Menominee tribal members engaged in big food projects or who want to host larger quantities of people for feasts have a place to do so now.
The new community kitchen, taking up the space that used to be the old recreation center in Keshena, held an open house Sept. 20 where dozens of tribal members gathered to sample a variety of Indigenous foods — braised bison, turkey meatballs with sage sauce, and wild rice pudding topped with blackberries among them — and see what the new kitchen has to offer them.
“It’s a great resource for our community members and Indigenous food producers in the area to have a safe, certified kitchen that meets all the food safety standards so that they can expand their market and grow the capacity of their agriculture business or farm,” said Stephanie Dodge, intertribal food systems manager for the Menominee Agriculture and Food Systems Department. “The kitchen also offers opportunities for community members to do large-scale canning processes for their families.”
Besides canning, there are freeze-drying and dehydrating machines that can help with food preservation, according to Dodge. This will be a benefit to hunters especially, she said, as they look for ways to avoid spoilage of the game they track down.
“I have some people who want to come in and dehydrate their bear meat to make some jerky,” Dodge said. “It’s a beautiful opportunity for us to expand and provide more information and education on cooking demonstrations, how to use our culturally relevant foods on a daily basis or manner rather than making it a special event or ceremony.”
The kitchen cost the tribe about $100,000 to construct in the old recreation center. There is a serving room where community members got to taste the various dishes in a grand feast and a dining hall where they enjoyed their meals and were in fellowship with their neighbors.
Besides the prep area, the kitchen also has a walk-in cooler and a separate walk-in freezer. The facility is powered by an array of solar panels outside, saving the tribe about $10,000 on energy costs annually, which means when a storm knocks out electricity to homes, the community kitchen will still have the power on and be able to help store people’s food when their refrigeration systems are out of commission.
“We’re trying to enhance the practice and the daily use of growing your own foods, processing your own foods and consuming your own foods on a more regular basis,” Dodge said.
Francisco Alegria, the tribe’s nutrition educator, sees the kitchen as an expansion of the work he’s been trying to do as the tribe tries to reverse the effects of colonization and reintroduce the people to the traditional ways of food with modern equipment.
“It’s nice to have a walk-in cooler, walk-in freezer and some of this industrial equipment not only to hold food and cook it safely but to do the volume,” Alegria said. “Some people are cooking for 50 people, 100 people. It’s nice to build a reach to those volumes, because sometimes you’re limited (at home).”
Alegria said there is a versatility to the things that community members can do. There’s even equipment that they can check out to use at home if they have smaller food projects that don’t require an industrial kitchen to accomplish.
“People can come and learn from other people around here,” Alegria said. “That’s food sovereignty. We’re taking back our food systems.”
The need for a community kitchen dates back to 2018, when the agriculture and food systems department conducted a survey on what needs tribal members had. The kitchen was at the top of the list, because there was no kitchen endorsed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on the reservation, according to Gary Besaw, the department’s director.
Besaw pointed out that there were folks who were hesitant to start gardens on a grand scale, because there wasn’t a place to process their crops or do any canning. He said the schools have kitchens to do that sort of thing, but they’re hard to reserve for the community, because the school’s needs came first.
The old kitchen that was part of the former recreation center will still be available to the community as a fundraising area, according to Besaw.
The new kitchen is just the first step, in Besaw’s view, of becoming a major source of food not only for the Menominee tribe but for neighboring Indigenous communities. For example, the Menominee are working with the Oneida Nation to provide more hull corn raised on its reservation near Green Bay and bring it to Keshena and nearby communities.
Future plans include having a segment of the reservation at its border with Oconto County for ranches that raise bison and other meats.
“We’re told that you need to know the stories, and you need to know the old-school way of processing, and if you teach the kids that, then we’ll allow you to use the commercial stuff,” Besaw said.
lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com
