Indigenous food summit connects communities in Portland
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Nearly 200 people from Portland and surrounding areas gathered for the first Indigenous Food Summit earlier this month, organized by local nonprofits to expand access to traditional foods and strengthen food sovereignty.
Nora Frank-Buckner of the Nez Perce and Klamath tribes helped launch the summit after organizing a similar event in Seattle. Participants shared knowledge and practiced food-related skills through workshops on topics like tea blending, wild foods preparation, and cougar hide tanning.
The summit centered meals around “first foods” like wild rice, salmon, bison, and the “three sisters”, corn, beans, and squash, prepared by Indigenous chefs. Youth from the Siletz Valley Schools’ culinary program prepared dishes including cassava flour crackers with honey huckleberry pudding and bison meatballs. Organizers aimed to make the principles of food sovereignty more accessible, emphasizing that everyone possesses unique knowledge to contribute to a connected food system.
Emma Johnson, ITECK coordinator at Portland State University, hopes the summit will become an annual event and inspire similar gatherings throughout the region. Darius Mani Yaw, an Indigenous traditional ecological and cultural knowledge researcher, led a workshop on “decolonizing the diet” by incorporating foods and practices from various cultures, and encouraged community-based efforts to support access to traditional foods. Participants left with recipes, herbal blends, and a renewed sense of connection to land-tending and food-making traditions.
