Apache Chef Nephi Craig Plans Native-Foods Conference
Craig, shown center left with his staff, is White Mountain Apache and Navajo. He has classical-French training and worldwide experience as a chef and hopes the conference will attract a
range of community members and outside folks interested in exploring many aspects and
applications of Native foodways. “Native foods are not a trend,” says Craig,.
“They are a way to recover our communities and decolonize ourselves.”
Craig
says Native people are emerging
from what he calls “the Great Interruption” in their foodways: “Pre-contact, we
were expert farmers, hunters, gatherers, fishermen and cooks. Then we suffered
a violent clash of cultures that lasted 500 years and ended in the reservation
system and cheap, high-fat, high-carbohydrate commodity foods. They, in turn,
produced rampant killers: diabetes, heart disease and obesity.” As a result, he
says, healing is the most important ingredient in Native cuisine.
The conference’s stellar
list of partners includes Native chefs and restaurateurs April “Bleu” Adams, Dine’/Hidatsa/Mandan;
Bertina Cadman,
Dine’; Arlie Doxtator, Oneida; Mark Mason, Dine’/Hidatsa/Mandan; and
Chris
Rodriguez, Xicano; along with scholar Claudia Serrato, P'urhépecha.
Organizations that have signed on include the White Mountain Apache Tribe; the
Native American Culinary Association, which Craig heads; Johns Hopkins Center
for American Indian Health; and the People’s Garden, a local community garden
where Craig and his all-Apache culinary team have given cooking demonstrations. Here’s an interview with Craig:
Why
a conference?
A one-day workshop we did at the resort last summer
attracted people from all over the region, and I thought we could go further
and continue to explore ways Native foods can be used creatively to address many
social and public-health issues. We’re expecting interest from chefs, but also
from scholars and professionals in public health, education, agriculture and
more.
That’s the language of the world today. Things need
labels to be understood. But Native foods will be the energizing force that
brings all these people together. Like an old-time autonomous Apache band
living on the land, everyone at the conference will all rely on every single
other person’s resources. To get back to that historical way of being, we Apaches
need the expertise of disparate people.
Will
this help your community directly?
My community is hurting, and there is no quick fix
for the problems here. I could get stressed out naming the ills—political,
legal, social—but it all ties back to wellness and mental health. With the
conference, we will be doing something positive, showcasing local people with
special talents and information, as well as visiting experts, and talking about
Apache values and their importance. We’ll help underline that the culture is
intact and valuable.
How
is the People’s Garden a part of this?
I’ve asked them to present, and we’ll be cooking
with their food. I hope we can bring attention to the great work they do and
encourage people on the reservation to take up farming. There’s an idea that we
Apaches were warriors, so we shouldn’t get involved with farming, but I think
we can make it cool—especially to youth. The elders need some strong
backs out there!
Will
your Sunrise Park Resort team be around during the conference?
They certainly will. My staff is so important to
me. My training, experience and theories have all come together in this kitchen.
We’re an all-Apache team producing food collaboratively in our sacred high
mountains. We have taken some things from the classical French culinary canon,
but other things we’ve modified—for example, making our kitchen less
hierarchical in a way that’s more comfortable for us as Apaches. My goal is to
have each of us think of ourselves as able to be both teacher and mentor every
day and to carry this idea throughout our lives. This concept is working, too:
team members’ skills have grown quickly, and of course, ironically, that means
other restaurants are hiring them away. But that’s natural, and supporting
their personal development is what it’s all about.
It has. Chefs have noticed it, and one came all the
way out here from Indianapolis to see us. He was interested in our ideas about
the relationship of culture and food.
Are
you learning as you go?
Learning is a constant, but it has to be slow. What
we do in food here at White Mountain revolves around things that are special,
significant. And there’s so much I don’t know. I went to our cultural center to
look for photographs, especially of men cooking, because I wanted to show male
staffers that food was traditionally of concern to men as well as women. What I
saw in the photographs—preparations for a sweat or a ceremony, for example—was
so powerful, I felt I was communing with the past. Even if food wasn’t in the
picture, I knew there was a pit off-camera where meat was roasting, that there
were acorns women had spent the summer gathering. I was intimidated, humbled. I
even wondered, should I be seeing these things? My work here at White Mountain will
take time, like the nurturing of a farm or a baby. And it needs the support of
all the people—community members and partners from outside.
Text c. Stephanie Woodard; photographs courtesy Nephi Craig.
Text c. Stephanie Woodard; photographs courtesy Nephi Craig.
