabbage, and stricket meat. (Side note: I was told it was stricket meat but when I tried to research it, nothing came up. It is possible that it is fatback and the best way to describe it is a harder, saltier version of bacon. I am calling it stricket meat for this blog but if you know a different name for this dish, please let me know.) For dessert, they cooked us a strawberry shortcake. It was a traditional Cherokee meal and it was delicious. It was so nice to have a home-cooked meal since I had not had one in months.
Bean bread is a mixture of “cornmeal, flour, and cooked mixed together wrapped with soaked hickory leaves and tied together with young river grass, and low-boiled for about thirty minutes.”(Veteto and Welch) It is typically unwrapped after cooking and topped with cooked greens or animal grease. In this case, it was animal grease and it was one of my favorite dishes of the meal. The grease and salt enhanced the flavor of the bean patty. The fried chicken, potatoes, and cabbage were paired so nicely with each other and were well-seasoned. They truly made me miss a good home-cooked meal that this college student had been wanting. The hominy and beans were top tier and when you eat it with the cabbage, you experience a whole new world of flavors. My great-grandmother actually used to eat hominy frequently for breakfast when she was living in Charleston, SC and this was my first time having it. After having it, I understood why she liked the dish so much. Stricket meat is a very popular food in Cherokee culture which is what one of the women who cooked told me. She also told me it is not the healthiest which makes sense considering it is similar to bacon but a little harder. It tasted amazing and after having it, I understood why it was considered an addictive food. I absolutely love strawberries and the strawberry shortcake was phenomenal. The cake was light and fluffy along with the fresh sweet strawberry topping. The whipped cream on top was the icing on the cake and it was a lovely way to end such a delicious meal.
While being at school, I have learned a lot about indigenous culture considering I am in the anthropology department. I also learned from working at the WCU Fine Art Museum or as I like to call it, my second home. We have a lot of Cherokee artwork in our collection and we have done exhibits highlighting Cherokee artists such as America Meredith. In this post, I wanted to dive into Western North Carolina and show you all the indigenous culture that resides in this area. The food I had at this conference inspired me to focus on a Cherokee piece from our art museum’s collection.I chose a hand-tinted, double-exposed black and white photograph labeled Earth Renewal Series - Pawnee Woman in a Field by Shan Goshorn who was a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Shan Goshorn was well known for her basketry and “Shan Goshorn (Cherokee) worked in photography and painting before turning to the unique double-woven Cherokee baskets as vessels to carry her complex retellings of history.” (Racette)
Born on July 3, 1957, Goshorn grew up in Baltimore and moved to Cherokee, NC after graduating high school. Before going to college, she began practicing Native American art, and “in Cherokee, she worked at the Qualla Arts and Crafts cooperative, a job that led her to the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, an agency within the Department of the Interior.” (Lemonides) The Indian Arts and Crafts Board commissioned her to illustrate around 20 traditional Cherokee basket patterns. She moved to Tulsa, OK where she was inspired by “Native American artists who incorporated political themes in their work”(Lemonides) and as a response to the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage to North America, she began making works focusing on human rights issues.
This piece presents a slightly faded Pawnee woman in an open field with traditional clothing on. This piece presents the connection with the land that Indigenous cultures have where they have a connection to their homelands. Goshorn’s photograph is from her Earth Renewal Series that she made during a difficult time in her life. She was going through a difficult pregnancy and was told to withdraw from her political activism as a way to aid her in having a healthy pregnancy. Goshorn stated that she “consciously settled into a place that drew strength from the nurturing qualities of our original mother, the earth. Traditional teachings tell us that we are the caregivers to this mother; she provides for us in return.”(Goshorn) This series involves double-exposed images that feature her friends and family who aid in presenting her concept of renewal. The idea of renewal of the earth and ourselves which is a strong focus of many Indigenous dances and ceremonies.
Later on, Goshorn incorporated this photograph into a basket that was created in the traditional double-weave style that the Cherokee use. (Shan Goshorn) While the exteriors are photographs, these baskets incorporate splints on the interior that are made from reproductions “on paper of the Indian Removal Act of 1830” (Shan Goshorn) These baskets are described as representations of “ both ends of the Trail of Tears and our duality of belonging to both places now.” (Shan Goshorn) Goshorn shows her culture through her works similar to how the NIAWA showed their culture through their food. Both of these allowed me to understand and experience Cherokee culture in a different way. I can not wait to continue learning about their culture through their food and art. If you are interested in attending the Rooted in the Mountains Symposium, I highly recommend it! It is a lovely way to learn about different research that is being done and to grow your knowledge about Indigenous culture. If you cook a meal from the Cherokee Tribal Food Distribution Program website, please let me know. I would love to see your creations!
References:
Barbaro, Theresa. “Shan Goshorn Re-Weaving History .” Smithsonian Institution, 2014.
Goshorn, Shan. “Statements about Work.” Shan Goshorn Studio, 22 Oct. 2010, http://shangoshorn.blogspot.com/2010/.
Lemonides, Alex. “Shan Goshorn, Whose Cherokee Art Was Political, Dies at 61.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 20 Dec. 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/obituaries/shan-goshorn-dead.html.
Nazarea, Virginia D., et al. “Food from Ancestors .” Seeds of Resistance, Seeds of Hope: Place and Agency in the Conservation of Biodiversity, University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 2013, pp. 64–84.
Racette, Sherry Farrell. “Tuft Life: Stitching Sovereignty in Contemporary Indigenous Art.” Art Journal, vol. 76, no. 2, [Taylor & Francis, Ltd., CAA], 2017, pp. 114–23, http://www.jstor.org/stable/45142477.
“Shan Goshorn.” SHAN GOSHORN, http://www.shangoshorn.net/.
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