The 2016 Great Lakes Intertribal Food Summit held at Gun Lake Pottawatomi’s Jijak Camp from April 21-24 was a tremendous success due to an amazing turnout of individuals and groups willing to share their unique skills and knowledge.
Search #foodsummit and #jijak at Facebook and Twitter for event pictures and posts and go to the link provided here for a beautiful layout of photos and narratives from the event:
Great Lakes Intertribal Food Summit – Event Summary
We are looking for volunteers to help with the Taste of Madison, which will be an amazing event and memorable experience on the Saturday and Sunday of Labor Day weekend. Each volunteer will receive three food tickets per each four hour shift for any of our dishes (you can give them to friends as well). We are requesting a minimum of a four hour shift .
The Mobile Farmers Market will be bringing Native foods to the Taste of Madison for what is almost surely the first time in the major event’s history. Drawing between 80,000-100,000 people, this event will be an unparalleled opportunity to expand awareness of our amazing foods to a completely new audience whose only association with Native foods is likely frybread and Indian tacos, if anything.
Our three dishes are:
The Great Lakes Intertribal Food Summit will be held April 14-16, 2015 at Oneida, WI. The event will feature hands-on workshops on Tuesday, April 14 and regular conference sessions April 15-16. The Mobile Farmers Market is working with Native chefs who are coordinating the entire menu to source as much Native-produced food as possible.
Building on success at its semi-annual meeting last February, we headed back out to the Pacific Northwest for the ATNI (Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indian) annual meeting in Pendleton, Oregon at Umatilla’s Wildhorse Resort and Casino. We again brought ingredients for the hotel chefs to make our native salad recipe (with their own spin) that brought together White Earth wild rice, Oneida’s Tsyunhehkwa white corn, Native Natural Anasazi beans tossed in a wild berry vinaigrette made with Yocha Dehe’s Seka Hills olive oil and Red Lake Nation Foods wild plum syrup. The recipe also included dried cranberries and local fresh garbanzo beans.
Luncheon Featuring All Tribally-Produced Foods
ATNI Tribal Foods Luncheon
Food Show and Chef’s Cookoff
Secret Ingredient: Beaver Tail
Cookoff Pantry
White Earth Wild Rice Donated by the Mobile Farmers Market
Chef Jack Strong
Plated Submissions
Judges’ Panel
Our packed schedule unfortunately doesn’t allow enough time to make it everywhere, but we were able to squeeze in a quick trip to western New York State where we are holding two events with the Seneca at Irving on Tuesday, July 15th and Wednesday, July 16th.
The Mobile Farmers Market will be at the Waterfront Festival in Madison, Wisconsin on Saturday-Sunday, June 7-8 to help expand awareness of Native food products. We’ll also be at the Wisconsin Tribal Tourism Conference in Oneida, as well as Red Cliff and Bad River next week.
Waterfront Festival Flyer
As part of the Food Sovereignty Summit, the Mobile Farmers Market will be organizing a seed swap and trading market. Toward the end of each day on Tuesday and Wednesday (April 15th & 16th), about 4:00pm, we’ll have extra tables by our exhibit area available for Native artists and seed savers to display their goods for trade and/or sale. We’ll keep the tables open until around 6:00pm when dinner starts, and there is no fee to participate – just bring your seeds and artwork and help us by spreading the word.
Swap Your Seeds, Trade Your Goods
The Reconnecting the Tribal Trade Routes Roadtrip has traveled thousands of miles through sixteen different states on its way to reaching Washington state where we will be setup this week for the ANTI (Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians) meeting. Along the way, we’ve introduced traditional Tribal food products into different Tribes and picked up a variety of new products. Hundreds of people have attended our market events, and we’ve also provided technical assistance by helping to spread awareness of numerous assistance programs and address specific issues.
Roadtrip Route through February 18th
Here are links to the other portions of the roadtrip:
The California portion of the Reconnecting the Tribal Trade Routes Roadtrip made numerous stops with outreach meetings and market events in numerous communities, including Soboba, Chumash, Tule River, the USDA State Offices in Davis, Yocha Dehe, and Coyote Valley. Click this link to read the full story on the California portion of the trip.
California Route
This portion of the trip has been more focused on outreach than products, but we did have a couple good market events and brought out the products at most of our stops.
Crowded at the USDA State Offices
We also added some new products to our inventory with the Yocha Dehe Tribe’s Seka Hills product line of olive oils. Their operation, which also includes vineyards, livestock, and vegetables, is impressive.
Seka Hills Olive Oil
As in most of region’s on this trip, a couple more weeks (at least) in California would have been nice, but we had a tight timeline to get north to Washington for the ATNI meeting, so our route went north pretty quickly after Friday’s meetings in Coyote Valley. However, we did get a little time in the redwoods and some nice views of the Pacific Ocean and its coastline.
Redwoods
The Arizona portion of the Reconnecting the Tribal Trade Routes Roadtrip is currently underway. We visited Dine College on the Navajo Reservation on Tuesday, February 4th and White Mountain Apache on Wednesday, February 5th. Next up are a visit to Tohono O’odham Community Action (TOCA) on Thursday and a market event at their cafe on Friday, February 7th before another market event at Native Seed SEARCH in Tucson on Saturday.
Arizona Route
Amazing Sunset on the Navajo Reservation
And also check out the stories on other portions of our trip from Louisiana, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. California and the Pacific Northwest are following Arizona.
Native Food Network 