By Sally Hedberg
Special to the Town Crier
Beginning with an opening live painting demonstration at 6:30 p.m., Sunday, June 28 and culminating with an entertaining Native American Foods Chef Cook Off and the Mt. Cahuilla Bird Singers at 7:00 p.m., Friday, July 3, the week-long festival has daily lectures centering on traditional and contemporary Native American life. All the demonstrations, entertainment and lectures are free to the public. Classes in Basketry, Flute Making, Blown Glass, Weaving, Jewelry and Cooking are taught concurrently for a fee.
The “Native Foods in the Modern Kitchen” class is taught by Freddie Bitsoie. He is returning for his fifth year to Idyllwild Arts where he presents tastings of Native American cuisine at each noontime lecture. He uses a wide variety of ingredients he says are available at most food stores. Freddie laughs, “We no longer have to forage and gather the ingredients as some folks think we do.”
Freddie, a Navajo who lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is a young man with a wealth of knowledge about Anthropology, Archaeology, and Art History having attended the University of New Mexico. These classes contributed to his research on Native American Foods. His hands-on experience came when he trained as a Chef at the Culinary Institute in Scottsdale, Arizona.
His father worked on the pipeline in Arizona and the family moved a lot. It wasn’t until he took his first Anthropology class and heard about cultural interaction that he said, “That’s Me!” This experience gave him an ethnic identification to experience his past through ancient places like Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde and Four Corners region. His instructor noticed he wrote many papers on food culture and suggested Freddie continue as a food anthologist delving into the historic and factual review of foods.
“When I first heard the term ‘Native American Cuisine’ my brain went haywire. I had been brought up that Navajos, Hopis and other tribes had their own food.” Since then Freddie has taken on the task of defining the term. For example, the controversy over Fry Bread: Did it come about because of the government rations to the reservations? Or did it happen as part of a migration of the Pre-Iberians, Italians or Spaniards? Most cultures in the world eat some kind of fried dough.
During his two day cooking class, Freddie will introduce native foods from across the country and how to utilize them in everyday living. He will use natural ingredients like real wild rice, milled mesquite flour, cholla cactus buds which taste like asparagus and fish. Again readily available.
As part of educating folks on Native American foods, Freddie hosts the food show, “Rezervations Not Required” which will air on PBS. He encourages the public to attend the Idyllwild Chef Competition on Friday, July 3 to watch Native American Chefs from across the United States cook their special dishes. For the festival schedule, go to www.idyllwildarts.org/nativearts.
