Thanks Giving from the First Table

Unthinkable oppression against the American Natives followed. Half a century passed, with America’s first people having to exist insufferable circumstances; forcibly removed from their hard-earned, long-standing homesteads to live on small reservations without necessities and without even the right to practice their deep-seeded cultures. That tyranny continued as law, all the way to 1978. The real irony is that the Pilgrims first came to America to escape their own persecution for following their own religious and cultural beliefs elsewhere.

Now, the vast majority of U.S. food magazines feature Thanksgiving “dinner” each year with the same bowl of mashed potatoes slathered in gravy, aside artificially pumped-up turkeys that seem to have become a sort of bloated, culinary mascot. Instead, these Land and Sea recipes are my best attempt at sharing what the research proves to be much closer to the real thing, from the table of the Indigenous Americans, on that fateful day. For those of you reading this, who will bow heads this Thanksgiving to say a few words of gratitude, hopefully you include thanks for everyone at the table –yours, and theirs.