Brian Yazzie: Supporting tribal communities through indigenous foods (ep312)
How can non-Native peoples engage with Indigenous cuisines in ways that are rooted in reciprocity and respect? How can people connect with and help to revitalize Native ingredients and foodways?
Brian Yazzie, also known as Yazzie the Chef (Diné/Navajo), is from Dennehotso, Arizona, and based out of Saint Paul, MN. Yazzie has a degree of Associate in Applied Science (AAS) in Culinary Arts from Saint Paul College 2016. He is a summer resident chef at Dream of Wild Health farm, a delegate of Slow Food Turtle Island Association, and a team member at I-Collective: a collective of cooks, chefs, seed keepers, farmers, foragers, and scholars, focused on bringing awareness to the cultural appropriations of Indigenous foods of the Americas.
Yazzie’s mission is specifically working with and for the betterment of tribal communities, wellness, and health through Indigenous foods. He travels internationally and is available for catering, private dinners, pop-up dinners, chef demos & cooking classes, collaborations, and presentations on Indigenous food sovereignty.
Musical feature: Trust The Sun by Inanna
“The reason why I stepped away from doing decolonized menu was that I feel like the resources of Indigenous ingredients are not where it should be right now. If I fully decolonized my menu and with other restaurants in North America at the same time, we will exhaust our resources within a year or two. I don’t think that’s the way to go, because every [native] ingredient, every plate is for a ceremonial use.”
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Transcript
Note: The values, views, and opinions of our diverse guests do not necessarily reflect those of Green Dreamer. We encourage everyone to do additional research on the information, resources, and statistics shared. This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Kamea Chayne: I'd love for you to first give us a little peek into your background growing up, how cooking became to be such an important part of your life, and also the teenage years that eventually led you to immerse yourself into the culinary world.
Brian Yazzie: I started cooking at the age of seven. I come from a single-parent household. My dad passed away when I was at the age of five from heart complications or heart disease. So as the youngest out of eight siblings, I was always at home. My older siblings would be moving out, going to college, or moving to the city off the reservation. So I was always left behind at home with my mom. My mom would come home from a double shift, and instead of coming home to relax, she would go straight into the kitchen and cook us a hot meal regardless of the day and time. It wasn't till my late 20s when I went to culinary school, but, I always say cooking saved my life. I grew up in a single-parent household, but my mom always showed me unconditional love.
At the same time, without a father figure, I looked up to older brothers, uncles, and most of them lived a negative lifestyle. So I took off on that avenue at a young age. I went to two or three detention centers for kids on the reservation. I went through four different high schools on and off the reservation, all into my adolescent years—going into county jails in Phoenix, Arizona.
Cooking saved my life. I would receive phone calls from my sisters, when I'm on the streets days at a time, on off the reservation. I would come home, cook a meal or two, put all frozen meats, frozen vegetables in the freezer so that my sisters could reheat them. That was their way of checking on me to see how I was doing.
I went through stealing cars, getting shot at, getting stabbed at. So I always share that cooking saved my life. In my early 20s, being with my wife for a couple of years, she'd seen the lifestyle that I lived. She gave me the ultimatum of being in a serious relationship or to move on and continue to living a single life and running the streets.
Kamea Chayne: Thank you so much for sharing your story. So in your first semester at culinary school, your instructors told you to find a niche and this eventually led you to focus on Native foods. But what revelations did you make along the way in regards to Native American ingredients and their relationship with cuisines around the world today?
Brian Yazzie: Before I attended St Paul College, my wife and I moved from Casper, Wyoming. I used to be a carpenter and bricklayer. I was doing that type of labor, where the money was great, but it wasn't a passion that I had. So when we moved to Minnesota in 2012, 2013, I was looking at pharmacy technician programs. Because to me, the money was good, it was indoors. That's what I was looking at. My wife encouraged me to look into St. Paul College, culinary arts. You know, she basically said, why don't I get paid for something I'd love to do? Which was cooking, you know?
I compared St. Paul College and Le Cordon Bleu’s tuition and academic values, and I went with St. Paul College. And I remember my first semester. It was a challenge between my peers and colleagues. Most of them were inspiring chefs, and some were already working in the culinary industry—they just needed to learn some fundamentals of cooking, or receive a certificate to move onto a higher position. Our challenge was to pick one cuisine throughout the world, and to try and perfect one dish from that cuisine at the end of the semester, so we’d get extra credits or points, or something to brag about.
So I was looking at Japanese cuisine, Southern food cultures, outdoor cooking, all these cultures that cook outside… and I realized that looking at all these textbooks, looking at these different cookbooks across the world… Not only have my Navajo ancestors—and the Indigenous people across the Americas—survived colonisation and genocide, but they still have the ingredients as well.
The first dish I made for my challenge was Three Sisters Salad. Three Sisters Salad is more of an overall view of Indigenous cultures across the Americas: there’s over 560 tribes alone in North America, in the States, and each tribe or region has its own type of corn, bean, squash… And most of those products are surrounding ceremonial use, moving, planting and harvesting with the seasons and with the full moon—the ecology around Mother Earth.
There was no cookbook I could find. There was a lot of fusion for sure, but it wasn't specifically focused on Indigenous food. So I started researching more of the Southwest food culture and the Midwest food culture, and in 2013, my second semester, is when I met a guy named Sean Sherman, now known as The Sioux Chef. I worked with him until 2016 (when I graduated), and when I was working with him, I came up with the term “cooking in two worlds”. Because when I was in culinary school, I would work with dairy, gluten, processed sugar, all types of ingredients across the world. But when I stepped off campus to work with Sean or the Sioux Chef team, I have to exclude all of that from my mind and work only with decolonized ingredients. So that was a challenge for me.
When I graduated in 2016, Sean and I had a conversation and he gave me the blessing to actually branch out on my own because he saw potential in me, I already had a presence on social media with the work that I was doing while I was still in culinary school.
Kamea Chayne: So just to clarify, you said you found that a lot of ingredients that are actually indigenous to North America are currently integral to a lot of cuisines that are not from North America. So like Italian cuisine, for example.
Brian Yazzie: Yeah, yeah, definitely, it's not just North America, but looking at the Americas across the board without the state lines, without the borders, but looking at actually their languages and their local food cultures, their hyper-local food cultures and just starting off from that… And then looking at the larger scale of the tribes across the Americas, knowing the Pacific Northwest, the ingredients and food culture differ from the Seminole tribes in the southeast part of North America. And then learning the landscape of farming and cultivating in the Southwest is definitely different from the atmosphere and the elevation levels of the Midwest area.
So to me, it was not just being in the kitchen, but also about being in the landscape and learning these different values of ingredients that we create and put onto plates. From there, I realized that simple ingredients like tomatoes were coming from the Americas. I wanted to know: what was Italian or French cuisine without these ingredients?
Kamea Chayne: And that really speaks to how integral learning Indigenous foodways is, because Indigenous cuisines are reflective of what is regenerative for the bioregional landscapes. So it is interesting to think about what Italian cuisine could have looked like before they introduced these ingredients that are so integral to what we know of Italian cuisine today. That got me thinking as well, what is Italian cuisine without tomatoes? So it's really interesting to think about.
And today we know that Native Americans and Alaska Natives disproportionately face higher levels of various chronic illnesses, general distress, and self-harm and suicide rates. And our health, including our mental health, is hugely influenced by food and nourishment. So how would you contextualize these broad health concerns with the historical context of colonization and how that transformed Native foodways?
Brian Yazzie: For sure. This definitely speaks to the project that I am a part of, here at Gatherings Cafe, which is located inside the Minneapolis American Indian Center, which is in the South neighborhood on Franklin Avenue in South Minneapolis—basically the birthplace of the American Indian Movement.
So the project that we have here, #FeedingOurElders… we started last year, in mid-March. The former executive chef here before I took over, Ben Shendo, he reached out to me after I self-quarantined for a couple of weeks, due to the pandemic. So I was able to jump into the kitchen here at the Cafe last year, in mid-March. We started with emptying out everything in the pantry, the fridge, and the freezer, and we started collecting more Indigenous ingredients. This just fell into place with the philosophy that I have, which is not just reintroducing, but making comfort food healthy Indigenous food. Our focus here is working with Indigenous elders in the Twin Cities area—those individuals whose immune systems may be compromised or who may be disabled and not able to drive or walk to the grocery store, to fend for themselves. So we started with about 250 meals a day, and now we're down to about 135 meals at least twice a week.
So my reason why we’re introducing this type of atmosphere and ingredients to our Indigenous community was that with our Indigenous elders… they’re still suffering from historical trauma, whether it's a residential school, boarding school, or just the household that they grew up and with commodity food programs… I first hit the ground running with the decolonized menu—without using gluten, dairy, or processed sugar. And I realized in 2016, when I branched out on my own, when I received my associate’s degree and when I started my YouTube channel…
I realized after traveling to so many tribal communities, most of them are still in “third-world” poverty status, regardless if it's in urban spaces or if it's in rural areas like on reservations. The reason is the food access that we have right now—not a lot of tribal communities have access to organic or decolonized menus.
So I had to take a step back from my work of decolonizing my menu fully, to implementing at least 50–75% Indigenous ingredients and making comfort food healthy. So that's what we're doing here. Here at the cafe, our Indigenous ingredients are sourced from tribal resources. For example, with wild rice, we source from tribal reservations or tribal communities here in the Midwest area, which also means we won’t be supplying wild rice from Canada, or Florida, or California.
And it’s also about slowly reintroducing these ingredients to our Elders, because for me, it’s about foodways as well. Because our Elders are not familiar with the ingredients that are just right below our feet. And so we had to slowly reintroduce these ingredients. In Minnesota here, we do a lot of wild rice, a lot of walleye, and a lot of berries. Ultimately, for me, it’s about serving the community: the Elders, the community, especially those on the Third World poverty status.
Kamea Chayne: I remember one question that your colleague, chef Sean Sherman, raised when I interviewed him, which was: why is it that we can find cuisines from all over the world in our major cities, but not the cuisines that are actually native to those very regions? And that was really memorable for me because I think it's so reflective of our general disconnect from our Native landscapes. And it's so true that the average non-Native American's lack of relationship to these landscapes is reflected in our food system and our lack of knowledge and awareness of Native foodways. So you mentioned some things like dairy and sugar that you have to cut out when you're looking at the decolonized menu. But what are some other common ingredients that people use today that actually are not indigenous to Turtle Island? And also, I'm curious, how has narrowing in on this focus transformed your own relationship with the land?
Brian Yazzie: For me, I'm thinking about anywhere from five to seven years, I would like to step out of the kitchen and focus more on the landscape. I’m working on starting a nonprofit, to focus on claiming a small land back in the Southwest, to start a farm, and build a small cafe on that, share the heritage of farm to table, and having local youth work on the farm, and in the cafe as well, and have the ecology be full circle.
Back then, before I got to an international level, before I got blindsided within that fame, I personally had to take a step back, to listen to my Elders. At the end of the day, as I said, it wasn’t about me, or my ego: it was about the community that I’m serving. 10 to 15 years ago, you weren’t able to find Indigenous cooks or chefs, you weren’t able to see food sovereignty, you wouldn’t have seen the term “food as medicine”. But now you do. And before that, you had food scholars, farmers, seedkeepers, holding up that integrity of food sovereignty, but it wasn’t until, I believe, cooks and chefs rose up and began to have their own platforms that these Indigenous ingredients were utilized, highlighted, and shown to the world.
These [Indigenous] ingredients are ceremonial pieces, meaning that every dish, every ingredient that we put out has a story, has a connection to the land.
Besides using ingredients from the Americas, I do use goat cheese, chocolate, different varieties, chicken, beef, and these ingredients are not indigenous to the Americas, but these resources are from tribal resources. For example, the beef that we utilize comes from the Navajo Nation, from a beef company that they’ve recently created. And goat cheese, which comes from the Navajo Nation, and Oaxaca as well. And our chocolate is sourced from a tribal resource in the Southwest, but also from a friend of mine from Belize as well. So these ingredients, highlighting them, helps tribal resources as well.
And for me, responding to what you said about your interview with Sean…
It’s always been stuck in my head when I first heard him say that you can step within a one-block radius in any city and you can find all types of cuisines except the Indigenous cuisine. That is heartbreaking, but at the same time, for us, we cannot romanticize Indigenous culture.
So we have to do it in a ceremonial way. There are restaurants opening up this year, and some of them have decolonized menus. But at the same time, how are we serving Indigenous ingredients within a decolonized menu in a space where individuals still serve and drink alcohol as well? To me, that’s not decolonizing: that’s taking four steps back from what has already been built. So for me, moving forward, I have to be careful with the moves that I make. Everything that I do has to be centered around community. For example, here at the cafe, I’m trying to step out of the kitchen more. We just started a farm at a local Native American apartment complex called Little Earth of United Tribes. It’s one of the biggest urban apartment complexes in North America for Native American populations. So they have a youth program that runs a farm right in their neighborhood in South Minneapolis. So we were able to claim a spot this year, about an 8 ft x 25 ft plot. We planted a lot of heirloom ingredients from throughout the Americas: Hopi Black Beans, Bear Island Flint Corn, Blue Hubbard Squash… the only thing that’s non-native that we’re growing is the Russian sunflower, and for us, using that product is just to help the soil regenerate as well. Same with using ingredients like bergamot and Hissa. So it’s definitely about returning to the landscape.
And it’s not just that, it’s also about claiming our space in the kitchen. For example, with the kitchen staff that I have here, we have a gender, non-binary balanced atmosphere. Meaning you won’t hear me yell in the kitchen or toss pans around, or trying to put a cook or a chef in check. It’s verbal communication before anything else.
Kamea Chayne: And there's perhaps no scientific way of knowing this because food is so experiential and even spiritual and emotional, but I wonder whether ingredients that are native to a particular region that have thrived and evolved together in the landscape might end up being able to harmonize better together on the plate as well? So it's kind of like tasting the landscape. And at least visually, I know that designers and artists often will take inspiration for color palettes from colors derived from certain bioregional landscapes, whether it's desert hues or vibrant tropical colors and so on. So, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how the tastes of bioregional ingredients might come together in unique and harmonious ways for the palette too.
Brian Yazzie: For sure. For example, one of my favorite dishes that they have done, and one of my popular catering dish, is a sage and maple glazed salmon with wild rice pilaf, having seasonal vegetables, which could be radishes, sunchokes, sunflower petals, parsnip or carrots. And then I have the salsa that goes on top, which is a cactus pad or a palace salsa with New Mexico green chili. And since I'm in the Midwest, when I'm making hot sauce, I kind of add a bit of honey or agave syrup to kind of tone down that spiciness. And to me, that dish represents my philosophy of intertribal foodways, you know. And for example, here in the Midwest, one of the recent dishes that we served the Elders was a smoked walleye and walleye indigenous to the Midwest. And the specific type of walleye we get is from the Red Lake Nation Fishery, which is about three hours north of Minneapolis on the Red Lake Nation reservation. And just looking at these types of products, and the meals that we provided last week, all the ingredients are sourced within a 100-mile radius. So walleye coming from the Midwest area, from Red Lake, we had watercress that we just foraged with one of the local sacred Dakota sites. And we also got the lilac—some species are not indigenous to North America, but it’s fragrant, you can smell the fragrance miles away when it’s in season. And we also got some Burdock root, wild onions… all these ingredients were put into a wild rice bowl or wild rice pilaf, and we smoked the walleye. And that definitely gave a flavor of what is Minnesota, and Minnesota’s Indigenous food culture.
Kamea Chayne: Well, I've read that you've had some interesting run-ins on social media, being blocked by certain celebrity chefs, revolving around their Native-inspired recipes. So what can you tell us about those interactions? And relatedly, how non-Native peoples can engage with Indigenous cuisines and foodways in ways that are rooted in reciprocity and deep respect?
Brian Yazzie: Food is love. It's our first language as kids, right? Coming from a liquid diet to a solid diet, and then as an Elder, returning to the spirit world or heaven, whichever religion you practice, you're going from solid food to a liquid diet again.
Food is love. Food is unity. But at the same time, food can be dangerous. It can be a weapon.
I mean, look at the Indigenous people in Palestine. Look at the Indigenous people here in North America. Look at the genocide that's still going on with the food wars. Here in North America, for example, with my tribe, Navajo, the only reason why a majority of the Navajo community members surrendered to the US government back in 1850, 1860, was due to food war. Meaning the tribal members weren't able to surrender until the corn crops were burned, and the Wild Game were chased off, and the outdoor cooking spaces and homes were burned down or torched.
These types of food wars are still going on and not just in community spaces, but also on social media. And that's reflecting off of celebrity chefs.
And most of [these celebrity chefs] are non-Indigenous, and they have romanticized around Indigenous food cultures, seeing it as a trend or a fad. But for us and for myself, it's not a fad or trend. It's just something that had always been here, but that it's just now being recognized.
And one thing that has to be clarified is that people see me or Sean as the leading food activist or leading the Indigenous food movement, but no. There are a lot more people who need to be recognized, who need to be seen. So we're definitely just some of those people who are connecting these boundaries and connecting dots on these networks.
So the way non-Native cooks and chefs are romanticizing these ingredients is definitely very dangerous, and I and also see it as a genocide that's happening now. There’s a couple of celebrities that I bump heads with and who end up blocking me. The reason for that is they were using Indigenous ingredients and romanticizing those, and profiting off them, but without actually connecting with those tribal resources and not returning or collaborating with these farmers or seedkeepers that these non-Indigenous chefs are collecting ingredients from. So there's that disconnection. So people like me, we’re definitely stressing on that. But we're also trying to keep it positive and being an influence on social media, and talking about the awareness that comes around Indigenous culture.
Kamea Chayne: So at this point, there are slowly, more and more Indigenous restaurants opening up across North America, although like you mentioned earlier, you have some concerns about this happening. So I would love to hear you speak to the nuance here. As in, isn't it a positive thing for people to be able to support Native restaurants as a way to support Native foodways? Or what are some other ways that people can connect with and help to revitalize Native ingredients and cuisines?
Brian Yazzie: The reason why I stepped away from doing the decolonized menu was that I feel like the resources of Indigenous ingredients are not where it should be right now.
If I fully decolonized my menu and with other restaurants in North America at the same time, we will definitely exhaust [tribal] resources within a year or two. I don't think that's the way to go, because every [native] ingredient, every plate is for a ceremonial use.
So for me, I would say about five to seven years, I would want to have tribal communities having their own farms, having their own gardens, regardless if it's on the reservation or in urban spaces.
So once these farms or plots are created, not only will these farms and grassroots individuals be able to feed their community, but they'd also be able to share those ingredients with cafes and restaurants in their region and also to represent their local hyper food culture. So that's my reason for stepping back from the decolonized menu, and instead slowly introducing at least 50–60% Indigenous ingredients. And just like I said, about 10, 15 years ago, you know, you would have never heard about Indigenous cooks, but you would be hearing about seedkeepers, food scholars in colleges and universities talking about food sovereignty. So I feel that now it’s the right time to actually be out on the landscape, regardless if you’re Indigenous or not. We’re all indigenous to a certain place and time, and I’m very thankful to have allies who are supporting my movement, but also allies who are using tribal ingredients—and actually, they are connected to tribal resources.
If you’re making a profit off an ingredient, a percentage should go back to the tribal resource you're receiving from. And not just that, but also hiring Indigenous cooks and chefs within your space, when you want to highlight Indigenous products or food cultures.
Kamea Chayne: So basically because native ecologies had been over-extracted, or destroyed from the history of colonization and Native foodways being destroyed, we have to first heal Native landscapes, before we make it a priority to direct these tribal resources to maybe fancy restaurants where non-Native people or people who are economically privileged might be able to enjoy the Native cuisines where Native communities can't even feed yourselves with Native ingredients, yet?
Brian Yazzie: Definitely hit a spot with that. For example, if we have decolonized menus and restaurants opening, you know, the average tribal community member will not be able to afford an appetizer or one of the menu dishes. Because all these are tribal sourced and organic ingredients. So if you're looking at that, the only demographic or clients or customers you would have are non-Indigenous people who are able to afford these types of menus. So it's just being careful with that and knowing the timeframe of reintroducing these ingredients and knowing where the communities are at.
Kamea Chayne: And so, of course, looking ahead, your exciting new project will be the Yaz podcast, which is launching in July, and its mission is to share Indigenous narratives. So on this note, what sorts of solutions or messages do you think have been left out of dominant discourses around improving our food system and the future of food with the marginalization of Indigenous perspectives? And what can we look forward to on your show?
Brian Yazzie: So with my podcast, it's basically sharing Indigenous narratives, regardless of whether it’s science or culture or sports or politics, or whatever it may be, it’s just about sharing more of those narratives coming from Indigenous perspectives. For example, with NASA, with the recent launch, one of the leading team members for that was Aaron Yazzie from the Navajo Nation. He created some of these drill bits and some of these parts that were able to go on to Mars. So having an Indigenous person like that breaking barriers, is to me not just beautiful, but resilient. And that's stepping back to World War One or Two, with the Navajo Code Talkers or the tribal code talkers across North America who were able to help the US government. That was kept from Indigenous people when boarding schools or residential schools were created. So to me, it's that full circle of resiliency and sharing our beautiful food culture, but always having an Indigenous person leading that perspective and leading that narrative.
To me, it's interesting to see that right now, because when I'm part of organizations and non-profits, I see a lot of leading positions that are led by non-Native people. And, of course, they’re allies and they would like to help, but at the same time, we have Indigenous people who have potential or who like to learn to lead in those spaces.
To me, it’s not about decolonizing our menu, but decolonizing our language and decolonizing our avenues of how we navigate our Indigenous existence.
Kamea Chayne: Thank you so much. We're nearing the end of our time together, but what else would you like to share that's on your mind right now? And what calls to action do you have for our listeners?
Brian Yazzie: I'm very active on social media. I respond to anyone and everyone. And one of my new projects is the podcast, which is airing on the weekend of my birthday. And also, looking into the reopening of the cafe here in mid-July. And also being part of a campaign project for the Navajo Nation, for my community: we have a Covid-19 relief project that we have been working on, a Go Fund Me campaign. So myself and two ladies from my community we're leading that project. And we just did a propane distribution for our Elders and for families who are unable to support themselves. They're in the pandemic, and now our next project is helping our community start up community gardens, reaching out to seed savers and seedkeepers and flooding our community with all types of seeds so that the youth programs there in the summer can help the community members plant and grow ingredients. And that falls back to sustainability. With my community, they just built a trading post or gas station about two years ago. And the last gas station or grocery store we had was about seventy-five years ago. And that burned down, and ever since then, there wasn't there was no type of gas station or grocery store around my community. And so you'd have to drive at least four to five minutes to an hour to just refill on gas or even to just to get snacks or fresh produce. So if anyone’s interested in supporting our Covid-19 relief fund, my Instagram and Facebook profiles have a couple of links. And also Gatherings Cafe, we're still feeding our Elders, and we'll probably go at least one more year, we have awesome support from World Central Kitchen, which is founded and led by chef José Andrés. If anyone's interested, definitely reach out to me to let us know if you’d like to help on any of these projects.
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Kamea Chayne: Thank you so much. I just have three lightning round closing questions for you before we wrap up. What is an uplifting social media account or publication you follow or a book that's been really profound for you?
Brian Yazzie: I would say I-collective. It's a nonprofit, grassroots collective of seedkeepers, farmers, food scholars, chefs, cooks. We’re on the frontline of calling out—bringing awareness to the misappropriation of Indigenous culture, especially around culinary and food sovereignty.
Also, there’s a Navajo chef by the name of Freddie Bitsoie, he’s the main chef at the Native Museum in Washington, DC, and he's coming out with a cookbook I believe in October, November, called New Native Kitchen. Which is a cookbook of fusion and Indigenous ingredients. And the work that he's been doing, he's been doing for years, at least eight to ten years, so I'm very I'm excited to see what he would have in his cookbook.
And the other person I recommend is Tashia Hart, who is at Red Lake Nation, Ojibwe, who's a very good colleague and mentor of mine. And she has a book coming out, called The Good Berry, which in the Ojibwe language means Manoomin, and that’s wild rice. So that cookbook has over 75 recipes of nothing but wild rice, in desserts, savory dishes, entree, whatever it may be. It’ll be the first of its kind in focusing on just one ingredient, but how to manipulate and how to be creative with one ingredient in so many ways.
And for me, I'm working on two cookbooks. One is part of the cafe, #FeedingYourElders. So we basically have over 200 recipes that I’m going to help narrow down and create a cookbook, focusing on what we fed the Elders during a pandemic, and using a lot of natural sweeteners in those situations. And the second cookbook I'm working on is the term that I shared with you, “cooking in two worlds”—that’s just slowly reintroducing Indigenous ingredients and highlighting non-Native ingredients that are being distributed or being cared for by tribal resources. So that's some of the projects that I'm a part of, and affiliated with, that I can definitely recommend for sure.
Kamea Chayne: This conversation is making me hungry. My second final question for you is, what do you tell yourself to stay motivated and inspired?
Brian Yazzie: Who else would do this type of work if I stopped? There's a lot of people, there's a lot of inspiring chefs for sure, but the networking and platform that I have… I cannot shy away from the awareness that it has brought. And to me, it's just being humble, just knowing where you come from, and knowing the communities you're serving, and to not be blindsided by fame or ego. So it's always, at the end of the day for me, about making sure all the Elders are fed. If there’s negative or positive feedback, I welcome that as a chef because that will only hone my knives and better my skills in the kitchen.
Kamea Chayne: And what makes you most hopeful for our world at the moment?
Brian Yazzie: Definitely unity. The presence of North America right now is definitely diverse. Like I said, we're all indigenous to a certain place and time, but we just have to focus on where we are at now, especially with Indigenous people leading, for example, here in northern Minnesota, we have the Line 3 pipeline that's trying to go through from Canada to the Midwest area into the East Coast and in the northern Minnesota area it’s going through one of the wild rice lakes, one of the original tribal wild rice lakes. You know, so it's not if but when the pipeline breaks... Not only will it affect the tribal community, but will affect the ecosystem and the wild rice that people depend on within that landscape.
Kamea Chayne: Well, green dreamer, if you want to learn more and stay updated on Brian’s work, you can stay updated on www.yazziethechef.com, and you can also follow him on Instagram and Twitter @Yazzie_TheChef, on Facebook @Yazziethechef, and on YouTube at Yazzie The Chef TV. Brian, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate everything that you're doing, for your leadership, and this opportunity to speak with you. What final words of wisdom do you have for us as green dreamers?
Brian Yazzie: If you're a cook or a chef or culinarian, take a moment, step out of the kitchen, look at the landscape. You hear the term victory gardens, community gardens, … go outside and find a plot to connect with your neighbors, put your hands in the soil, put your hands in the dirt. Know where food comes from. That is one of the big awareness that a lot of cooks or chefs are bringing up, especially from an Indigenous perspective. And definitely step out of the kitchen for a day or two, help one of the community gardens, help distribute meals. To me, that’s just life—stepping out of your comfort zone most of the time and finding a little balance in life.
