{"id":17371,"date":"2026-09-18T05:25:51","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T05:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/17371\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T05:25:51","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T05:25:51","slug":"indigenous-food-program-launches-in-virginia-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/17371\/","title":{"rendered":"Indigenous Food Program Launches in Virginia Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a Saturday in June, Linda Black Elk stands beside a picnic table that is covered in small bowls filled with a rainbow of brightly colored spices.<\/p>\n

\"EthnobotanistEthnobotanist Linda Black Elk leads a session on food preservation and native spice mixes on Saturday, June 13, 2026, at the REED Center for Ecosystem Reintegration in Middletown, Maryland.<\/p>\n

\u201cKids love Doritos,\u201d she tells the crowd around her, \u201cbut they\u2019re less than healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clad in orange overalls, Black Elk exudes enthusiasm. Food is her life. She\u2019s an ethnobotanist, and works to restore traditional indigenous foodways at public schools in her home state of Minnesota.<\/p>\n

Beneath a white festival tent on a grassy hill at the REED Center for Ecosystem Reintegration in Middletown, Maryland, she shares a recipe for homemade Doritos that uses a native spice mix she calls \u201cIndige-dash.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSalt, chili powder, and sumac powder,\u201d she tells the crowd. \u201cSpray the corn chips with avocado oil, and then sprinkle this spice blend. \u2026 It is so crazy delicious.\u201d<\/p>\n

The event, the Forest, Food, & Fire Ecological Summit, is a celebration of indigenous foodways native to the Eastern Woodlands, a region that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the eastern Great Plains, and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.<\/p>\n

Participants can choose between foraging walks, mushroom hunts and informational sessions on rewilding \u2014 an effort to increase biodiversity and restore natural ecosystems. Later, three indigenous chefs will compete in a cooking contest, turning local ingredients like milkweed flower, rainbow trout and lion\u2019s mane mushrooms into several-course meals.<\/p>\n

The summit was organized by Troy Wiipongwii, the director of innovation and entrepreneurship at the College of William & Mary\u2019s Institute for Integrative Conservation.<\/p>\n

Wiipongwii also directs the Traditional Eastern Woodlands Foodways Alliance, a group which includes members of the Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy, Lumbee, Monacan, Nansemond, Pamunkey, Rappahannock and Upper Mattaponi tribes. In 2024, the alliance won a nearly half-million dollar grant from the US Department of Agriculture to train school nutritionists on how to procure and prepare indigenous meals from the region.<\/p>\n

The group has worked with chefs, school nutritionists and K-12 students to create an indigenous lunch menu. Their USDA-approved recipes \u2014 which include turkey wild rice soup, a three sisters stew with bison or venison, rabbit wild rice stew, bison empanadas and a fiddlehead wrap \u2014 are available to public school cafeterias in Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina.<\/p>\n

But preparing indigenous recipes is more complicated than just following directions, Wiipongwii says: \u201cThere\u2019s a nuance there to how some of the things need to be prepared to truly kind of encapture what\u2019s meant by indigenous. Otherwise, it\u2019s just indigenous-inspired, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ChefChef Ren\u00e9 Locklear White prepares rainbow trout with her granddaughter during the indigenous food contest at the Forest, Food and Fire Ecological Summit on Saturday, June 13, 2026, at the REED Center for Ecosystem Reintegration in Middletown, Maryland.<\/p>\n

Later this summer, William & Mary\u2019s Studio for Teaching and Learning Innovation \u200awill launch training programs for school nutritionists addressing topics like ingredient procurement and how to make culturally appropriate substitutions when ingredients are unavailable.<\/p>\n

Indigenous recipes need to reflect local conservation goals, holistic health and tribal culture. Wiipongwii points out that readily available ingredients don\u2019t always check those boxes.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can buy corn, beans and squash in a regular grocery store,\u201d he says. \u201cThese are GMO corn. These are GMO beans. These are GMO squash. \u200aThey have lost that indigenous essence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other ingredients can be nearly impossible to obtain. Wild venison, for example, is illegal to buy or sell in Virginia. The Eastern Woodlands Alliance hopes to eventually lobby state legislatures for legal pathways to buy and sell wild venison, but until then, cafeteria chefs will need to use alternatives.<\/p>\n

In Virginia, this school lunch program marks a big step towards native food sovereignty \u2014 the right tribes have to access traditional foods.<\/p>\n

Because of colonialism, forced removal and genocide, Virginia\u2019s native tribes have only recently received federal recognition. Despite having one of the oldest reservations in the US, dating back to 1646, the Pamunkey Tribe didn\u2019t receive federal recognition until just ten years ago. Six more Virginia tribes got federal recognition in 2018. The Lumbee tribe of North Carolina, which is the biggest native group east of the Mississippi River, has had federal recognition for less than a year.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a \u201cunique relationship that federally recognized tribes have with the federal government,\u201d says Wiipongwii. Federal recognition grants a tribe the right to self-governance and makes members eligible for earmarked federal funds. Those funds, in turn, boost programs that serve tribal members\u2019 needs.<\/p>\n

\"JessJess Phillips (left), environmental director of the Eastern Chickahominy Tribe, and chef Sherry Pocknett participate in a panel discussion on indigenous food sovereignty on Saturday, June 13, 2026, at the REED Center for Ecosystem Reintegration in Middletown, Maryland.<\/p>\n

Wiipongwii\u2019s cousin, Jess Phillips, is the environmental director of her tribe, the Eastern Chickahominy Tribe in New Kent County. \u200aAs a mother and grandmother, she says, \u201cit\u2019s important for kids to be able to access and enjoy those foods as early as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Local, fresh and minimally processed, indigenous foods tend to be quite healthy. They also connect people to the land around them. As a child, Phillips foraged for foods like sassafras and muscadine grapes with her mother. These days, her own kids pick and eat wild wood sorrel, which they call \u201csour candy.\u201d Phillips is eager to see more young people connecting with their environments in public school cafeterias.<\/p>\n

Until now, indigenous foodways have been shared primarily within families. But with the possibility of eating indigenous meals in public schools, those traditions can continue beyond the confines of individual homes.<\/p>\n

After all, says Black Elk, native foods are all around us.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aWhen you teach a kid that the plants that they\u2019re walking over every day are actually not weeds, they are food and medicine,\u201d she says, \u201cit totally changes the way they look at the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 VPM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On a Saturday in June, Linda Black Elk stands beside a picnic table that is covered in small bowls filled with a rainbow of brightly colored spices. Ethnobotanist Linda Black Elk leads a session on food preservation and native spice mixes on Saturday, June 13, 2026, at the REED Center for Ecosystem Reintegration in Middletown,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[2184,242,16935,3531,3529,3527,3530,3528,16934],"class_list":["post-17371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-maryland","tag-education","tag-food-and-drink","tag-indigenous-people","tag-maryland","tag-maryland-dining","tag-maryland-food","tag-maryland-grocery-stores","tag-maryland-restaurants","tag-vpm-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/vive.im\/@dc\/117290387779982163","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}