Board Member Makoce Ikikcupi Mandan, North Dakota, United States
Session Description: Traditional ecological knowledge refers to the dynamic knowledge of the world’s Indigenous peoples, gathered over millennia through direct participation with the landscape. This includes still-relevant knowledge of food acquisition and preservation. The reclamation of traditional food preservation techniques has contributed greatly to resiliency, healing, and sovereignty in Indigenous communities. An understanding of these techniques provides one with a unique perspective on the intricate relationships between people and place, and how these relationships are still relevant to all of us today.
Join Luke and Linda Black Elk as they discuss various traditional food preservation techniques and work together with them, as a community, to prepare one of the world's most perfect foods: Lakota wasná (also known as pemmican). Wasná is an easily portable, long-lasting, and healthy food that represents Indigenous brilliance and the collective knowledge of our people gathered over thousands of years.
Participants will have the opportunity to make bison wasná as well as a vegan corn-based wasná to take home with them. As we make this amazing product together, we will discuss the importance of traditional ecological knowledge and the ways that food preservation is essential to the food sovereignty movement.
*Note: this conference venue does not allow outside food, so all wasná is for offsite consumption.
