Western Apache Cooking and Cuisine

Western Apache Cooking and Cuisine are not new terms. The food and cooking of our Apache people has sustained us for generations. Western Apache Cooking and Cuisine have continued to evolve throughout the generations from pre-colonization and era before the "Indian Reservation" borders that crossed our lands. The cooking evolved with violent military contact and the suppression of food-ways that are about a coexistence between people, land, waters and the entire universe.

Reconnecting with the landscape and activating ancestral knowledge is the strongest, most tangible pathway toward decolonization and a healthy return to indigeneity. We adapt and move forward, constantly. This is a timeless trait in our shared resiliency.

This is a brief description of our culinary evolution and how a kitchen forces people to change in a positive way. We have turned our work space into an exhibition kitchen. Here are images from the process.

The pictures speak volumes about our time together as Apaches in the Kitchen.

The Dzilgha'a Kitchen in 2009

These signs have been up for years. It is about understanding and belief. We always stress that 'Mise en Place' is not only physical, that it is also about mental organization or 'Mental Mise en Place'.

Empty Kitchen in 2010. People bring all kitchens to life.

An action shot when we were going full speed for dinner service and cooking for a Chef's Table in the background. The Chefs table will now be visible to guests that are entering the restaurant dining room entrance. 

Sous Chef Vincent Way aka Vinny, dusting before painting. Chef de partie Randall Cosen looks on. This image was taken a few weeks ago in 2014. 

Chef Randall Cosen carefully painting around our signage. Randal is transitioning to the saute station this year after working the meat station on the grill. His work ethic, demonstration and mise en place indicated that he was ready to change stations to learn more skills.

Chef Juwon Hendricks painting the area that used to be his station.

The Kitchen all taped and prepped for painting.  We did all this work ourselves. 

A delivery of epic proportions. Up until this point we have served thousands of meals with only a six (6) burner range that had no ovens. The procurement of this range changes everything...it even transforms the culinary team. 

Out of the box, onto the truck and into the building. David assists.

Randall, Juwon and David begin installation.

Building the shelf.

This is an early photo, but it is here to illustrate the tape that had been in place more than once over the years.

White Mountain Apache construction team begins. The red line indicates the location of the header.

The first cut to remove the dry wall. This was a structural cut to see what was in the wall. 

We uncover old unused outlets. No power. We cut and capped a water line with the permission of upper management and our Apache Fire Chief. This authorization took a few steps and days. Unforeseen obstacle that we got past.

The Team returns after we weld the line and continue the work.

Cutting the wall. This is from outside in the dining room. 

Construction continues.

December 2014

The window opens up for the first time.

My first look into the soon to be window, I realize how things are going to change. 

Process 2014

Apaches building this Kitchen

The first look with the finished frame from the inside. This was an amazing thing to see for the first time.

First look at the frame from the dining room entrance.

My reminder to support the exchange of knowledge from my collection.

Chef Nephi Craig and the finished frame. I removed the drop cloth and began the clean up. Many hours late into the night after the office work is done and the kitchen is quiet.

My wife Jandi took this image of me cleaning the kitchen solo.

Clean and almost ready. Signage to be placed back in a vantage point for all to see 'Perfection is a Direction, not an end'. Pots hang, and this kitchen rests. This kitchen has grown and trained so many indigenous chefs and it has also saved my life.

This is organic beauty. I am eternally grateful and ready to participate in our own evolution. The kitchen gods are pleased as we await tempered glass.

The tempered glass arrives days later and our Apache construction team make the installation while I take photos to document this important event.

The first look with the glass installed. Painters tape applied for finishing.

Progress not Perfection. Decolonization in process. Evolution in the moment. 

Sealing up before stain.

Closer and closer.

The construction team taking photos to report. As they take photos I talk with them and they are very proud of their work. They ask me about the menu and ask if there are good steaks, I gladly tell them, "Yes". I also tell them about our culinary team being all Apaches in the Kitchen, they visibly appreciate it saying they are proud to have been a part of this positive change in our humble kitchen.

Decolonization and Self-Determination live here. Dzilgha'a Kitchen 2014. 10,000 feet in our sacred mountains on the White Mountain Apache Tribe. We are grateful.

Photo from Feb. 15, 2014 the night of an important Chef's Table with a young stagier and member of our indigenous posterity. Left to right. Randall Cosen, Vincent Way, my son Ari Carter Craig, Myself (Nephi Craig) and Juwon Hendricks. 

Power. Purpose. Discipline. Technique. 

White Mountain Apache Culinary Team in 2013 when we cooked a five course dinner for 500 people for the Phoenix Indian Center at Talking Stick Resort in their massive banquet kitchens. Left to right: Stephanie Dosela, Nancy James, Juwon Hendricks, Vina Reidhead, Herman Skidmore, Chef Nephi Craig, Randall Cosen, Tamara Gatewood, Vincent Way
This would not have been possible with out these chefs. It is all about the team. 

White Mountain Apache Chefs at the 1st Annual ROOTS Conference in Huron, Ohio at the renown place of power called The Chef's Garden. It was such an honor to be here. The changes in our kitchen are justified. In my six, going on 7 years as head chef, the most important lesson I have learned in this kitchen on the White Mountain Apache Reservation has been resilient patience. 

White Mountain Apache Culinary Team

Western Apache Cooking and Cuisine continues to evolve and shape our lives. We hope that it inspires you and someday you will have the chance to join us at a Chef's Table. This is Decolonization in action. This is a deliberate return to Apache Principles of Leadership as we work to remain in our ancestral homelands while revitalizing the sacred relationship with the landscape and one another as Apaches in the Kitchen.

Thank you for supporting Native American Culinary Culture Building 2015!

White Mountain Apache Culinary Staff!

Chef Nephi Craig, NACA Chef Founder
Dzilgha'a Kitchen, December 16, 2014
11:20 pm after service

Interception

Land Advocacy & Ancestral Memory

Food ways are important to me. Food ways are the language that I understand. I am not a fluent speaker of the N'Dee (Apache) or Dineh (navajo) languages. I am a fluent speaker in the language of the colonizer, English. Over time I have shed elements of its destructive potential through understanding the vocabulary of violence. My deliberate steps toward the vocabulary of affection have allowed me to become fluent or at least begin to understand another language--Food ways. In taking small steps to use our language in my cooking style, I have been shown elements of this profound conceptual universe that is still wide open and unknown to me. This unknown is an exciting frontier to me as a cook that searches for mental, emotional and intellectual nourishment. I am fortunate to be a chef that is mindful of oppression and keen to colonization, while cooking with decolonization in mind. The language of Food ways speaks to me and I listen...at times it is not easy because I too, live in this age of distraction, fast food and disease. 

Western Apache/English Dictionary

When sticking to what cultural protocol I know about food preparation and consumption, the western term 'Chef' is or has become today, a direct contradiction to what food and the preparation of food means to us in our indigenous homes and community. I struggle with this fact. I do my best to find balance with what the word 'chef' means in the colonial world that has been build up around us as indigenous peoples and what I understand from personal experience about indigenous cooks in my life. The commonality is humility, vitality and diligence...universal principles. I have been doing my best to allow my cooking to be a balance that is unapologetic about indigenous foods. I believe that in conceptualizing a cuisine in the shadows of colonialism, imperialism, capitalism and the many guises of self-government, at least I can allow the foods to be themselves in the hope that others hear/understand the language of Food ways. I enjoy the world of culinary arts, because it teaches me so much about the forces that animate my world as an indigenous person. Falsehoods of luxury built on the appropriation of indigenous food ways is the equivalent of imperial slumming and often comical from an indigenous person's perspective. 

Shared Resiliency

So this is the final frontier. The last life saving and life giving element of our indigenous vitality...Food ways. The culture of cuisine that we build as indigenous peoples of all demographics can be revitalized to reflect 'at-will' not 'at-risk'. I will not accommodate modernity in the pursuit of Ancestral Knowledge, because to do so would only aid and abet the final colonization and recolonization of Indigenous Food ways and Indigeneity. Decolonization is a right, not an intellectual privilege. Lets make it happen. Stand Strong. Perpetuate Good. 

Culinary Culture Building and Routes of Trade

We are up against many elements as we push to develop Native American Cuisine. Even the term Native American Cuisine is too broad of a term. Foods and regions of the Americas are extremely diverse  and varied and to give an culinary observer a reference I often reference the gastronomic diversity of Asia and India and the ancient civilizations there. Indigenous Food-ways thrived among the people and complex trade routes that we revitalize through community building. 

In our region of the Americas, withing the borders of the United States, within the state of Arizona our was historically referred to as Apacheria...and more specifically our region in the White Mountain Apache Tribe is classified as Western Apacheria. To give an example of the diversity, right now in my kitchen I sit at 10,000 feet elevation surrounded by mixed conifer stands of Ponderosa Pine, Spruce, Oak and Aspen trees. Down at the western edge of the White Mountain Apache tribe at approximately 2000 feet it is in the desert regions of Arizona where there are an abundance of reptiles, cactus, agave, century plants and other wild desert flora. This image here speaks to our indigenous Apache resiliency over centuries of warfare and oppression in all forms.

Our indigenous neighbors to the east are the Zuni people, to the northwest is the Hopi, and farther northeast is the vast Dineh Nation. Before the reservation system was created these entire lands kept intricate routes of trade, commerce and exchange of technology and foodways. This diversity of hunting, agriculture and even fishing was the cultural currency of the time. Western Apache leaders were often chosen for their ability to feed their families and for intimate knowledge of the land's caloric and aquatic resources. The calorie rich landscape of our ancestors still exists, it is the value system based on a food/water based economy that has vanished during this age of fast food and disease...the vanishing of a food/water based value system has produced the violence and despondency in our indigenous communities.

We have in place intimate knowledge of our landscape when we live on our homelands. It is not just our elders that hold the keys to the past, granted their deep intimate lifelong indigenous experience, we as a new generation hold the keys of our indigeneity...our language, our clan system, our traditions and the landscape. These elements are the pieces of the cultural indigenous jig-saw puzzle that we as cooks are able to piece together with delicious and decolonized results. The culinary revitalization of our food-ways satisfies many dimensions of appetite. Imagine the hunger you might have felt early in life to know your culture. Recall the turmoil and fear of our youth coupled with the hunger to find a spiritual way of life that brings peace and security in our own adult sense of self. Imagine the deep desire to listen to your body and eat seasonally and how the simple act of planting or gathering and consuming wild foods satisfies not just the pallet but also a genetic, atomic and cosmic appetite within us all. 

Our Food-ways and Food system is Cosmic & Sacred.

Remember that if you are Native and have lifelong memories of indigeneity with your family, you have a supplemental form of intelligence/education. Your life experience as an indigenous person and cook is Ethnographic and your personal decisions to cook Native Foods at any level is Ethno-Poetry...meaning like music, art and ceremony it needs no interpretation...it just is. Ethnopoetics are simply experienced and that is exactly what we strive to accomplish when we cook...we want to provide and create an experience. 

So when our Grandmother prepares a traditional stew, roasted potatoes and frybread, she is providing an ethnographic and anthropological culinary experience that can not be found anywhere else on the planet. She is exercising her deep life knowledge of nurturing the body, mind and spirit...she is creating a masterful experience of edible Ancestral Knowledge and ethnopoetry. Grandmothers cooking is a culinary history lesson in cultural oppression, resiliency, humility and nurturing. When we grow up around that we have that experience as part of our culinary genetic and atomic memory. This is the supplemental culinary education that can never be taught in culinary schools or any other university...this is the power of the humble indigenous experience in our current Indigenous or Native American gastronomy as we develop it. Our food-ways need us...needs us to return to our homes and visit with our families that live on the rez. 

Indigenous Culinary Decolonization 

So in our efforts to "develop" and revitalize our food-ways as Native Chefs, I believe that we must shift our value system and discard the western gastronomic lens that we often view our own communities through. I know this is a difficult concept to understand, but make it simple I'll reference something you already know...its is cool because Decolonization is really like "taking the Red Pill and finding out how far the rabbit hole goes." 

When Culinary Decolonization is the Red Pill, we are understanding the Western Culinary Traditions that we may learn in western institutions and culinary school or on television, but we make a conscious decision to shift our value system to a lens of humility and clarity. This is often scary because it challenges the established notion of "cuisine" and strikes at the heart of culinary imperialism and colonization. The choice to delve into our gastronomic indigeneity and listen to the sacred atoms that speak to us in prayer and give us chills when we hear our own truths is where the power is at. There is little to no power in seeking the Western Validation of our own indigenous food-ways, but rather indigenous epistemology is validating western science/medicine. 

Remember that Colonialism has an appetite too..."colonialism has a vicious appetite for violence and oppression." Indigenous Foods and methodologies to not feed colonialism, they starve it....the wholesome and generous spirit of native food-ways are the antidote to violence and fear at the most intimate level...at home and within ourselves.

Lets shift our value system from the lucrative notions of property, power and prestige that is what dominant culinary culture is about right now. Lets stay ahead of the curve and utilize indigenous foods to satisfy the forgotten dimensions of appetite and strengthen our emotional intelligence in our kitchens and homes. In this shifting of value to our Ancestral Knowledge and each other, we Apaches in the Kitchen are accepting interns and stagiers and if you have taken the time to read this far into my post, we want the young culinary student, the established cook and the chef to reach out to us and engage in community building. It will be the working relationships that will be the most important developments in indigenous food ways, because I dont know about you, but my kitchen is old, beat up, in need of repair and equipment BUT our most prized and valuable pieces of the kitchen are 'The People'. Even our cultural self-descriptions in the Apache language speak to this truth...the terms "N'Dee" in Apache and "Dineh" in Navajo both mean 'The People'. 

Both pre-Reservation terms, N'Dee and Dineh, that we have called ourselves since time-immemorial speak to the ingelligent nature of our value system. If we want to break it down into western terms that are less than 100 years old, we could call that "Industrial Psychology", where essentially it is building people BEFORE building capital/resources in a business...that is nothing new to our indigeneity and our very language holds keys to the emotional intelligence that is still with us. Ancestral Knowledge.

Dineh stagier, Daryl Yellowhair in white with Apaches in the kitchen. 

We recently had Dineh Stagiers come and be with us in Dzil'gha'a, in the area in the map above where our kitchen is at Sunrise Park Resort. These Dineh stagiers came with a determined spirit to learn and see our common indigenous reality. We shared that our reality in our kitchen is not a glamorous one, that we make it happen with what we have. We wanted to share that the most powerful element in indigenous foods is the sharing and individual articulation of the gastronomic experience. The Navajo men came from Crownpoint, New Mexico on the eastern agency of vast Dinetah (navajoland) to cook with us for an event for the Apache youth where we prepared healthful interpretations of indigenous foods.

In looking within for inspiration and development we reach out to each other and exercise our Shared Resiliency in cooking. This is a great stride forward that chefs in training want to come and be with us to stage. We open our doors for the sake of Community Building through cuisine...we call it Native American Culinary Culture Building, taking principles of community building.

Left to right: Stagier Darin Joe, Chef Nephi Craig, Randal Cosen, Juwon Hendricks, Vincent Way. Stagier Daryl Yellowhair can not be seen but is right behind me.

Dineh Stagier: Darin Joe

Participant Observation: Dineh Stagier Daryl Yellowhair 

We are on a pathway of inter-tribal development to revitalize the complex and ancient Trade Routes of the American Southwest and our revitalization is through Native American Cuisine. Our belief is that by making our culinary development relevant and attainable at the grassroots level, this is what will promote change. Creating the opportunity to offer stagier positions in a Native Kitchen is mind blowing considering that 75-100 years ago there were severe penalties for even talking like this. I could have benefited from greatly 16 years ago when I was a young line cook by staging with other Native Chefs, that is why we open the doors. So in the spirit of reciprocity and social recovery, we honor the phrase, "We cannot keep what we have unless we give it away." 

This is a life long continual culinary evolution. Sure there are many great kitchens to stage in, and we encourage you to seek them out in your path to understand, "the riddle of steel" that is a line-cook's life. Know that we, Apaches in the Kitchen, are out there and you are welcome to come with a sense of respect and humility to our ancestral homeland to stage, please understand that your are in our home. Leave the western lens at the border of the Rez and bring a sense of diligence and understanding, while building community and revitalizing our ancient, sophisticated life blood that is our Trade Routes.  

Trade Route to our Dzilgha'a Kitchen 

"Food and cooking are the tools, Ancestral Knowledge is the technology."

Than you for supporting Native American Culinary Culture Building 2014! 

Rations for all.

Topic: Native American Cuisine

Region specific: Western Apache Cooking and Cuisine

Micro-Regional Definition: White Mountain Apache Cuisine of Dzilgha'a

Question: "Why haven't I heard of Native American Cuisine?"

To attempt to answer, as a Native person and a chef myself...

It is very important to remember that what is perceived as Native American Cuisine, even to ourselves, is really not indigenous at all. This fact is becoming more widely accepted, but we have a long way to go. As we move forward as Native American People in the year 2014 we are still confronted by misconceptions on our collective pathway toward Social Recovery and Recovery from Colonialism. As we Acknowledge, Consider, Explore, Embrace and Maintain Life in a colonial reality, a form of intellectual and spiritual decolonization begins to take place. One of the most important elements of our lives is the decolonial cooking and cuisine.

What is Native American Cuisine? One might rush to say, "Frybread!" This crispy, delicious, deep-fried concoction that has both sweet and savory applications in the kitchen, is in fact NOT indigenous cooking. 

To be very critical, with public health in mind, Frybread is really a taste of American Colonialism. Frybread is a taste of confinement and oppression. This deceptively delicious food that I also grew up eating and have many fond memories attached to it has a harsh reality. Frybread and other dishes have brought on a public health epidemic of epic proportions throughout Native America. This health epidemic is not only physical, it is also mental, emotional, spiritual and it is the violence in our communities. A major piece of our "social issues", as some would call it, is really a result of this image here, which is a U.S. Military Food Ration Ticket.

Indian Ration Card

As the California Gold Rush and Manifest Destiny took root in Native America, many forms of warfare were employed by American settlers, the military, and enforced by the government in the name of progress. Biological and Spiritual Warfare consumed Native peoples and once all Native Peoples, were "confined" or "pacified" on the Prison Camps called Reservations, a new wave of warfare would be waged on the children of prisoners of war in the first United States Indian Boarding Schools like this one here in Carlisle Pennsylvania. 

In understanding and articulating Native American Cuisine, I use the terms Culinary Imperialism and Violent Appropriation of Food-ways. The brutal decimation of the American Bison, the Plains Indians and the imposition of non-Native foods and the deliberate creation of dependency is evidence of Culinary Warfare in our culinary history.

Below is a stark example of Culinary Warfare and Created Dependency. Look at the countless Dakota Peoples during the 1830's receiving Military Food Rations. The control of the food supply and distribution of unhealthy foods is a spirit crushing event to indigenous peoples.

Military Food Rations being distributed to the Dakota Natives during the 1830's

Regardless of climate, region and culinary heritage, Military Food Rations were issued. This photo below is taken on the San Carlos Apache Reservation, one of the worst Prison Camps in the for all bands of Apaches in 1892. 

Receiving Food Rations at San Carlos Agency 1892

Waiting for Rations in 1905, Indiana (note the Calvary)

The illustration below is of the distribution of food rations to the "Indians" at Medicine Bluff Creek in 1869.

Traditional Basketry brought to Ft. Gaston will carry non native foods. 1877

This is a photo from Ft. Gaston in Northern California in 1877. Again Native women most likely from the Hoopa Nation bring their traditional food baskets to carry a new foreign food that would eventually contribute to the public health epidemic among their posterity. 

Rations for all 1905. 

"Rations for all 1905" A Library of Congress photo.

What these images illustrate is a wide spread form of culinary warfare on all parts of Native America...all parts of Indian Country. It did not matter what "Reservation" you were from or what tribe you represented, you got the same Food Rations. Together we grew up with a common trauma at the deepest level. Our grandmothers, aunts and mothers employed humble culinary ingenuity and as a result, we grew up with foods like Frybread. I believe that the reason there is so much nostalgia, love and humor attached to Frybread is because it is a coping mechanism for the harsh reality...the harsh origin of a widely accepted food staple that has contributed to our current health epidemic across Native America. Look at this Bureau of Indian Affairs map of Indian Reservations in the United States and remember that Military Food Rations and the Boarding School System was employed on every remaining piece of Native Territory.

Cultural Integration 

From 1491 to 1991 in America we see and experience a great interruption of all forms of culture including cuisine. The complex trade routes that enabled the sharing of food, culture and technology are halted or wiped out completely. 500 years of warfare and oppression is a critical piece of our Indigenous Culinary History in the American historical landscape that is not talked about. This conversation has begun and it requires a courageous dialog. 

Native American Cuisine, for me, is about resiliency...Our Shared Resiliency as Native peoples. My interpretation of Native American Cuisine is also about responsibility...responsibility to move forward in light of this history with a healthy work ethic, beyond the stage of resistance and into the threshold of real tangible change because of resiliency.

This image is of two White Mountain Apache Scouts on horseback. My White Mountain Apache and Dineh Ancestors literally saw the world end during the 1800's, so I am writing this as a post-apocalyptic Western Apache/Dineh Chef in this new reality. What we are left with is our language, our landscape, our waters and food relatives. We are left with the pieces of our Indigeneity to piece our identity back together. This is how powerful our Western Apache "Terrior" is today for us as we practice Native cooking and articulate cuisine. 

This Culinary History is THE REASON that Native American Cuisine is not "considered" to be a cuisine at all. Native/Indigenous American Cuisine of Turtle Island is a Mother Cuisine. Despite this bloody history of conquest, colonization and imperialism, the people, plants, water and the land are communicating this message of indigenous ingenuity and shared resiliency in culture/cuisine. It is powerful moment in time and by all means necessary the dialog must continue. In our region we push onward with a sense of responsibility to our land and we call it Land Advocacy. As stewards of the landscape in this new reality, we are able to piece together an intimate portrayal of who we are today. We are able to weave a tapestry of gastronomic history that contributes to our Social Recovery. As a mentor of mine once said, "Disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed." -D.Nunez

Restoring Balance through Indigenous Food

Thank you for supporting Native American Culinary Culture Building!

A place in history

Pre-Reservation Western Apache Bands

This image is of pre-reservation Western Apache bands. We are cooking in the area known as Dziłgha’á on this map. The high mountains is where we have been working together for the past 5 years with me at the helm as head chef. This has been life changing for me as a chef.

The work that we have done in our community has taken time. Places like Cibecue or the group known as Dził T'aadn have taught lessons and created anchor points for our style of cooking by lending wisdom and opening portals to our Apache Universe through food. The harvesting of juniper berries, juniper, grasses, wild carrots, wild potatoes and other wild edibles that we preserved have provided us with an plethora of taste, flavor and texture. These ingredients we harvested our selves are now being used on our chefs table this winter season.

The Chefs Table at Sunrise Park Resort, which is located in the region of Dziłgha’á on the map here, is a very special occurrence in our history. This group of White Mountain Apaches, our crew has taken Western Apache food ideologies and adapted them to the world around us. As you read this, continue to look back and forth at the map because this is the land of our ancestors and our culinary work with Western Apache Food is decolonization in action. 

It has been the mountains and landscape that have given the most inspiration to our style of cooking. The Chef's Table has been where we utilize the foods from a Chef's perspective. 

Sublimation and "Freezer Burn" or Denaturing egg proteins

More importantly we have been able to share and Re-Member our wild foods with our Apache youth through Science and Cooking workshops where we delve into Western realizations of the natural world that are also articulated in Apache and Navajo. Photosynthesis and energy transfer for example are both described philosophically in life models that are cosmic. By integrating science and cooking with our Western Apache wild foods with youth and adults we get to explore energy transfer in the cooking process and understand the denaturing of proteins in cooking by applying energy on both sides of the spectrum, hot and cold...fire and ice. 

Energy Transfer through metal, water and gas

By integrating Indigenous philosophy with science, we gain a understanding of our world that is empowering. We also begin to realize that much of Western Science is catching up to Indigenous models of life that integrate science in a natural way. These indigenous science and cooking workshops integrate wild foods and require a botanical knowledge, an Ancestral Knowledge that many of our community members possess. The application of heat/energy, minerals like salt/sugar, acid and smoke to our indigenous foods causes us to interact and revitalize the intimate relationship with our foods...it activates a relationship and interaction with our own Terrior. This is the remedy to violence and a movement toward using the vocabulary of affection in our homes and in our minds. The feeling of being "lost" or the despondency felt when identity is lost or not valued is remedied by finding identity through cultural and Ancestral Knowledge. It illustrates the keen intelligent nature of our ancestors and the keen intelligence we possess today. 

Our Western Apache Food and Identity System is cosmic

We also make our Ancestral Knowledge relevant for our generation. When too many people look at the black and white images of Native American history as ages ago, but in reality the black and white images of the past are a mere 3 generations back. Our living history begins to speak and the food is the anchor point in our lifetime, our shared history informs our practice and our shared resilience will ensure the future. 

Apache Elders at our Chef's Table

As a part of  Dziłgha’á, our culinary work is community based and focused on the empowerment of people through sensory experience and participant observation. The late anthropologist Keith Basso has a book titled, "Wisdom Sits in Places" and this is true. The lessons we learned only came from visiting the places where the wild food grew. The lessons came from visiting the landscape where the place-names originated. The anchor points for identity came from cultivating a relationship with self and our land. This Re-Membering of our food traditions inform our practice on the Chef's Table and we produce dishes that are world class, place-based and executed with humility. 

Western Apache 2014

This is one of our dishes Gah (or rabbit) with Onion, Root Vegetables and Sauce Nana. Plated with river stones from the Salt River Canyon. "The Land has Power", we capture this sentiment/fact by bringing in 

elements of the land to use them in our presentation.

Western Apache Food and Cooking

This is a Venison course with pickled onions from Dził T'aadn or Cibecue, dried squash and our crushed Apache Trail Mix. It is garnished with Wild Carrots also from Dził T'aadn. 

Grace inspired Western Apache Cuisine

This is a winter vegetable course inspired by Grace in Chicago where I went to be a stagier this year, two days after they were awarded two Michelin Stars. 

Winter root vegetables are the inspiration here, there is an animal power linked to root vegetables in our Apache universe that is also cosmic. Here we use Amaranth to honor the complex civilizations of all of the Americas.

Roasted Parsnip, Charred Turnip, Braised Radish, Braised Carrot, Charred Sweet Parsnip, Raw Brussels Sprouts with Acid, Raw Radish, Confit Tomato and Baby Kale. We liken being a stagier to an Apache Raiding Campaign in history, where we travel to access tools, technology, foods, gain intelligence and resources to bring them home, adapting them to our own ideals and making them our own. Thank you to Chef Curtis and the Grace team!

This image below is one way that we capture "Identity, Time and Place" in our cuisine. Pictured to the left is an image of the ribs of an Apache dwelling or wickiup. In the Apache language the wickiup is called Gowah or Home. To the right is a dish that evolved on our Chef's Table using pears.

Western Apache Cooking and Cuisine

This dish is translated to Masáána bik’os ndeezi bigową or "The Long-Neck Apple's House" in Apache. There is pears in various forms and a delicious pinon cloud, the spun sugar is the Gowah and 6 different cooking techniques are applied to the pear and served here. 

Joseph C. Ivans, 1899-1992

We chose pears, although not indigenous to the Americas, because my great-grandfather Joseph C. Ivans grew pears in his garden and as a kid, we used to climb those pear trees. My great-grandfather was born in 1899 at the end of the Apache world and on the brink of our Western Apache Revolution that created the world we exist in today. My grandpa Ivans was put on a train in Holbrook, Arizona as a child and sent across the United States to be a student at the Carlisle Indian School, which was the military model for all other boarding schools in the United States. My grandpa Joseph Ivans lived through the next assault on Indigenous existence in America which was a form of psychological warfare on entire generation of Native children under the guise of education in the boarding school system, children who had families then living as prisoners of war on "Reservations". My grandfather represents and embodies Indigenous Resiliency and it was his garden that first introduced me to agriculture and fresh food that he grew for his family in poverty. 

The black and white images are not so far away. This is our living history told through cooking and cuisine. We stand strong in our fields of shared resiliency honoring our culinary traditions while creating decolonial pathways toward solutions.  We are conscious of our place in culinary history and as a Chef, I watch other chefs activate similar forms of Ancestral Knowledge based on their own terrior and it is inspiring to see across the world as we enter an age of responsibility in food culture. Our shared recovery from colonialism is indeed gastronomic, scientific, biological, cosmic and spiritual. 

This is how we are activating Ancestral Knowledge in Western Apacheria. We are grateful that food has been the medium to communicate themes of empowerment, revitalization, decolonization and indigenous health to all people. In the sacred high mountains of Dziłgha’á or the Eastern White Mountains, the land is speaking and we are conduits for the messages in the plants, land, animals, waters...Land Advocates for our Western Apache terrior. 

Balance