Summer is prime season for conventions, which are often catered. At a recent event held for Native Americans in Grand Ronde, special effort was taken to feed attendees traditional food.
Buffet lines at hotels and casinos are often filled with lasagna, fried chicken, and other vittles that are high in sodium, sugar, and fats. But at the recent Sacred Tobacco & Traditional Medicines Gathering at the Grand Ronde Tribe’s Spirit Mountain Event Center, the menu was more…pre-colonial.
“Some smoked trout, uhm, some sunflower cookies with apples and cranberries,” said Amanda Storm, walking through the buffet line. “Wojapi, and I always feel like I’m mispronouncing it, so if I did that I am very sorry!’
Storm works with Native American Rehabilitation Association (NARA) Northwest, and helped coordinate the menu for the event. Native American or Indigenous cuisine has taken off in the last few decades, with traditional foods being a regular offering at the National Museum of the American Indian's Mitsitam cafe. A Portland restaurant, Javelina, is one of a few pop-ups that have launched that offer Indigenous items including bison, elk, duck, wild rice, and more contemporary innovations like fry bread.
Another partner was Angey Rideout, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde's Youth Tobacco Prevention Coordinator.
“All trying to make sure that the foods that we were serving here were going along with the theme of sacred tobacco, traditional medicine, and looking at food as medicine,” explained Rideout. “And our Indigenous First Foods are medicine.”
Organizers said the menu could offer attendees some ideas for how to help offset national trends of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes among Native groups.
Reframing the role of tobacco
150 Native Americans have registered for the Sacred Tobacco and Traditional Medicines Gathering to collectively explore the role of tobacco in their culture. The gist is to challenge perceptions that commercial tobacco is traditional.
Health practitioners and family advocates – mostly from the nine tribes found across Oregon - are meeting at the Spirit Mountain Event Center.
Ben Sanford is the commercial tobacco prevention coordinator for the Native American Youth and Family Center in Portland, and a member of the Sappony Tribe of North Carolina. He’s brought jarred samples of a Hopi leaf tobacco that he’s helped cultivate.
“It’s earthy, it’s rich. It makes my nostrils flare in the best way," Sanford told KLCC. "When we think of the appeal to the Creator of the fragrance of tobacco, it’s everything I think it should be.”
The event's aim is for Native people to switch from chain-smoking commercial grade tobacco with its tar and nicotine, and use more natural forms of the plant in a more reverent way.
Shannon Lafferty is the coordinator of the Grand Ronde’s Tribal Youth Empowerment and Prevention program.
“All the way up until this year we have been giving packs of cigarettes or top loose tobacco as giveaways," she said. "And this is the first year that we actually used real tobacco. And I’m proud of that.”
Native Americans have higher rates of smoking-related illnesses than the general population, a trend organizers want to tackle. Like the introduction of processed and fast foods since Western colonization, organizers see commercial tobacco and habitual smoking as detrimental to Native people's health.
Other presentations at the conference include equine therapy, the Land Back movement, basket weaving, and traditional games. This is the second time this event has been held, the first being at Sun River near Bend in 2023.
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