Our Stories
Chef Spotlight: Tiffany Deer
CHEF TIFFANY DEER Tiffany Wahsontiiostha Deer is a professional chef with a love of food and flavor, and a passion for cooking healthy and easy to prepare meals at home. “In my mind, there are two separate baskets of Native food, or Mohawk food. One basket would be filled with our traditional food, which to […]
Read More
Native Eatery Spotlight: Indigikitchen
INDIGIKITCHEN Indigikitchen, a portmanteau of Indigenous, digital, and kitchen, is an online cooking show dedicated to re-indigenizing our diets using digital media. Using foods native to their Americas, Indigikitchen gives viewers the important tools they need to find and prepare food on their own reservations. Beyond that, it strengthens the ties to our cultures and […]
Read More
Education & History: KCET Gathering Medicine
Indigenous peoples in California relied on traditional gathering to provide for all of their food and medicinal needs. California’s landscapes produce hundreds of indigenous plant species that have been used thousands of years prior to European contact. And many of these plants and their preparations as medicine informed modern pharmacopeia, most notably aspirin, which is […]
Read More
Eating Well: Indigenous Food Harvesting Techniques Help Preserve the Land for Future Generations
Ancestral Guard is an indigenous organizing network teaching traditional hunting, gathering and preparation of local foods. Their hope is that the indigenous tribes will build networks that revolve around the land and its resources to help heal the land and preserve some traditional ways of life for tribes in northern California. From sustainably harvesting mussels […]
Read More
Weaving Spotlight: KCET Weaving Community
KCET Weaving Community: How Native Peoples are Rediscovering Their Basketry Traditions Basketry has been described as the pinnacle of Californian indigenous culture. But the craftsmanship necessary to make these works of art requires much more than weaving techniques. It requires a deep and sustained relationship with the environment. For centuries Native peoples tended the […]
Read More
Cedar Basket Weaving With Brenda Crabtree
[fvplayer id=”118″] Brenda Crabtree is the Director of Aboriginal Programs at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver. She is a member of the Spuzzum Band and has both Nlaka’pamux and Sto:lo ancestry. Her art practice includes cedar and spruce root basketry, drum making, moose hair tufting and beadwork. Her work is continually […]
Read More
Art & Food: Sonya Kelliher-Combs
SONYA KELLIHER-COMBS Sonya Kelliher-Combs was raised in the Northwest Alaska community of Nome. Her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree is from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Master of Fine Arts is from Arizona State University. Through her mixed media painting and sculpture, Kelliher-Combs offers a chronicle of the ongoing struggle for self-definition and identity […]
Read More
Education & History: Decolonizing the Diet
KCET Presents: Decolonizing the Diet California — a biodiversity hotspot — provides an abundance of plants for both food and medicine. To Native peoples across the state, gathering locations were like supermarkets today. They provided all the resources necessary to survive. These native plants are relevant today as they reinforce cultural continuity for California’s […]
Read More
Art & Food: Cara Romero, The Last Indian Market
CARA ROMERO Cara Romero (b. 1977, Inglewood, CA) is a contemporary fine art photographer. An enrolled citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, Romero was raised between contrasting settings: the rural Chemehuevi reservation in Mojave Desert, CA and the urban sprawl of Houston, TX. Romero’s identity informs her photography, a blend of fine art and editorial […]
Read More