Reclaim Your Harvest Season with A Decolonized Playlist for Hungry Ears
Illustration of Chef Crystal Wahpepah by Kaitlin Strange
As we gather in the kitchen and around the table this week, we’re reflecting on the ways food can nourish us on a much deeper level. Food can tether us to the stories of our communities and lineages, offer us a path towards healing and transformation, and nurture a reciprocal relationship with the lands and waters to which we belong. Of course, food can also root us in harmful narratives and practices of extraction, exploitation, and erasure. This harvest season, we’re sharing a bounty of stories that ground us in the former. Stories that gift us with a full-bellied experience of care and the love embedded in acts of accountability and reconciliation.
Hungry Ears Playlist 2021
Think of this as a multi-course audio-visual meal of honesty, compassion, and good storytelling. Listen in with friends and loved ones as you cook-along over Zoom, peel potatoes just across the table, or wait for your take-out (no judgement!).
“ I knew what it would take and how long it would take, for me to become an Indigenous chef the way I wanted—to honor my grandparents and to honor my people.” Indigenous chef and RFRS storytelling alum, Crystal Wahpepah (Kickapoo), of Wahpepah’s Kitchen, explores how she was driven to carve her own path to chef-dom by a love for her traditional foods of care and healing, instilled in her by her family and community.
Sometimes we find medicine where we least expect it. At this year’s Storyslam, Nomtipom Wintu ethnobotanist and medical herbalist, Sage LaPena, shared her beautiful story about helping people to open their eyes to the medicine all around us that is reaching out to heal us, everywhere we look.
For those of you who joined us for our recent Around The Table with cook activist Jocelyn Jackson and left asking "how can I bring reverence back to the table?", be sure to check out Jocelyn's invigorating article on how we can reclaim Thanksgiving with gratitude and justice for Indigenous and Black peoples.
Another follow-up to our conversation on food culture, is Rowen White's 2019 keynote address at the Young Farmers Conference (referenced during our Around The Table). Go deep with Rowen, as she challenges us all to consider the cultural dimension of biodiversity and how it is key to living well on this earth.
Marinate in the music of healing and resistance with Caminando Para Sanar. Inspired by the ocean in Mapuche-Tehuelche ancestral territory (Argentina), this song was composed by Epu Newen of Movimiento de Mujeres Indígenas por el buen vivir, the Indigenous Women's Movement for Good Living, a movement of Indigenous nations working to fight terricide and advance Indigenous rights.
Who picks the produce you get at the grocery store? In throwback episode from the Toasted Sister Podcast, host Andy Murphy interviews Indigenous immigrant farmworkers about their journeys to the fields of Alamosa, Colorado. To dig a bit deeper, check out this article on how climate change is putting Indigenous communities in Guatemala on the frontlines.
Award-winning poet, Ashley M. Jones made history after being named the first Black writer and youngest individual ever to be named the new state Poet Laureate of Alabama this year. Listen to her powerful and evocative verses about food and labor on this episode of Gravy.
Music and food just go together, right? Keep the rhythm going and dream into the future we long for as you prep that last minute stuffing or welcome friends to the table with RFRS' official RFRS' official Food Culture Portal Playlist.
Still Hungry for More?
Stream all of our episodes of The Curious Eater on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.