On Thanksgiving, Washington Post readers turned to the front page of the Style section for the annual “Native American” lecture on “Hatesgiving.” It was a food article by Maura Judkis. The online headline was “Native American chefs lament 'Columbusing'of indigenous foods.” Judkis began:
Earlier this fall, Karlos Baca, an indigenous food activist known for cooking beautiful foraged meals using traditional Native American ingredients and cooking methods, was approached by a regional food magazine: Would he like to provide a recipe for their Thanksgiving issue?
"Instead of getting a recipe from me, they got three pages of activism," he says. Baca, along with some other Native Americans who see the holiday as whitewashing the harm colonists did to indigenous people, refers to it as "Takesgiving" or "Hatesgiving." Typically, he won't participate in the dinner: "I have a tradition of fasting," he says.
“Foodies” looking for the next hot culinary trend are beginning to seize on the Native American foods. But wait, even the term “Native American” is an insult! The guilt trip is never ending! You must always feel the need to apologize for the wrongs of Miles Standish! Or General Custer!
Thinking of Native American food as a trend perpetuates a number of misguided notions: first, that Native American food is a monolithic thing. The food of our nation's indigenous people -- some, like Baca, do not like the term "Native American," because his ancestors predate the naming of America -- is as diverse as the country's 567 federally recognized Native American nations. Outsiders tend to think of them in the aggregate, noting fry bread, a fried dough with various toppings, as one food that many share. Around Thanksgiving, one of the few times that schools teach students about Native Americans, many include fry bread as part of the curriculum.
But Baca, [Sean] Sherman and other chefs reject fry bread, which they see as a symbol of resilience under colonial oppression. The fried dough recipe, Sherman writes in his recently released cookbook, "The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen," is the product of the government commodities that Native Americans were given during their forced migration, which separated tribes from their traditional foods. Baca and Sherman are among the Native American chefs who serve "decolonized" meals, prepared with no pork, beef, dairy, processed cane sugar or wheat flour, ingredients that Europeans introduced into native diets. Avoiding these ingredients is also healthier, they say.
The colonists "purposely destroyed food systems, first as a means of control, and the aftermath of it is horrendous," says Sherman, noting that Native Americans have an average life expectancy four years shorter than all other races and ethnicities in America. According to the Indian Health Service, they also die at higher rates than other Americans of such ailments as liver disease and diabetes.
Earth to the WashPost: Those destroyed livers are probably due to high rates of alcoholism, not food intake. Then comes the lecture on “Columbusing,” a form of busing they don’t like:
Native American diets "have been here for a long time, whereas the Paleo diet was designed as a food trend," says Sherman, scoffing at the idea of "Captain Caveman's diet."
And reducing a deeply spiritual food culture to its trend potential or its nutritive value is another example of a phenomenon called "Columbusing" - the practice among white people of acting as if something created by people of color didn't exist until they took note of it, like the intrepid explorer who "discovered" America, where indigenous people had been living for centuries. This happens frequently to food that becomes suddenly trendy: pho, collard greens and matcha have all been Columbused in the past year, becoming the domain of bearded white chefs with full-sleeve tattoos. And now, Native American food is going through the same thing.
"I've seen some pop-up restaurant start-ups start to come around where nonnative people are trying to do Native American food," says Sherman. "And we had a conversation with them - 'You know, you can do whatever you want to do, but if you call your food Native American food and you don't even have any native people on your staff, then it's completely cultural appropriation.' "
Somehow, this story doesn’t include the fact that The Washington Post should be using a Native American reporter on this story instead of letting a painfully white lady do it. Judkis offered a soupcon of balance, from chefs that don't believe hammering the white people is an effective public-relations strategy. The ending is precious, as well. Thanksgiving is a “sore spot, but an entry point” for lectures about American Indian cooking. "Even though Thanksgiving is the biggest lie in American history," one chef says, "it's a lie told over dinner."
Judkis was oddly upset that the white people insulted in this article were not offering up breast-beating responses of guilt on Twitter. This was her original tweet:
Happy Thanksgiving! The latest victims of food Columbusing are Native Americans - who were *literally* Columbused. Food media have deemed Native American food trendy, and compared it to the Paleo diet. Indigenous people have mixed feelings about that. https://t.co/WHm1gPrMD1
— Maura Judkis (@MauraJudkis) November 22, 2017
She chided one critic for not displaying the "spirit of Thanksgiving"....as if her "whites ruined America with Hatesgiving" was in the spirit of Thanksgiving?
Some whites were gentler in their embattled response:
[Hat tip: Dan Gainor]
