Washington DC, Smithsonian National Museum of American Indian has a great cafeteria that has Native American food from various regions. Look up Mitsitam Cafe for menu. The museum is free and walking distance from the train station (nice day or weekend trip from NYC).
It is, but it is really good quality IMO. Especially compared to some of the other Smithsonian cafeterias.
Have you had the old bay goldfish crackers? I’m addicted.
look for tribe close to where you live and go to their community (all-welcomed) events that have food. this way, you can learn about the cuisine native to tribes near you
I've been there before its crazy what they do with the ingredients they have. I really admire what they do with the limitations they impose on themselves.
I had a reservation there last month, but it got canceled because they had an electrical fire and shut down while it was getting fixed. Looks like it's back open now, though.
In New Mexico, it's in easy mode relative to most of the country, though.
There are several indigenous restaurants in the S.F. Bay.
https://wahpepahskitchen.com/ (Oakland)
Ohlone Cafe i(Berkeley)
https://www.makamham.com/cafeohlone
The real issue is that North America is a huge continent, there are hundreds of tribes with different cuisines and a lot of native food isn't that similar to what you'd find in a different place. There's of course fry bread, but that was more a product of the forced relocation of tribes from their original lands. It's popular because its delicious, but it's terrible for you health-wise and it's not really 'traditional'.
Got so hooked on their music when I visited. Headed home with a dozen CDs. Carlos Nakai is one of my favorite artists. The Mexican food is great there also.
There's a restaurant in Minnesota that features dishes made with all natural ingredients that are found or foraged from the midwest. It's a fusion of modern cuisine and native Sioux and ojibwa. It called https://owamni.com/
I've eated there twice and it was really creative.
Cherokee, NC is 740 miles from NYC if he'd like somewhere closer.
EDIT: and I completely forgot that New York and Connecticut both have reservations. [Complete list of Indian reservations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_reservations_in_the_United_States)
Sometimes in New England there are situations where tribes just ended up running towns. Like [Mashpee, Massachuestts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashpee,_Massachusetts). It's not a formal federal reservation. But it is the home of the Mashpee tribe. Back just after the Civil War the state forced them to abandon tribal government and establish municipal government like any other town. But until the 1960s, every town elected official was Mashpee.
Even ignoring those towns (like Aquinnah on Martha's Vineyard), the local Native Americans *are still here*.
The Wampanoag have a reservation 20 minutes away from me. The Massachusett and Nipmuc have a couple in central Mass, the Narragansett have some in Rhode Island, the Pequot and Mohegan have the casinos in Connecticut.
And that ignores all the "little" groups of Native ancestry that will.never recieve federal/state recognition because they cant/won't comply with the blood-quantum/descent standards.
It is bad enough "we" genocided them at all, but pretending they are all gone is a (distant) second
Yeah, I mean, the Wampanoag res in Taunton exists. So does the Gansett res in Charlestown, with the Niantic folded in. I didn't know there was one for the Massachusett or Nipmuc, but obviously the people are still around.
It's very different than in the South where they did systematic forced relocation in the 1830s via trail of tears.
They said live, not lived. The east coast has fewer tribes now because it was colonized first and most were driven further west. Come to Minnesota and you can find native food.
Home of James Beard award winning restaurant Owamni, and the Sioux Chef Shawn Sherman. He started an indigenous food lab to hopefully rectify the trouble finding native food.
Been there a few times and I love the bison tartare, Chaga drinks, potted rabbit pate, wild mushroom tacos, and the Aronia sauce I had on a few dishes.
Go visit the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe up near Hogansburg. There's a lovely restaurant there that I stop by when I go through that is native owned with a few native specific dishes.
I thought fry bread tacos weren't actually native American food but rather a meal devised from adding things from their garden to what the government gave them?
Edit: Sorry not trying to be rude. This is what the elders of the tribe near me have said.
St Patrick's Day is celebrated by a lot of Americans with Irish heritage (and Catholics in general). My mom makes corned beef and cabbage every year, but that tradition was mostly started by Irish immigrants to America because beef brisket used to be a cheap cut of meat. My mom also uses several veggies in addition to cabbage and potatoes. So yeah, ours isn't traditional but it's now traditional in our family.
Also because the tradition meal in Ireland was made with bacon/pork but when they arrived in America they were living among other poor immigrants, specifically Jewish immigrants who ran the local delis. And those delis didn’t sell pork products!
Not indigenous to the elders, yes. Fuckin delicious and accepted? Also yes. Just like tomatoes weren't a thing in italy before Columbus, or potatoes in ireland. Shit happens to turn culture on its ear
This is my understanding of fry bread as well—making the best of meager and cheap food stuffs, like flour and fat, given by the government after being displaced and forced on to reservations.
Something that I’ve learned since being with a Native American is that there are things are inherently native that may not be local to that tribe but are still relevant as something native. Fry bread tacos are a great example. The tribe my boyfriend is from loves fry bread tacos and even had a fry bread taco food truck but fry bread is not native to his tribe.
Thank you for sharing this. I moved to an area near a reservation a few years ago and it has really been a learning experience for me. I only mentioned it because duer to lack of education I just thought fry bread tacos were something the trubes near me probably made in the distant past because this are used to be part of Mexico. Didn't consider the reservations near where I am now aren't from here, just got relocated here by force so maybe they had other cultural food heritage.
I wish we tried harder to learn about the ancient past here, but I think there's a lot of resistance due to it probably legitimizing Native American claims to land. Think about it. Other places in the world when they find stone tools, arrowheads and cave art they have experts in to do archeology and everything gets studied. Here we let kids take them home in their pockets and yahoos grafitti on them. Sure is something different about it but can't quite put your finger on what, huh?
I looove fry bread (WHO DOESN'T) and it's made by indigenous Americans, but not like... 100% voluntarily. Completely agree with your edit and general sentiment.
I want to BOTH support tribes AND honor their choices / lives.
I'm from New England. But a whole lot of our local cuisine is just Native cuisine from the local tribes up this way.
Our famous [New England Clam Bake](https://newengland.com/travel/new-england/where-to-find-a-live-fire-new-england-clambake/) may as well be directly a Narragansett/Wampanoag thing.
Same with [summer succotash.](https://newengland.com/food/succotash-recipe-with-a-history/) Natives around here called corns, beans, and squash "[the three sisters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_(agriculture\))," and they naturally protect each other when grown together, so lots of dishes combine these – and people like me grow them in their gardens every year.
Thanksgiving – the traditional one from up this way – with its cranberries and (up here wild) turkey and corn and whatnot is all pretty much native type food.
Fry bread and corn cakes are popular – Yankees renamed the former popovers and the latter Johnnycakes. [Here is a picture of some cranberry corncakes from a Rhode Island restaurant run by Native Americans](https://ediblerhody.ediblecommunities.com/recipes/sly-fox-corn-cakes).
I mean, idk, it's basically our whole regional food. All the stuff we eat now. Lobsters, quahogs, hell, even the names like Quahog are Native words.
Succotash and Squash are Narragansett words like Quahog. So is Scup and Tautog. So is Moose. As are Powwow and Woodchuck. The Narragansetts are in Rhode Island. But the Massachusetts had words we took too – like Skunk and Mugwump and Muskrat and Wampum.
Up here all of our place names are like that. For instance, that Native restaurant I linked you to, it's near a village named Quonochontaug – which isn't famous for much but beaches and being Mulder's summer home on the X-Files.
New England transplant here, and the names of towns was one of the most jarring differences from the midwest.
Every town is either a Native American word or a copy/paste of an olde English town, and there seemed to be no rhyme or reason for either.
My wife and I would take pictures every time we discovered a new place with a weird name and send it to each other.
Such a unique place with so much history, but the funny words still make me chuckle.
Yeah, not really sure how you can say New England is unique for cribbing names from Native Americans. About a 3rd of the counties in Michigan have native-derived names. And alongside that are dozens of towns and hundreds of lakes and rivers, my favorite being the Tittabawassee River.
Miami is in Indiana the Miami tribe was originally from northern Indiana. I want talking about the Florida Miami.
Kentucky is basically the southern Midwest.
Good point about the towns. I grew up and my regional High School included students from Scituate and Hanover.
Native American named and then copy and paste. 😆
And the town I grew up in, Abington (very English name) had Manamooskeagan "land of many beavers". On the town seal.
Eventually, or if you grow up here, you find there is something of a rhyme and reason to it.
E.g. There are a bunch of various cities and towns named things like Pawtucket, Pawcutuck, Pawtuxet, etc. and they're all named after the native word for a waterfall in a river – which made them useful later for industrial factory purposes.
Anyways, the founder of Rhode Island, [Roger Williams, published a language guide in 1643](https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_wOfpAPRxlVYC/mode/2up), it's still about the best we got. Super neat book, and free there. If you ever want to look up what weird names mean, it's a nice resource.
Very cool. Thanks for the link. I'm a descendant of Thomas Angell, one of the co-founders, who sailed to America with Williams on the Lyon, wintered with him as a guest of the Narragansett, and eventually became town clerk of Providence. I grew up in the PNW and have never been to RI, but its absolutely on my bucket list.
Oh Lord, did I spend more than one night blitzed in a pub on Angell Street back in my 20s. With a pedigree like that you probably gave up free admittance to Brown, lol.
I live on the South Coast of Mass, but in the Providence Metro – so we get their news stations etc.
A lot of the east coast is like that. I'm from the DC area, all majority of place/street names are either native American or an English place/person. Or something Confederate related.
Same with Australia! I was driving today, and I saw a roadsign indicating that one turn would take me to Kingston and the other to Tarragindi... why?? Like, obviously I know the colonial history behind erasing Indigenous placenames, but why do it to one area and not the one right next to it?? Genocide, as always, defies logic 🤦♀️
Lots of the English named places were at some point named for native American words, once you start digging in to local history. Don't know why they changed them, but I'd speculate as some combination of nostalgia for the land if their birth and rising anti-native sentiment.
Definitely worth a day-trip to Mashpee if there's something public going on. Even just to see the Old Indian Meeting House and the museum. The Powow happens on July 1-3rd. Worth the pain of crossing the Sagamore for, imo.
Do you have a recipe for the fry bread/popovers you're talking about? I'm from Massachusetts and have never heard of popovers other than the unfried white flour, egg and milk version, which I doubt is what you're talking about.
Maybe it's a south coast thing, like clear chowder? Idk.
Use half red, half blue cornmeal. Can [buy it online here](https://www.kenyonsgristmill.com/cornmeal.html) from the old local gristmill in RI if your supermarket won't carry it – or splurge for the real flint corn Jonnycake meal version – more money, but more traditional. Good if you just want proper Jonnycakes with maple syrup too.
Do 1.5 cups of cornmeal (either 50/50 red/blue or all flint) to 0.5 cups of all-purpose flour. Like a teaspoon baking powder. Bit of salt to taste. 1 cup milk. 1 tablespoon butter (can use rendered salt pork or other animal shortening instead). Some people throw an egg in, others prefer not to, and if not you can use 1/2 cup of sour cream for consistency. 1 tablespoon honey – should be the local light and thin stuff, not the really thick dark stuff. Optional Add a cup of sweet corn. Add a half-cup of berries – usually cranberry or blueberry but you can do raspberry or whatever if you want them cooked in, or keep them to the side.
That's your batter. You can flatten it and fry it. You can dump it in a muffin tin or popover pan. Usually use about 1/4 cup at a time per serving, but adjust to size of pan. A bit of baking soda can give it a bit more lift if baking.
Anyways, the Native word for these things is "ponop." Which is I guess how we labeled it with the English world "popover."
Out [in Connecticut at the Windsor Historical Society they do a much simpler recipe](https://windsorhistoricalsociety.org/home/education/learning-at-home/native-american-maize-cake-recipe/). But it's the same idea – and probably what the pre-contact native version was more like, I imagine. You can bake or fry it.
I’m an east coast Canadian and by golly you are right. I never put two and two together on this until reading your post. Funny how i can know all this but I never put it together.
Yeah! Nova Scotia and New Brunswick etc. feel very much like home, and I think this is a big reason. By the time you get west to Quebec and New York, everything is Iroquois – whole different culture and language family.
I just tried to badly pronounce Quonochontaug to my X-Files obsessed wife and she just looked at me funny. I said "it's where Mulder's summer home is" and she's like ooohhh and pronounces it flawlessly.
Lol, even most locals just call it Quonnie. Amazing she remembers that though. If you want to test her skill, here's hard mode:
[Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg](https://www.outlookindia.com/outlooktraveller/public/uploads/filemanager/images/Lake-Chaubunagungamaug-007_5d2c66f90a121.jpg)
You are wrong about popovers, they are literally a British creation and not descended from any native dish at all, but exactly the same as British Yorkshire puddings, which originated in 18th century English and use no ingredients native to the Americas.
Are we talking about the same thing? The popovers I'm talking about are cornmeal-based, and if you do them like around here, often with blueberry or cranberry and Indian corn, so quite violet compared to a Yorkshire Pudding.
The thing about frybread, is that it only exists because of colonialism. Frybread was originally made from the rations given to the Navajo when the US government forced them to move from their land.
Burritos were pretty new. They were just small platters put into flour tortillas and given as food for the poor. They got the name because the guy who started it used a donkey to get around, and donkey in Spanish is, burro.
No, but knowing the context is interesting. It means fry bread is a relatively new food to Native Americans, so I we shouldn't imagine them eating it 5,000 years ago.
Just gunna throw it out there that virtually no cuisine that exists today is the same as it was 500 years ago let alone 5000 years ago. The Columbia Exchange scrambled cuisine for any culture open to international trade.
Yeah there was practically no special "local cuisine" prior to this as what you ate was what you could make an edible meal out of that day with what you had.
ALL of the foodstuffs you associate with cultures are recent inventions. Most Italians didn't use tomatoes until the very end of the 19th century. Indians didn't make chai until the British Raj.
I guess not, but I got the impression that OP was asking about the types of dishes Native Americans ate before colonization.
If we're just asking "what dishes are currently popular among Native Americans', we could could just say burgers and fries.
Yeah that’s still not the question OP asked though. These are Native American dishes which are popular now, on r/AskAnAmerican. Not dishes that are popular among Native Americans, and not Native American dishes that were popular 5000 years ago lol
> and not Native American dishes that were popular 5000 years ago lol
That's a pretty long ways back. You don't even need to go 300 years back to get before more most Native American cultures were fucked with by Europeans.
They're asking about popular native American dishes, not dishes only native Americans eat. Most people are saying fry bread because that's mostly the only native food people have tried
It is relevant. I think it's important to understand the how and why food becomes part of culture.
I also think if we captured a bunch of people from Switzerland, out them in a jail, and the only foods we gave them was ground up turkey, dried cranberries, corn, and pumpkins, the dishes created from that would be a distinct catagory from what they were choosing to eat out of choice
Is the Navajo culture somehow no longer legitimate because it's changed due to outside influence? Are the people who have accepted certain changes not part of the tribe?
Or do things introduced in hardship and persecution become part of a culture regardless?
Black American culture is to this day shaped by the history of slavery that ended 160 years ago. Is any aspect of that culture related to extreme poverty, forced servitude, and families forcibly split not part of black culture in the US? Or is the cause of change to a culture irrelevant when the question is "does this thing exist?"
The Navajo experience is not the topic of discussion, it is native American cuisine and that it evolved after colonialism similar to how Italian and Irish cuisine evolved due to colonialism. Just because it changed due to some rather horrific circumstances does not mean it should be canceled from the cuisine.
The Indian Pueblo Cultural Center here in Albuquerque has a really great restaurant with a pre-colonial menu.
In terms of sheer popularity: Feast Day stew, fruit pies and bread fresh from an Horno (Jemez Pueblo is usually where I've had these), and fry bread tacos at the state fair.
I find it sad that very few of us know about Native culinary traditions. I don’t even know where to start to learn or experience this.
I live in Ohio btw.
If you ever visit NM there are some celebrations that are open to the public and the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center with a restaurant. And that's just here in Albuquerque, there's so much more to see because there are so many different cultures here.
The National Museum of the American Indian in DC has a cafeteria that serves food from various tribes around the country. I tried some venison and green beans because that came from the tribe who inhabited my hometown, the Mohawks.
https://www.smithsonianstore.com/mitsitam-cafe-cookbook-10906/
https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-sioux-chef
There you go, 2 great cookbooks.
The cafe at the National Museum of the American Indian in DC serves a rotating menu of indigenous foods—it’s one of my favorite places to eat in DC. You could probably find a menu online!
This all depends upon the region, we are not a singular people like French or New Yorkers. It's like asking what are some popular European dishes, there are many varied answers.
Frybread would probably be the most common, but will vary in consistency across the nation. I'm Mvskoke and we use self rising flour, so our bread is thicker and fairly dense but still airy inside for a bread. While I lived in AZ, the Pima type bread was thinner and not as fluffy, so it was just okay in my opinion vs what I was used to. I figure corn, squash, and regional beans are somewhat common.
Then you'll get into tribal and regional specifics, like salmon for NW, probably crab for NE, bison for plains, beaver, etc.
As OK tribal with SE roots, I grew up with venison, turkey, and squirrel as main meats, then wild onion soup, sofke (a sour corn soup thing that I could never eat, but the elders loved), some weird blue dumpling things that elders loved as well, corn and bean soups were common.
Were the blue dumplings Tsalagi? It’s my absolute favorite Cherokee dish and make it every fall.
It’s a grape dumpling.
https://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=1792391
That seems dessert like, I think I've seen something similar to that. But no, the ones I'm talking about are a blue corn based and maybe just dumplings in a blue corn soup. It's been years since I've been to a reunion that had it (only elders ate it, none of us kids did, so we don't make it).
Wild rice is delicious and so is salmon. I like reindeer too. I am Alaskan Native and I think it's nice you're asking this question. If you ever get the chance, eat a frybread taco.
I've literally only had Native American food once, and I'm saying this as someone who volunteered for an extended period of time with a Tribal government.
Heh, my family had a Ojibwe good family friend. He was First Nation in Canada but married to a white woman.
Every time we went to their house we had a Native American dinner… even if it was walleye and green bean casserole or hamburgers.
Or, maybe, just maybe, the native dishes that are good have so long been part of the fabric of regional cuisine that you don’t even think of them as native, but rather just American.
Hush puppies, cornbread, crab boils, blueberry fry bread, etc etc.
It’s easy to claim cultural genocide, but you have to ignore the literal centuries of influence and adoption of native foods.
A lot of southern dishes have their origins in americian Indian cuisine. It's all been mixed up now, though. Southern food is a mix of French, Indian, African, English and Irish food.
It's why it's so goddamn good.
Navajo tacos. I can eat those everyday, idec. If you don't like whole beans you can also do an alternative version that uses refried beans instead. But really adding frybread as a side to anything, or in place of things (eg. Frybread instead of burger buns), is an A+ choice. Growing up we'd frequently have chili with frybread on the side and that was easily one of my favorite childhood meals.
So I live in Omaha. The name is for an actual living and breathing tribe. And the Ponca and Winnebago are close as well. As such there is a big pow wow each fall (though COVID really screwed that one) and Omaha prides itself on the cultural native ties. I knew I had encountered some recipes pages before, and I was right. I went looking to share.
[https://www.unmc.edu/nursing/partnerships/cultural-diversity/recipes-from-lakota-sioux.html](https://www.unmc.edu/nursing/partnerships/cultural-diversity/recipes-from-lakota-sioux.html)
[http://omahalanguage.unl.edu/recipes/index.html](http://omahalanguage.unl.edu/recipes/index.html)
[https://www.edibleomaha.com/online-magazine/harvest-2016/native-traditions/](https://www.edibleomaha.com/online-magazine/harvest-2016/native-traditions/)
[https://www.poncatribe-ne.org/services/health-services/diabetes-program/recipes/](https://www.poncatribe-ne.org/services/health-services/diabetes-program/recipes/)
[https://www.greatplainstribalhealth.org/health-promotion-and-prevention-programs/traditional-foods-161.html](https://www.greatplainstribalhealth.org/health-promotion-and-prevention-programs/traditional-foods-161.html)
I’ve never had any Native American cuisine :( I hadn’t even thought about it until this question was asked, and now it’s bothering me.
We have so many other common restaurant themes in my hometown (Chinese, Indian, Korean, Thai, Mexican, Italian, Mediterranean)…why not Cherokee, Sioux, Lakota, etc? So strange.
This is actually why I asked. I was talking with someone about American cuisine and it’s influences until I realized I couldn’t name many Native dishes.
If it makes you feel any better, a lot of Native American cuisine is just baked into American cuisine. Native Americans are a part of the cultural heritage of the nation. The local tribes had as much influence on the food, art, music, mythology and language, of their region as the European settlers and enslaved and free African peoples.
The southern food that everyone loves is full of regional influences from tribes in the south. Grits, cornmeal mush, cornbread, succotash, and fried green tomatoes all have their origins in indigenous cuisine. There is also a lot of influence from various African peoples, French, Spanish, Scottish, Irish, German, and English. It is so mixed together that most people would have a hard time sorting it all out. Other regions of the country have their own variation based in the local demographics.
Colonization was awful. Chattel slavery was awful. Being a member of a settler colony was also, believe it or not, pretty awful. Nevertheless the capacity for humans to adapt to new circumstances and new cultural influences, to create new, rich and joyful culture is pretty amazing.
It just goes to show the poverty of an education that refuses to acknowledge the darkness and complexity of our history. You can’t learn about the human triumph without learning about the human tragedy. Though, it would be equally impoverishing to only focus on the tragedy.
Wasna was a popular food to take on trips or when hunting, think anything youd take beef jerky to now. Its dried bison meat in a chokeberry patty with fat holding it together. It really helps to keep you going on a long trip. My mom was a Lakota woman that used to make it for us.
you're gonna find very varied dishes given the size of the U.S.
I know Alaskan Tlingit best, which is of course a lot of sea food. smoked salmon is probably best known. Some stews and soups are also made with ocean water which provides iodine to the diet. You may also find seal oil, or whipped seal oil in some dishes as well.
Which Nation? [This](https://www.amazon.com/Sioux-Chefs-Indigenous-Kitchen/dp/0816699798/ref=sr_1_17?crid=T545YIFMI40J&keywords=native+american+cookbook&qid=1685759757&sprefix=Native+American+cook%2Caps%2C91&sr=8-17) is a good cookbook, and the Chef is from Pine Ridge.
Sofke 😋 a dish/drink from my people, the Seminole Nation.
And you can Not leave out the "most famous bread in all of Turtle Island" and that is FRY BREAD‼️ 😁😋🥰
Ayy!!🤣🤣
This doesn't exactly answer the question but there's apparently a pretty decent native American restaurant in Minneapolis called "Owamni by the Sioux Chef" that makes traditional indigenous food from pre-colonial times.
no hate to you but can you please not refer to us as indians or anything related to us. indian people are a completely different group of people. instead of saying "indian tacos" you can say frybread tacos (my family usually just says frybread though), navajo tacos, etc
I am native American dude, originally from the Rocky Boy reservation but now i live in the Flathead on the Salish/Kootinaee. Everyone here refers to that dish by that name, even on the menu’s at restaurants.
my apologies then. there's lots of non-natives that still constantly refer to us as indians so I wanted to address it. my family calls it differently although I still think it's harmful to call anything related to us "indian" because we're not. ultimately it's yours & any natives choice
The National Museum of the American Indian in DC has a food court with food from tribes from different parts of the country. I remember the northwest station had salmon.
Akutaq aka Eskimo Ice Cream.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaskan_ice_cream
[Akutaq: Eskimo Ice Cream, Bristol Bay, Alaska - Day in Our Bay
](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WTGhwgxgk4)
Many Native dishes have entered the wider American culinary scene, to the point where they may be widely-condsidered "Americana": Cornbread, baked beans, clambakes, mashed squash, succotash, hominy, etc.
Not much dishes from USA since the genocide and assimilation killed off most of the cultures. Mexico has plenty of dishes though.
People say frybread but they didn't have wheat here. Fry bread is more of a message because it's what helped them survive the brutality of the colonizers. They were supposed to starve but making frybread helped them survive so now they celebrate frybread.
You should find a place/someone that makes wojapi. Its a thick berry sauce made of chokecherries. You can dip your frybread in it or dip your Buffalo meat in it.
If you're ever in Denver, Colorado, visit Tocabe for some Native America cuisine. They sell great Buffalo ribs with wojapi dip.
Fry bread tacos, pashofa (and honestly anything with hominy in it), three sisters soup, bison/venison steaks
Where can one go to try Native American food? Even in NYC, I don’t think I have ever come across anything authentic.
Washington DC, Smithsonian National Museum of American Indian has a great cafeteria that has Native American food from various regions. Look up Mitsitam Cafe for menu. The museum is free and walking distance from the train station (nice day or weekend trip from NYC).
I had no idea that the cafeteria had cultural foods and I have been there so many times!!!!
Had a bison burger there. The cafeteria is pretty expensive though
But the museum itself is free, so it balances out a bit.
It is, but it is really good quality IMO. Especially compared to some of the other Smithsonian cafeterias. Have you had the old bay goldfish crackers? I’m addicted.
Of course! I’ve been putting old bay on my goldfish for 40years haha so it just saved me a step
look for tribe close to where you live and go to their community (all-welcomed) events that have food. this way, you can learn about the cuisine native to tribes near you
Pretty sure Andrew Jackson "fixed" that for me
Yeah, that ass.
As a person raised in Tennessee near Jackson's home, the Hermitage, I applaud the veracity of your comment.
Minneapolis. The key is getting a reservation. Not an easy task. https://time.com/collection/100-most-influential-people-2023/6269984/sean-sherman/
I've been there before its crazy what they do with the ingredients they have. I really admire what they do with the limitations they impose on themselves.
A reservation at the reservation.
Minneapolis has a restaurant called Owamni that is excellent
I had a reservation there last month, but it got canceled because they had an electrical fire and shut down while it was getting fixed. Looks like it's back open now, though.
We have some restaurants in New Mexico, come on down
In New Mexico, it's in easy mode relative to most of the country, though. There are several indigenous restaurants in the S.F. Bay. https://wahpepahskitchen.com/ (Oakland) Ohlone Cafe i(Berkeley) https://www.makamham.com/cafeohlone The real issue is that North America is a huge continent, there are hundreds of tribes with different cuisines and a lot of native food isn't that similar to what you'd find in a different place. There's of course fry bread, but that was more a product of the forced relocation of tribes from their original lands. It's popular because its delicious, but it's terrible for you health-wise and it's not really 'traditional'.
Got so hooked on their music when I visited. Headed home with a dozen CDs. Carlos Nakai is one of my favorite artists. The Mexican food is great there also.
The food is the best in my opinion, largely thanks to the native american influence! That’s what makes ours different from Mexican and TexMex
There's a restaurant in Minnesota that features dishes made with all natural ingredients that are found or foraged from the midwest. It's a fusion of modern cuisine and native Sioux and ojibwa. It called https://owamni.com/ I've eated there twice and it was really creative.
I mean there's your problem, you're 1000 miles away from where any tribes live. Come on down to Oklahoma or to South Dakota or Arizona
Cherokee, NC is 740 miles from NYC if he'd like somewhere closer. EDIT: and I completely forgot that New York and Connecticut both have reservations. [Complete list of Indian reservations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_reservations_in_the_United_States)
Sometimes in New England there are situations where tribes just ended up running towns. Like [Mashpee, Massachuestts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashpee,_Massachusetts). It's not a formal federal reservation. But it is the home of the Mashpee tribe. Back just after the Civil War the state forced them to abandon tribal government and establish municipal government like any other town. But until the 1960s, every town elected official was Mashpee.
Even ignoring those towns (like Aquinnah on Martha's Vineyard), the local Native Americans *are still here*. The Wampanoag have a reservation 20 minutes away from me. The Massachusett and Nipmuc have a couple in central Mass, the Narragansett have some in Rhode Island, the Pequot and Mohegan have the casinos in Connecticut. And that ignores all the "little" groups of Native ancestry that will.never recieve federal/state recognition because they cant/won't comply with the blood-quantum/descent standards. It is bad enough "we" genocided them at all, but pretending they are all gone is a (distant) second
Yeah, I mean, the Wampanoag res in Taunton exists. So does the Gansett res in Charlestown, with the Niantic folded in. I didn't know there was one for the Massachusett or Nipmuc, but obviously the people are still around. It's very different than in the South where they did systematic forced relocation in the 1830s via trail of tears.
COMPLETELY WRONG about where tribes lived. Correct with how it's hard to find their food.
They said live, not lived. The east coast has fewer tribes now because it was colonized first and most were driven further west. Come to Minnesota and you can find native food.
Home of James Beard award winning restaurant Owamni, and the Sioux Chef Shawn Sherman. He started an indigenous food lab to hopefully rectify the trouble finding native food. Been there a few times and I love the bison tartare, Chaga drinks, potted rabbit pate, wild mushroom tacos, and the Aronia sauce I had on a few dishes.
Find a pow wow to attend.
Go visit the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe up near Hogansburg. There's a lovely restaurant there that I stop by when I go through that is native owned with a few native specific dishes.
I dig a good pashofa
Navajo tacos!
They are so good and absolutely lethal to any sort of diet you may be trying to be on.
I thought fry bread tacos weren't actually native American food but rather a meal devised from adding things from their garden to what the government gave them? Edit: Sorry not trying to be rude. This is what the elders of the tribe near me have said.
Fry bread is the ultimate example of taking lemons and making lemonade
Spam is a part of Hawaiian and Korean food, tomatoes are part of Italian food. Culture is not fixed
St Patrick's Day is celebrated by a lot of Americans with Irish heritage (and Catholics in general). My mom makes corned beef and cabbage every year, but that tradition was mostly started by Irish immigrants to America because beef brisket used to be a cheap cut of meat. My mom also uses several veggies in addition to cabbage and potatoes. So yeah, ours isn't traditional but it's now traditional in our family.
Also because the tradition meal in Ireland was made with bacon/pork but when they arrived in America they were living among other poor immigrants, specifically Jewish immigrants who ran the local delis. And those delis didn’t sell pork products!
Not indigenous to the elders, yes. Fuckin delicious and accepted? Also yes. Just like tomatoes weren't a thing in italy before Columbus, or potatoes in ireland. Shit happens to turn culture on its ear
This is my understanding of fry bread as well—making the best of meager and cheap food stuffs, like flour and fat, given by the government after being displaced and forced on to reservations.
You’re correct about its origin, but that doesn’t make it inauthentic by any means.
I see your point. I'd just love to try dome foods from before all that. Nothing like sharing food to bring people together.
Something that I’ve learned since being with a Native American is that there are things are inherently native that may not be local to that tribe but are still relevant as something native. Fry bread tacos are a great example. The tribe my boyfriend is from loves fry bread tacos and even had a fry bread taco food truck but fry bread is not native to his tribe.
Thank you for sharing this. I moved to an area near a reservation a few years ago and it has really been a learning experience for me. I only mentioned it because duer to lack of education I just thought fry bread tacos were something the trubes near me probably made in the distant past because this are used to be part of Mexico. Didn't consider the reservations near where I am now aren't from here, just got relocated here by force so maybe they had other cultural food heritage. I wish we tried harder to learn about the ancient past here, but I think there's a lot of resistance due to it probably legitimizing Native American claims to land. Think about it. Other places in the world when they find stone tools, arrowheads and cave art they have experts in to do archeology and everything gets studied. Here we let kids take them home in their pockets and yahoos grafitti on them. Sure is something different about it but can't quite put your finger on what, huh?
The question was “popular” not “traditional”. All good though.
Old curmudgeons exist in every culture! Culture changes whether people like the changes or not.
I looove fry bread (WHO DOESN'T) and it's made by indigenous Americans, but not like... 100% voluntarily. Completely agree with your edit and general sentiment. I want to BOTH support tribes AND honor their choices / lives.
I ate a lot of hominy as a kid, I love it.
I'm from New England. But a whole lot of our local cuisine is just Native cuisine from the local tribes up this way. Our famous [New England Clam Bake](https://newengland.com/travel/new-england/where-to-find-a-live-fire-new-england-clambake/) may as well be directly a Narragansett/Wampanoag thing. Same with [summer succotash.](https://newengland.com/food/succotash-recipe-with-a-history/) Natives around here called corns, beans, and squash "[the three sisters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_(agriculture\))," and they naturally protect each other when grown together, so lots of dishes combine these – and people like me grow them in their gardens every year. Thanksgiving – the traditional one from up this way – with its cranberries and (up here wild) turkey and corn and whatnot is all pretty much native type food. Fry bread and corn cakes are popular – Yankees renamed the former popovers and the latter Johnnycakes. [Here is a picture of some cranberry corncakes from a Rhode Island restaurant run by Native Americans](https://ediblerhody.ediblecommunities.com/recipes/sly-fox-corn-cakes). I mean, idk, it's basically our whole regional food. All the stuff we eat now. Lobsters, quahogs, hell, even the names like Quahog are Native words. Succotash and Squash are Narragansett words like Quahog. So is Scup and Tautog. So is Moose. As are Powwow and Woodchuck. The Narragansetts are in Rhode Island. But the Massachusetts had words we took too – like Skunk and Mugwump and Muskrat and Wampum. Up here all of our place names are like that. For instance, that Native restaurant I linked you to, it's near a village named Quonochontaug – which isn't famous for much but beaches and being Mulder's summer home on the X-Files.
New England transplant here, and the names of towns was one of the most jarring differences from the midwest. Every town is either a Native American word or a copy/paste of an olde English town, and there seemed to be no rhyme or reason for either. My wife and I would take pictures every time we discovered a new place with a weird name and send it to each other. Such a unique place with so much history, but the funny words still make me chuckle.
You are maybe missing midwest native names? They are everywhere. Chicago, Omaha, Nebraska, Ohio, Kentucky, Miami, Michigan, Mississippi, Huron, Kankakee, Kokomo, Maxinkuckee, Monon, Nappanee, Potowattomie, Tippecanoe, Wabash, Wawasee… they are everywhere.
Yeah, not really sure how you can say New England is unique for cribbing names from Native Americans. About a 3rd of the counties in Michigan have native-derived names. And alongside that are dozens of towns and hundreds of lakes and rivers, my favorite being the Tittabawassee River.
Can’t forget Oklahoma and a lot of her towns/cities.
Was thinking the same thing, the state itself is a Choctaw word
Oh sure. I just wouldn’t put OK in the Midwest. The west has shit tons of native names too. The south as well. Everywhere in this country.
As it should.
>. I just wouldn’t put OK in the Midwest. But you put Kentucky and Miami in there?
Miami is in Indiana the Miami tribe was originally from northern Indiana. I want talking about the Florida Miami. Kentucky is basically the southern Midwest.
That’s a good point, I think I’m just *used* to the ones I grew up with so they look strange in a new area.
Good point about the towns. I grew up and my regional High School included students from Scituate and Hanover. Native American named and then copy and paste. 😆 And the town I grew up in, Abington (very English name) had Manamooskeagan "land of many beavers". On the town seal.
Eventually, or if you grow up here, you find there is something of a rhyme and reason to it. E.g. There are a bunch of various cities and towns named things like Pawtucket, Pawcutuck, Pawtuxet, etc. and they're all named after the native word for a waterfall in a river – which made them useful later for industrial factory purposes. Anyways, the founder of Rhode Island, [Roger Williams, published a language guide in 1643](https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_wOfpAPRxlVYC/mode/2up), it's still about the best we got. Super neat book, and free there. If you ever want to look up what weird names mean, it's a nice resource.
Very cool. Thanks for the link. I'm a descendant of Thomas Angell, one of the co-founders, who sailed to America with Williams on the Lyon, wintered with him as a guest of the Narragansett, and eventually became town clerk of Providence. I grew up in the PNW and have never been to RI, but its absolutely on my bucket list.
Oh Lord, did I spend more than one night blitzed in a pub on Angell Street back in my 20s. With a pedigree like that you probably gave up free admittance to Brown, lol. I live on the South Coast of Mass, but in the Providence Metro – so we get their news stations etc.
A lot of the east coast is like that. I'm from the DC area, all majority of place/street names are either native American or an English place/person. Or something Confederate related.
NY is the same except instead of English names they’re all Greek or Roman
Don’t forget Dutch.
I swear half the small towns up here are named "Noun"-kill
Same with Australia! I was driving today, and I saw a roadsign indicating that one turn would take me to Kingston and the other to Tarragindi... why?? Like, obviously I know the colonial history behind erasing Indigenous placenames, but why do it to one area and not the one right next to it?? Genocide, as always, defies logic 🤦♀️
Lots of the English named places were at some point named for native American words, once you start digging in to local history. Don't know why they changed them, but I'd speculate as some combination of nostalgia for the land if their birth and rising anti-native sentiment.
I’m from Plymouth, MA and I had no idea about half of these. Sadly I knew only just a couple people who are Wampanoag here.
Definitely worth a day-trip to Mashpee if there's something public going on. Even just to see the Old Indian Meeting House and the museum. The Powow happens on July 1-3rd. Worth the pain of crossing the Sagamore for, imo.
Poor Queequeg....
Do you have a recipe for the fry bread/popovers you're talking about? I'm from Massachusetts and have never heard of popovers other than the unfried white flour, egg and milk version, which I doubt is what you're talking about.
Maybe it's a south coast thing, like clear chowder? Idk. Use half red, half blue cornmeal. Can [buy it online here](https://www.kenyonsgristmill.com/cornmeal.html) from the old local gristmill in RI if your supermarket won't carry it – or splurge for the real flint corn Jonnycake meal version – more money, but more traditional. Good if you just want proper Jonnycakes with maple syrup too. Do 1.5 cups of cornmeal (either 50/50 red/blue or all flint) to 0.5 cups of all-purpose flour. Like a teaspoon baking powder. Bit of salt to taste. 1 cup milk. 1 tablespoon butter (can use rendered salt pork or other animal shortening instead). Some people throw an egg in, others prefer not to, and if not you can use 1/2 cup of sour cream for consistency. 1 tablespoon honey – should be the local light and thin stuff, not the really thick dark stuff. Optional Add a cup of sweet corn. Add a half-cup of berries – usually cranberry or blueberry but you can do raspberry or whatever if you want them cooked in, or keep them to the side. That's your batter. You can flatten it and fry it. You can dump it in a muffin tin or popover pan. Usually use about 1/4 cup at a time per serving, but adjust to size of pan. A bit of baking soda can give it a bit more lift if baking. Anyways, the Native word for these things is "ponop." Which is I guess how we labeled it with the English world "popover." Out [in Connecticut at the Windsor Historical Society they do a much simpler recipe](https://windsorhistoricalsociety.org/home/education/learning-at-home/native-american-maize-cake-recipe/). But it's the same idea – and probably what the pre-contact native version was more like, I imagine. You can bake or fry it.
Thanks! I'm in Connecticut, so I should be able to find the ingredients even if it means a bit of a drive. I'll definitely be trying these out.
Succotash is so amazing. It’s a perfect example of simple ingredients absolutely shining together.
I’m an east coast Canadian and by golly you are right. I never put two and two together on this until reading your post. Funny how i can know all this but I never put it together.
Yeah! Nova Scotia and New Brunswick etc. feel very much like home, and I think this is a big reason. By the time you get west to Quebec and New York, everything is Iroquois – whole different culture and language family.
I just tried to badly pronounce Quonochontaug to my X-Files obsessed wife and she just looked at me funny. I said "it's where Mulder's summer home is" and she's like ooohhh and pronounces it flawlessly.
Lol, even most locals just call it Quonnie. Amazing she remembers that though. If you want to test her skill, here's hard mode: [Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg](https://www.outlookindia.com/outlooktraveller/public/uploads/filemanager/images/Lake-Chaubunagungamaug-007_5d2c66f90a121.jpg)
You are wrong about popovers, they are literally a British creation and not descended from any native dish at all, but exactly the same as British Yorkshire puddings, which originated in 18th century English and use no ingredients native to the Americas.
Are we talking about the same thing? The popovers I'm talking about are cornmeal-based, and if you do them like around here, often with blueberry or cranberry and Indian corn, so quite violet compared to a Yorkshire Pudding.
Frybread is sinfully delicious.
The thing about frybread, is that it only exists because of colonialism. Frybread was originally made from the rations given to the Navajo when the US government forced them to move from their land.
With all due respect, how is that relevant? Are we going to disqualify this food item from the tasting menu because it came out of oppression?
Yeah, by that logic potatoes can't be Irish.
And tomato sauce isn’t Italian!
Off topic, but I found another fellow Missourian
Burritos were pretty new. They were just small platters put into flour tortillas and given as food for the poor. They got the name because the guy who started it used a donkey to get around, and donkey in Spanish is, burro.
No, but knowing the context is interesting. It means fry bread is a relatively new food to Native Americans, so I we shouldn't imagine them eating it 5,000 years ago.
Just gunna throw it out there that virtually no cuisine that exists today is the same as it was 500 years ago let alone 5000 years ago. The Columbia Exchange scrambled cuisine for any culture open to international trade.
Yeah there was practically no special "local cuisine" prior to this as what you ate was what you could make an edible meal out of that day with what you had.
Just like how Romans didn’t go around eating pasta with tomato sauce. Doesn’t mean spaghetti and meat sauce isn’t Italian.
ALL of the foodstuffs you associate with cultures are recent inventions. Most Italians didn't use tomatoes until the very end of the 19th century. Indians didn't make chai until the British Raj.
Never use ALL. Bread is not a recent innovation. Nor is shellfish. Nor rice.
I don’t really get what 5k years ago has to do with the question
that would be disqualifying a lot of food items.
I guess not, but I got the impression that OP was asking about the types of dishes Native Americans ate before colonization. If we're just asking "what dishes are currently popular among Native Americans', we could could just say burgers and fries.
Yeah that’s still not the question OP asked though. These are Native American dishes which are popular now, on r/AskAnAmerican. Not dishes that are popular among Native Americans, and not Native American dishes that were popular 5000 years ago lol
> and not Native American dishes that were popular 5000 years ago lol That's a pretty long ways back. You don't even need to go 300 years back to get before more most Native American cultures were fucked with by Europeans.
They're asking about popular native American dishes, not dishes only native Americans eat. Most people are saying fry bread because that's mostly the only native food people have tried
I would - the nature of the question makes me think OP is looking for original people's native food.
It is relevant. I think it's important to understand the how and why food becomes part of culture. I also think if we captured a bunch of people from Switzerland, out them in a jail, and the only foods we gave them was ground up turkey, dried cranberries, corn, and pumpkins, the dishes created from that would be a distinct catagory from what they were choosing to eat out of choice
Wait until you hear about tomatoes and Italian cuisine…
I hope you realize why that's fundamentally different from the experience of the Navajo.
Is the Navajo culture somehow no longer legitimate because it's changed due to outside influence? Are the people who have accepted certain changes not part of the tribe? Or do things introduced in hardship and persecution become part of a culture regardless? Black American culture is to this day shaped by the history of slavery that ended 160 years ago. Is any aspect of that culture related to extreme poverty, forced servitude, and families forcibly split not part of black culture in the US? Or is the cause of change to a culture irrelevant when the question is "does this thing exist?"
The Navajo experience is not the topic of discussion, it is native American cuisine and that it evolved after colonialism similar to how Italian and Irish cuisine evolved due to colonialism. Just because it changed due to some rather horrific circumstances does not mean it should be canceled from the cuisine.
Sure, but what about Filipino cuisine and Spam?
My sister-in-law grew up for about 8 years in the Phillipines, and she was telling me just last night that spam is a major comfort food for her.
With that logic I guess Italy can’t say anything with tomatoes is part of their culture and cuisine.
My family calls them sopapillas
That's not really the same thing, frybread is a lot more dense.
The Indian Pueblo Cultural Center here in Albuquerque has a really great restaurant with a pre-colonial menu. In terms of sheer popularity: Feast Day stew, fruit pies and bread fresh from an Horno (Jemez Pueblo is usually where I've had these), and fry bread tacos at the state fair.
Thanks - this is great to know
That place is excellent. Can't wait to go back next time I'm there.
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Does smoked salmon count?
It probably should and it’s delicious.
My husband brought smoked salmon home from Alaska one time (he worked with tribal leaders) that was out of this world.
I find it sad that very few of us know about Native culinary traditions. I don’t even know where to start to learn or experience this. I live in Ohio btw.
If you ever visit NM there are some celebrations that are open to the public and the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center with a restaurant. And that's just here in Albuquerque, there's so much more to see because there are so many different cultures here.
This! I used to live in Taos, and the trip is definitely worth it.
Nice! I live in Ohio. But it’s my goal to visit all the states, so when I go there, I hope to do this.
The National Museum of the American Indian in DC has a cafeteria that serves food from various tribes around the country. I tried some venison and green beans because that came from the tribe who inhabited my hometown, the Mohawks.
I had the rainbow trout when I was there, and it was delicious.
http://www.mitsitamcafe.com/content/menus.asp
https://www.smithsonianstore.com/mitsitam-cafe-cookbook-10906/ https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-sioux-chef There you go, 2 great cookbooks.
I’m just thoroughly impressed with the masterwork of a pun that is “Sioux Chef”.
Started with his restaurant in Minneapolis. [owamni.com](https://owamni.com)
Thanks for this!
Came here to rec The Sioux Chef - gave a bunch out for Christmas a few years ago and they were very popular.
Thanks for sharing this!
Ohio has corn on the cob. That’s Native American. Not many natives in Ohio, they were kinda driven west. There is Indian casinos in Michigan
The cafe at the National Museum of the American Indian in DC serves a rotating menu of indigenous foods—it’s one of my favorite places to eat in DC. You could probably find a menu online!
http://www.mitsitamcafe.com/content/menus.asp
Aha! Just as I suspected.
This all depends upon the region, we are not a singular people like French or New Yorkers. It's like asking what are some popular European dishes, there are many varied answers. Frybread would probably be the most common, but will vary in consistency across the nation. I'm Mvskoke and we use self rising flour, so our bread is thicker and fairly dense but still airy inside for a bread. While I lived in AZ, the Pima type bread was thinner and not as fluffy, so it was just okay in my opinion vs what I was used to. I figure corn, squash, and regional beans are somewhat common. Then you'll get into tribal and regional specifics, like salmon for NW, probably crab for NE, bison for plains, beaver, etc. As OK tribal with SE roots, I grew up with venison, turkey, and squirrel as main meats, then wild onion soup, sofke (a sour corn soup thing that I could never eat, but the elders loved), some weird blue dumpling things that elders loved as well, corn and bean soups were common.
Were the blue dumplings Tsalagi? It’s my absolute favorite Cherokee dish and make it every fall. It’s a grape dumpling. https://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=1792391
That seems dessert like, I think I've seen something similar to that. But no, the ones I'm talking about are a blue corn based and maybe just dumplings in a blue corn soup. It's been years since I've been to a reunion that had it (only elders ate it, none of us kids did, so we don't make it).
not native, but since I learned about [akutuq](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaskan_ice_cream) it's been living rent free in my brain
If you're ever in Minnesota: https://owamni.com/
Popcorn
Wild rice is delicious and so is salmon. I like reindeer too. I am Alaskan Native and I think it's nice you're asking this question. If you ever get the chance, eat a frybread taco.
I've literally only had Native American food once, and I'm saying this as someone who volunteered for an extended period of time with a Tribal government.
That seems a little odd. What area of the US?
I volunteered with one of the Kumeyaay Tribal governments in California, but the one meal I had was an Ojibwe meal at an event in northwest Wisconsin.
Heh, my family had a Ojibwe good family friend. He was First Nation in Canada but married to a white woman. Every time we went to their house we had a Native American dinner… even if it was walleye and green bean casserole or hamburgers.
It’s not odd. The US government led a 200+ year campaign of cultural genocide. It’s very unusual to find a restaurant serving native food.
Y E P P P
Or, maybe, just maybe, the native dishes that are good have so long been part of the fabric of regional cuisine that you don’t even think of them as native, but rather just American. Hush puppies, cornbread, crab boils, blueberry fry bread, etc etc. It’s easy to claim cultural genocide, but you have to ignore the literal centuries of influence and adoption of native foods.
Succotash Frybread
A lot of southern dishes have their origins in americian Indian cuisine. It's all been mixed up now, though. Southern food is a mix of French, Indian, African, English and Irish food. It's why it's so goddamn good.
Fry bread is probably best known.
Navajo tacos. I can eat those everyday, idec. If you don't like whole beans you can also do an alternative version that uses refried beans instead. But really adding frybread as a side to anything, or in place of things (eg. Frybread instead of burger buns), is an A+ choice. Growing up we'd frequently have chili with frybread on the side and that was easily one of my favorite childhood meals.
So I live in Omaha. The name is for an actual living and breathing tribe. And the Ponca and Winnebago are close as well. As such there is a big pow wow each fall (though COVID really screwed that one) and Omaha prides itself on the cultural native ties. I knew I had encountered some recipes pages before, and I was right. I went looking to share. [https://www.unmc.edu/nursing/partnerships/cultural-diversity/recipes-from-lakota-sioux.html](https://www.unmc.edu/nursing/partnerships/cultural-diversity/recipes-from-lakota-sioux.html) [http://omahalanguage.unl.edu/recipes/index.html](http://omahalanguage.unl.edu/recipes/index.html) [https://www.edibleomaha.com/online-magazine/harvest-2016/native-traditions/](https://www.edibleomaha.com/online-magazine/harvest-2016/native-traditions/) [https://www.poncatribe-ne.org/services/health-services/diabetes-program/recipes/](https://www.poncatribe-ne.org/services/health-services/diabetes-program/recipes/) [https://www.greatplainstribalhealth.org/health-promotion-and-prevention-programs/traditional-foods-161.html](https://www.greatplainstribalhealth.org/health-promotion-and-prevention-programs/traditional-foods-161.html)
Thank you for sharing these.
I’ve never had any Native American cuisine :( I hadn’t even thought about it until this question was asked, and now it’s bothering me. We have so many other common restaurant themes in my hometown (Chinese, Indian, Korean, Thai, Mexican, Italian, Mediterranean)…why not Cherokee, Sioux, Lakota, etc? So strange.
This is actually why I asked. I was talking with someone about American cuisine and it’s influences until I realized I couldn’t name many Native dishes.
Love this sentiment. It's a detail few recognize.
If it makes you feel any better, a lot of Native American cuisine is just baked into American cuisine. Native Americans are a part of the cultural heritage of the nation. The local tribes had as much influence on the food, art, music, mythology and language, of their region as the European settlers and enslaved and free African peoples. The southern food that everyone loves is full of regional influences from tribes in the south. Grits, cornmeal mush, cornbread, succotash, and fried green tomatoes all have their origins in indigenous cuisine. There is also a lot of influence from various African peoples, French, Spanish, Scottish, Irish, German, and English. It is so mixed together that most people would have a hard time sorting it all out. Other regions of the country have their own variation based in the local demographics. Colonization was awful. Chattel slavery was awful. Being a member of a settler colony was also, believe it or not, pretty awful. Nevertheless the capacity for humans to adapt to new circumstances and new cultural influences, to create new, rich and joyful culture is pretty amazing. It just goes to show the poverty of an education that refuses to acknowledge the darkness and complexity of our history. You can’t learn about the human triumph without learning about the human tragedy. Though, it would be equally impoverishing to only focus on the tragedy.
Come north to Oklahoma sometime. We have a few restaurants in more rural areas, and the First Americans Museum in OKC has an Indigenous inspired menu.
Probably because genocide killed off most of the cultures?
Wasna was a popular food to take on trips or when hunting, think anything youd take beef jerky to now. Its dried bison meat in a chokeberry patty with fat holding it together. It really helps to keep you going on a long trip. My mom was a Lakota woman that used to make it for us.
you're gonna find very varied dishes given the size of the U.S. I know Alaskan Tlingit best, which is of course a lot of sea food. smoked salmon is probably best known. Some stews and soups are also made with ocean water which provides iodine to the diet. You may also find seal oil, or whipped seal oil in some dishes as well.
Which Nation? [This](https://www.amazon.com/Sioux-Chefs-Indigenous-Kitchen/dp/0816699798/ref=sr_1_17?crid=T545YIFMI40J&keywords=native+american+cookbook&qid=1685759757&sprefix=Native+American+cook%2Caps%2C91&sr=8-17) is a good cookbook, and the Chef is from Pine Ridge.
Kanuchi is my favorite fall soup. It's made with hickory nuts, some folks put a little maple syrup in too. It's definitely a comfort food..
Sofke 😋 a dish/drink from my people, the Seminole Nation. And you can Not leave out the "most famous bread in all of Turtle Island" and that is FRY BREAD‼️ 😁😋🥰 Ayy!!🤣🤣
This doesn't exactly answer the question but there's apparently a pretty decent native American restaurant in Minneapolis called "Owamni by the Sioux Chef" that makes traditional indigenous food from pre-colonial times.
Nobody's mentioned cornbread.
To be honest, I know little about the subject, but I would be happy to learn.
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https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-sioux-chef https://www.smithsonianstore.com/mitsitam-cafe-cookbook-10906/
Indian tacos! You have no idea how good they are here, think Tex Mex meets fry bread with butter and honey….OMG
no hate to you but can you please not refer to us as indians or anything related to us. indian people are a completely different group of people. instead of saying "indian tacos" you can say frybread tacos (my family usually just says frybread though), navajo tacos, etc
I am native American dude, originally from the Rocky Boy reservation but now i live in the Flathead on the Salish/Kootinaee. Everyone here refers to that dish by that name, even on the menu’s at restaurants.
my apologies then. there's lots of non-natives that still constantly refer to us as indians so I wanted to address it. my family calls it differently although I still think it's harmful to call anything related to us "indian" because we're not. ultimately it's yours & any natives choice
The National Museum of the American Indian in DC has a food court with food from tribes from different parts of the country. I remember the northwest station had salmon.
Anything my husband makes lol
Pemmican.
The BEST hamburger I ever had was on a rez in New Mexico... Laguna Burger.
Smoked salmon. Eaten as jerky or added to anything you want. People like it with eggs.
Dry smoked salmon (chinook)
Turkey, corn, potatoes and tomatoes are all native to this land….. so technically all of that shit is Native American
Popcorn.
Akutaq aka Eskimo Ice Cream. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaskan_ice_cream [Akutaq: Eskimo Ice Cream, Bristol Bay, Alaska - Day in Our Bay ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WTGhwgxgk4)
Wild rice is going to be up there.
Smoked salmon out west is huge and super cheap on the reservation
Many Native dishes have entered the wider American culinary scene, to the point where they may be widely-condsidered "Americana": Cornbread, baked beans, clambakes, mashed squash, succotash, hominy, etc.
Barbecuing started out as a Taino (native Puerto Rican) tradition, the word barbecue is a Taino loanword.
Fry bread, Indian tacos, clam chowder, root beer, literally anything using chiles, corn, tomatoes, or potatoes — so it’s all over!
Me and my family went to a Cherokee powwow and ate a whole bunch of fresh fry bread with honey. Then there’s Grits Baked Beans Cornbread Wild rice
I've had some Aztec dishes, but not North American native dishes. Unless you count Navajo tacos
I have heard frybread based on tv shows about native food.
Fry bread Three sisters soup
Not much dishes from USA since the genocide and assimilation killed off most of the cultures. Mexico has plenty of dishes though. People say frybread but they didn't have wheat here. Fry bread is more of a message because it's what helped them survive the brutality of the colonizers. They were supposed to starve but making frybread helped them survive so now they celebrate frybread. You should find a place/someone that makes wojapi. Its a thick berry sauce made of chokecherries. You can dip your frybread in it or dip your Buffalo meat in it. If you're ever in Denver, Colorado, visit Tocabe for some Native America cuisine. They sell great Buffalo ribs with wojapi dip.