In FERN’s latest story, published with Eater, Sean Sherman and Mecca Bos make the case for commercial development of the rich and extensive array of Native American food cultures across middle America. It’s a way, they argue, to diversify the food scene in a region long dominated by conservative fare. They write:
“If you stop at a roadside restaurant anywhere between North Dakota and Oklahoma, you might not immediately get a sense of culinary diversity. Many menus in rural and small-town middle America consist of high-calorie burgers and processed Caesar salads, along with a few trending items like Buffalo cauliflower or flatbreads. Of course, the region does include diverse cuisines, but you have to seek them out, and even those restaurants often depend on ingredients from massive food suppliers such as Sysco that tend to homogenize flavors.
“The middle of the country’s reputation for bland food completely ignores our Indigenous peoples. Within this core of America, dismissed by some as ‘flyover states,’ lies a rich tapestry of culinary heritages. The states of Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, the Dakotas, and Iowa are home to 58 federally recognized tribes, each with unique food traditions, including the amazing agricultural heritage of the Mandan, Arikara, and Hidatsa; the bison-centered foodways of the Plains tribes like the Lakota and Cheyenne; and the many cuisines of tribes forced into modern-day Oklahoma after Andrew Jackson’s racist Indian Removal Act.”