Toasted Sister Podcast

If you like the Toasted Sister intro music, you’re going to enjoy this special, musical episode featuring CW Ayon, or Cooper Ayon. As a one-man-band, he sings, he plays guitar, a kick drum, the tambourine and a harmonica sometimes. It’s very impressive to watch him perform live at a bar, a festival or a restaurant. He’s pretty much the voice of Las Cruces, New Mexico, but he’s played all over the country and abroad. In this episode, I introduce you to him and his new bandmate, Felipe Toltecatl. Check out: cwayon.com cwayon.bandcamp.com facebook.com/cooper.ayon

Neftalí Duran (Mixteco) came to this country as a migrant worker so he’s particularly in-tuned with today’s conversations about borders and migration. In this episode, Neftalí talks about the importance of migrant workers in the American food system, food shaming and why we can’t talk about food sovereignty without talking about access to food first.

David Wolfman (Xaxli’p First Nation) started cooking when he was 9 years old. Now he’s a classically trained chef, educator and host of the TV show “Cooking with the Wolfman.” In this episode, he talks about his new cookbook, “Cooking with the Wolfman: Indigenous Fusion,” the history of his family and the Indigenous food movement in Canada.

(Ink & Paper/Jessica Sargent photos) In this special episode, I talk with four Indigenous chefs who attended the I-Collective’s (Indigenous, Inspired, Innovative, Independent Collective) Indigenous Harvest Pop Up dinner in New York. They talk about the dishes they prepared for the seven-course dinner and what inspires and motivates them when they cook. Voices: Brit Reed (Choctaw), cook and student at Seattle Culinary Academy and founder of Food Sovereignty is Tribal Sovereignty Hillel Echo-Hawk (Pawnee and Athabaskan), cook at Joli and owner of Birch Basket Twila Cassadore (San Carlos Apache), cultural projects assistant with the San Carlos Apache Jessica Sargent (Akwesasne Mohawk), I-Collective photographer, owner of Ink and Paper Photo, administration of the Friends of the Akwesasne Freedom School rz2pzadn

At The Boot in Durham, North Carolina, chef Robert Kinneen (Tlingit) makes a lot of pasta and breaks down a pig and half a cow a month. It’s different than cooking porcupine, moose and walrus in Alaska. In this episode, Rob talks about moving and cooking in different restaurants, feeding President Obama and why truffle oil is an unrealistic ingredient to use in rural Alaska. Kinneen is the executive chef at The Boot and Happy Cardinal Catering.

An endless search for food, tainted cheese, killer pastries, feasting on the Death Star: that’s how Native comic book artists and illustrators incorporated food into their work. I talk with a bunch of “Indigenerds” at the Indigenous Comic Con 2. In the show: Arigon Starr, “Super Indian” Tatum Bowie and Damon Begay, “Spiral,” Interstellar Comix Jason EagleSpeaker, Eagle Speaker Publishing Jonathan Joss, actor and voice actor Gloria Begay, Diné Food Sovereignty Alliance Enoch Endwarrior, Reclaim Designs Maria Wolf Lopez, freelance comic book artist and illustrator Elroy Natachu Jr., artist, co-owner of Natachu Ink and Zuni cultural demonstrator and teacher Ryan Singer, Diné artist

In this special episode, four Indigenous chefs talk about what it’s like being female chefs in a culinary world currently dominated by men. Guests are Claudia Serrato (Purépecha), anthropologist, professor and chef, Andrea Murdoch (Venezuelan Andean Native), creator and owner of Four Directions Cuisine, Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz (Tewa, Tiwa, Mexican, Spanish), holistic healer and chef and Marlene Aguilar (Purépecha), community-based chef.

In this special episode, I travel to Taos, New Mexico to talk with a few Native chefs, some tribal leaders and farmers about the importance of eating the food that our ancestors ate. The Indigenous Food Experience was a first-time event put on by the Red Willow Farm at the Taos Pueblo.

You can’t talk about climate change in Native America without talking about food and how it’s affected by changes in water, land and temperature. Dr. Kyle Whyte (Citizen Potawatomi Nation), Timnick chair in the humanities and professor of philosophy and community sustainability at Michigan State University, spends a lot of time thinking about traditional Native food and how tribes are trying to protect it. In this episode, Dr. Whyte talks about Indigenous science, the importance of water, wild rice and the upcoming Nibi and Manoomin Symposium (Oct. 10-11 in Mahnomen, MN). (The strawberry video mentioned in the episode: “Reclaiming the Honorable Harvest: Robin Kimmerer at TEDxSitka”)

At age 5, Claudia Serrato (Purépecha) started cooking plant-based foods. Today, her passion is exploring raw foods, sweet flavors and making desserts with delicious combinations of Indigenous ingredients from all over Turtle Island. She’s an anthropologist, professor and chef who embraces words like “intimacy” and “Indigenous love” to describe the experience of ancestral foods. In this episode, Claudia talks about prenatal nutrition, being a woman in the kitchen and her project, Decolonial Food For Thought.

Freddie Bitsoie (Diné) is the executive chef of Mitsitam Cafe inside the National Museum of the American Indian where he uses his imagination and knowledge of history to bring Indigenous flavors to the museum experience. He studied anthropology in college but took a different route when he noticed everything he thought about was food. In this episode, Freddie talks about his culinary upbringing, the challenges of working in Indian casino restaurants and his thoughts on fusion and new Native cuisine.

Before food gets to your table it’s grown and cared for by someone. And that someone could be a Native farmer or tribal food producer. Dan Cornelius (Oneida Nation of Wisconsin) is a technical assistance specialist in the Great Lakes region of the Intertribal Agriculture Council (IAC) and manager of the Mobile Farmers Market. He and the IAC are working to reconnect trade routes by promoting foods produced by tribes and individual producers.

Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz (Tewa, Tiwa, Mexican, Spanish) is a holistic healer and chef (kitchencurandera.com). She learned about traditional food and plant medicine from her relatives and from growing up in the Southwest desert. In her work, she exposes people to the delicious bounty of the desert and bridges eastern medicine with Southwestern medicine. In this episode, she talks about her love and respect for plants, green chile and what she’s doing to help spread food knowledge in Native America through the new Northern American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NATIFS.org) organization.

Since he was 13 years old, Sean Sherman (Oglala Lakota) was in the kitchen. The skills he learned over the years helped him rise above the ranks in culinary school to become one of many most awesome Native American chefs. He’s the owner of The Sioux Chef, an Indigenous catering and education group. He and the crew have some exciting things coming up, including launching a nonprofit organization called North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NATIFS.org).

Our grandmothers' recipes are amazing. For Ben Jacobs (Osage), owner of Tocabe, his family’s frybread recipe helped him create a beautiful restaurant that showcases Native food in Denver. Although he doesn’t consider himself to be a chef, he’s become a voice in the Native food world. In this episode, Ben talks about the struggles of starting a Native restaurant, the meaning behind the restaurant’s aesthetics and how Natives like “Mambo No. 5” too.

When white people steal Native images, stories and fashions and then claim them as their own, it’s called appropriation. When they steal Indigenous recipes, well, that means we’re no longer gentle Indians on Toasted Sister. In this episode, I’m joined by Neftalí Duran (Mixteco) Oaxaca chef, Erica Scott-Pacheco (Lenape), social justice fundraiser, Sean Sherman (Oglala Lakota), owner of The Sioux Chef and Karlos Baca (Tewa, Diné, Ute) chef and forager, and we discuss appropriation in the kitchen and how it affects Indigenous culture and people.

After the Gold King Mine spill in 2015, Navajo agriculture in the Four Corners area took a turn for the worse. Two years later, Brandon Francis (Navajo), Four Corners farmer and research lab technician at the New Mexico State University Agricultural Science Center in Farmington, New Mexico, is using his science skills to boost Navajo farmers’ confidence in the soil and water. In this episode, Brandon talks about the difficulty of farming in Navajo country, being industrious and Bigfoot.

The Toasted Sister podcast is Natives talking about food, even if it’s Natives who aren’t particularly “foodies” talking about food. In this episode I talk with my friend and coworker, Monica Braine (Assiniboine, Hunkpapa Lakota) and James Simermeyer (Coharie, Navajo descent) about our odd food habits, weird food combinations, frybread and what a ceramic knife says about how Native cooking and attitudes have changed over time.

In this podcast extra, I bring my sister, Alisha Murphy (Navajo), into the studio to talk about our upbringing, poor man's food, the power of food memories and how our relationship with Mexican food changed.

Crystal Wahpepah (Kickapoo and Sac and Fox) loves her urban Native community in Oakland, California. As the owner of a successful Native catering business called Wahpepah’s Kitchen, she shows her love with food and by sharing food stories. In this episode, Crystal talks about her love for catering, the need for more Native flavors in the Bay Area (and everywhere else) and why she got chopped on the Food Network TV show “Chopped.” Hint: there was too much rotten fishy flavor in her dish.