Native American Chefs, Gastrodiplomacy, and the Importance of Representation in Culinary Justice

Keywords: Native American, chefs, gastrodiplomacy, culinary justice, food sovereignty
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Monday
Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 9

Abstract

Being a Native American professional chef working to get the world excited about Indigenous cuisine means moving between several worlds in order to showcase Native foods to a wide variety of audiences—to demonstrate to non-Native people that Indigenous communities have a beautiful and intact cuisine, and that their land rights and cultures need to be respected, as well as to get other Native people excited about cooking and eating Indigenous foods for the purposes of improving health and regaining and retaining culture. The food being prepared by the chefs featured in this presentation is aesthetically beautiful and nutritious, but also full of culture and history and seen as an important instrument of gastrodiplomacy—educating sometimes unsuspecting audiences through food. As Citizen Band Potawatomi chef Loretta Barette Oden once described during a presentation, “my theory is that if you grab people by the belly they’ll listen to anything you have to say.” Because of its power as a potential tool of education, many Native chefs have been pushing for the right to represent their own food, arguing that culinary justice means that people outside of the Native community should not work to commercially profit off of Native cuisine until Indigenous chefs have had sufficient opportunity to establish the field. Based on interviews with 27 different Native chefs, notes from 30 Native food sovereignty conferences, and 32 other cooking events around the country between 2011-2020, this presentation explores issues of representation and education among Native chefs in the food sovereignty movement.