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Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
We have a lot to be grateful for here at FRESH!
Our gratitude list is the table of contents for this very short edition of the Newsletter!
1) For a great Annual Meeting! For all our supporters, members, volunteers, fellow-travelers and friends!
2) For our Funders!
3) For being recognized by New London Beautification Committee for our efforts to steward and enliven public spaces!
4) And for our FRESH Advisory Board members for enduring a picture at the end of a long meeting in a very hot room
5) For Arthur Lerner, one of the founders of FRESH and the long time Executive Director. Once he stepped down from FRESH's staff, he carried on as an Advisory Board member. His term there ended, and now he is one of FRESH's most valuable volunteers!
6) For the opportunity to center, honor and learn more about Native food, ways and traditions and upend the paternalistic colonial narrative of Thanksgiving that was constructed for the American people in the wake of the Civil War...
Please take the time to read this fantastic, timely article the Time Magazine published by Sioux Chef Sean Sherman. We have excerpted it below.
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| | | A Report Back in Pictures, Annual Meeting 2018 |
| | | | | | | Our FABulous FAB (FRESH Advisory Board). Left to Right: Elizabeth Spurr, Bob Stuller, Denise Boyd, Sheila Yee, Yelena Bergman and Vita Rose.
They are holding FRESH's award from NL Beautification, but you can't really see it, so a picture is include right below. |
| | | | | | A NEW (AND VERY OLD) WAY TO THINK ABOUT THANKSGIVING |
| | Everyone in the FRESH office is reading this article by Sean Sherman, a member of The Sioux Nation and a Chef who won The James Beard Prize for Best American Cookbook with The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen in 2018.
"The Thanksgiving Tale We Tell Is a Harmful Lie. As a Native American, I’ve Found a Better Way to Celebrate the Holiday," Time Magazine, November 19, 2018
Sherman deftly refutes the official story of the Pilgrims and Indians sitting down to an abundant harvest table, crediting writer Sarah Josepha Hale with persuading President Lincoln that a divided, war weary nation needed a feel-good story of unity in the wake of the Civil War.
For those of us raised on construction paper headdresses and pilgrim hats it is a revelatory reminder of the power of state propaganda, the Big Lie and the ways "history" is made by the winners.
But what is even more powerful about Sean Sherman's piece is his conclusion about food, community and continuing to learn and explore.
He writes:
"The thing is, we do not need the poisonous “pilgrims and Indians” narrative. We do not need that illusion of past unity to actually unite people today. Instead, we can focus simply on values that apply to everybody: togetherness, generosity and gratitude. And we can make the day about what everybody wants to talk and think about anyway: the food.
"People may not realize it, but what every person in this country shares, and the very history of this nation, has been in front of us the whole time. Most of our Thanksgiving recipes are made with indigenous foods: turkey, corn, beans, pumpkins, maple, wild rice and the like. We should embrace this.
"For years, especially as the head of a company that focuses on indigenous foods, I have explored Native foods. It has given me—and can give all of us—a deeper understanding of the land we stand on. It’s exciting to reconnect with the nature around us. We Americans spend hours outdoors collecting foods like chanterelles, morels, ramps, wild ginger, chokecherries, wild plums, crab apples, cactus fruit, paw paws, manzanita berries, cattails, maple, wild rice (not the black stuff from California, which is a modified and completely different version of the true wild rice growing around the Great Lakes region), cedar, rose-hips, hickory, acorns and walnuts.
"We can work with Native growers producing heirloom beans, squash and pumpkins, and Native corn varieties, all coming in many shapes, sizes and colors. We can have our feasts include dishes like cedar-braised rabbit, sunchokes with sumac, pine-stewed venison, smoked turkey with chestnuts, true wild rice with foraged mushrooms, native squash with maple, smoked salmon and wild teas.
"No matter where you are in North America, you are on indigenous land. And so on this holiday, and any day really, I urge people to explore a deeper connection to what are called “American” foods by understanding true Native-American histories, and begin using what grows naturally around us, and to support Native-American growers. There is no need to make Thanksgiving about a false past. It is so much better when it celebrates the beauty of the present."
Thanks Sean Sherman!! |
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And Thanks To YOU WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT
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Follow this link: http://www.freshnewlondon.org/support-us |
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