Many Native Americans observe Thanksgiving. They just don鈥檛 celebrate it. It鈥檚 often a time for somber reflection on a sorrowful history, and always a time to honor ancestors.
But food is important, too, as WKSU鈥檚 Vivian Goodman discovered in a kitchen in Kent.
Editor's Note: This story was originally published on Dec. 2, 2015
Georgi Hudson Smith stirs a pot of buffalo stew. She throws in parsnips, potatoes, and carrots, for a thick mixture that goes well with the dense, round white bread she baked. It鈥檚 called bannock and you can bake it in an oven or on a stone placed directly on a campfire.
鈥淚t was brought over by the French actually. You can put it in a baggie and take it with you when you were trapping or going ricing to harvest the wild rice.鈥�
Georgi bakes bread and cooks up 30 pounds of buffalo stew every year for the Native American Indian Center鈥檚 Winter Gathering.
Fry bread too
While the stew simmers Renee Concha Saastamoinen makes fry bread, working the dough very gently. 鈥淭he best ones that I鈥檝e seen that do fry bread like this are the Navahos. They鈥檙e really good. Yeah.鈥�
She works the dough quickly and gently.
鈥淎nd swish it around, and I鈥檓 just throwing it together. I鈥檓 just using my fingertips. I鈥檓 going to add some more water.鈥�
Indian names
Renee goes by another name.
鈥淢y name is Pumpkin. It was given to me by my grandmother on my birth. I am from the Taos Pueblo, Jemez, Laguna, and Acoma tribes in the southwest region of New Mexico.鈥�
Georgi鈥檚 roots are in North Carolina. She鈥檚 of Cherokee and Ojibwa heritage.
鈥淢y Indian name is Ajuwah Kwayabik Washhkaysheo Didchadakway.鈥�
The last name means 鈥渄eer woman, spiritual warrior.鈥� Her first name is harder to translate.
鈥淚t means if you look up into the sky, the blue sky, there are two white clouds, and a golden eagle flies straight through.鈥�
Pumpkin just calls her Georgi.
鈥淲e鈥檝e known each other for a while. And we鈥檝e done a lot of cooking together. Yeah.鈥�
Multiple feasts
Mostly they cook for feasts. Pumpkin says there are plenty of them all year round.
鈥淲e have a feast day to celebrate the first planting. We have feast days to celebrate the harvest, but there鈥檚 feast days in between to celebrate the sun, the sky, the earth, the plants.鈥�
Giving thanks, she says, is an everyday thing.
鈥淭he moment we wake up we say 鈥榟ello鈥� to the earth and 鈥榯hank you.鈥欌��
Spirit bowls
But Thanksgiving Day itself, rather than a time for celebration, was a time of mourning.
鈥淲e always honored our ancestors. We always had what we called a spirit bowl, and grandfather always reminded us that this goes to the people who died at the hands of our oppressors.鈥�
Spirit bowls or spirit plates where Georgi鈥檚 people are from in North Carolina include a few plugs of ceremonial tobacco.
鈥淎nd we put that tobacco on that plate. And there鈥檚 a piece of food off every dish that鈥檚 brought.鈥�
In Pumpkin鈥檚 Taos Pueblo tribe, at least one of the dishes would be venison.
鈥淪ometimes my grandmother would make a deer stew where she鈥檇 put like these blue corn dumplings in them which were awesome. My father would hunt for us because we were a big family. He would hunt and he would bring us rabbit, and so we鈥檇 bake rabbit in the fireplaces that we had.鈥�
Their own foods
Growing up in New Mexico, stuffing, cranberry relish, and green bean casseroles were not on Pumpkin鈥檚 Thanksgiving table.
鈥淭he foods we ate were our own foods. We baked our breads. Grandfather killed wild turkey, which is very skinny by the way.鈥�
For Thanksgiving Georgi makes a dessert with wild blueberries and a special rice grown on the Ojibwa reserve in North Carolina.
鈥淎 little bit nuttier in texture and taste. We call it menomen. It鈥檚 a staple. So there would be wild rice menomen with blueberries. And blueberry is a medicine. And I made some for you today, actually.鈥�
Food is medicine
At Thanksgiving and at every other feast Georgi remembers what her late uncle鈥檚 taught her.
鈥淗e used food to heal people. People would come to him for remedies for all different kinds of things, cancer was one of them. And I helped him. I learned how to make food for medicine.鈥�
Pumpkin says she enjoys cooking for feasts, including Thanksgiving.
鈥淏ut I wish that history books would be changed to reflect what I grew up with, which was the truth to us as native peoples.鈥�
Nothing to celebrate
What Pumpkin read about New England Indians sitting down in the year 1637 for a friendly dinner with European pilgrims, never rang true.
鈥淲e would have conversations around our table, 鈥榃hy should we celebrate it? It鈥檚 nothing to celebrate, really.鈥�
Pumpkin鈥檚 father said that first Thanksgiving probably was nothing like the 鈥減ig-out鈥� that鈥檚 typical today.
鈥淲hen you鈥檙e reaching that point of wintertime you want to save. You want to eat a little bit and enjoy it, and then make it last. So my father always said, 鈥楧o you really think they wasted all that food on that one day?鈥欌��
Her father and especially her grandfather, an activist for Native American rights, would turn the Thanksgiving dinner table discussion into a history lesson.
鈥淲hat the Spanish did to our culture, what the American government did to our culture. He didn鈥檛 mince words.鈥�
Pumpkin wears a button with Cleveland Indians mascot Chief Wahoo鈥檚 face X鈥檈d out, but she doesn鈥檛 call herself an activist.
鈥淚鈥檓 just native. I鈥檓 American is what I am.鈥�
Keeping touch with her heritage
Unlike Pumpkin, Georgi didn鈥檛 grow up on a reservation.
鈥淓ighty to 90% of native people live off a reservation, or reservation system. We live in the cities. We鈥檙e around. We happen to live a little bit differently and think differently but we鈥檙e here.鈥�
In Georgi鈥檚 parents鈥� time there were forced removals and adoptions. Her own father grew up in foster care and for a while lost touch with his Cherokee heritage.
鈥淗e was removed from his tribe. There was a whole generation of people like my father鈥檚 generation who were disconnected from their tribal culture. 鈥�
But her father was proud to be Cherokee and encouraged her to follow in his path.
鈥淚 spent a lot of time on the pow-wow trail, and celebrating feasts and thanksgivings, but it wasn鈥檛 the actual American Thanksgiving.鈥�
Georgi鈥檚 Mother鈥檚 family was part Italian, part English.
鈥淪he represents that whole Caucasian or white part. So we growing up in Cleveland celebrated Thanksgiving.鈥�
Thankful for sustenance
But the concept of giving thanks on just one day of the year conflicted with what her father taught her a feast should be.
鈥淲e were to be grateful for the giving of the food, the meat that lost its life to sustain us, and we were supposed to use every part of that meat. To me it means so much more that way.鈥�
Georgi鈥檚 always been grateful for her heritage.
鈥淚t keeps me centered. It keeps me tethered to Mother Earth, and when I feel like I鈥檓 tethered to Mother Earth I feel like I have an identity.鈥�
Good attitudes improve the food
Pumpkin feels the same way, but identifying with a history of oppression never stopped her family from observing Thanksgiving.
鈥淚t was kind of like we had to do it because the world stopped in America, so let鈥檚 go eat.鈥�
The food will taste better, they say, if they put aside somber reflection and stay positive while they prepare the feast.
鈥淵ou can鈥檛 be sad. You can鈥檛 be crying and making food. That鈥檚 not good. It鈥檒l transfer the flavor and make people sad.鈥�
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