Crabapples are an indigenous food in the Upper Peninsula. Photo: slambo_42 (Flickr)
Martin Reinhardt, member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians and teacher at Northern Michigan University, is planning a Decolonizing Diet Project, where he and a group will only eat food that was available 300 years ago in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
The project officially starts spring 2012, but Reinhardt is already collecting wild foods and developing recipes. He’s made wild rice milk and pectin, gathered cranberries, leeks and ferns and been hunting to stock his kitchen.
Reinhardt has already tried out the decolonized diet with a week of eating indigenous foods.
What would be your indigenous Great Lakes meal of choice?
My Polish grandfather taught me to hunt (and cook and eat!) wild mushrooms. This is a lost and delicious art. We’ve all grown so far away from our hunter/gatherer roots. As a child in Lake County, in the heart of the Manistee National Forest, we gathered wild asperagus, huckleberries, wild strawberries and grapes (which, along with dandelions, made excellent wine), and ate the fish, crawfish and frogs we caught in the lake. There was always venison on the table. I realize this life style is limited by modern life, but it sure was fun growing up this way.
Sounds tasty! I would go with venison, also wild rice and cranberries.
I’ll order the Lake Trout, please, with a side of wild rice and cranberries.