An Afternoon with Esperanza Spalding & PRISMID at Native Arts & Cultures Foundation

 An Afternoon with Esperanza Spalding & PRISMID at Native Arts & Cultures Foundation

Curated and Written by Chef Ramon Shiloh

“A Black & Indigenous Futurisms Menu”

For our May 16th, 2024 event

CHEF/ARTIST STATEMENT:

I am part of an important movement, to shed light on an ever present conflict in the United States through food. Community has been disconnected through dissonance and corrupt ideologies, which upend healthy relationships of color, gender, and racial harmony.

I am part of a Community to create a Sacred Space for educators, artists, horticulturists, musicians, and cultural workers. The aim is to evaluate and heal those in dire need of interventionist care and direction.

Im with PRISMID SANCTUARY.

Co-founded by Esperanza Spalding and Mick Rose.

I’d like to thank my foraging mentor @cowlitzgatherer for providing some of the best ingredients for this event and in May. Your wisdom and knowledge of invasive and native (plant) species, are a blessing.

Be on the look out for another post related to our foraged species for this event, and in May.

Photos by: @bert_franks and me

©Ramon Shiloh/2024

We won the 2024 “FRANCES FULLER VICTOR AWARD FOR GENERAL NONFICTION Oregon Book Award. Sponsored by “Literary Arts”

 I am so grateful to write this little note about Josephine Woolington.

On Monday April 8th our book, “Where We Call Home: Lands, Seas, and Skies of the Pacific Northwest”, took the “FRANCES FULLER VICTOR AWARD FOR GENERAL NONFICTION”. The 2024 Oregon Book Award Ceremony was sponsored by “Literary Arts” at “Portland Center Stage at The Armory”.

Being present for this award ceremony was like winning an Oscar. But sweeter.

Josephine’s journey has led her to explore the natural histories of ten native species in the Pacific Northwest; searching for answers about how to preserve, improve, and heal from the dilemmas we face in our ecosystems. She logged thousands of hours of long hikes, canoe routes, driving excursions and more in order to get environmental answers from the sources themselves. She listened and has now aided in preserving the voices of plants, animals, Indigenous leaders, scientists, and artists.

She is the most compassionate, thorough, eclectic soul sister I’ve ever met. I have had the opportunity to partner and pen my artwork to the cover, spot illustrations, and provide an epitaph to our book. What an honor.

These experiences have enhanced my understanding of how I view the world today. From a Chef’s perspective I have always had a delicate relationship with plant life. I know what benefits they gift when healing myself and my community, one plate at a time. Without education, interventionist care, and cultivation, these plants will go extinct and we will only be reliant on for-profit consumer agriculture structures, that keep our land and body unhealthy.

What Josephine taught me, through our book, is to pay attention to the world around us. As we should.

Thank you for inviting me on this journey with you!

Congratulations Josephine Woolington!!

My Soul Sister for life!

Meeting Chef Nephi Craig

 

You know you’re in alignment with the cosmos when an inspiring Chef shows up to your community and makes time with you. It was also an honor to meet his Son Ari too. What a wonderful spirit that young man has become.

White Mountain Apache and Diné Chef, Nephi Craig (Eastern Arizona), has been cultivating, and implementing recovery techniques through indigenous foods to heal people from substance abuse, and addiction. On White Mountain Apache tribal land, Craig opened his restaurant Café Gozhóó to curate ‘a broader mission to help restore personal and cultural health to the community by revitalizing the Western Apache food system, and reintroducing Native foodways as medicine.’

In addition to indigenous foods, Nephi Craig is a Behavioral Health Tech and certified Relapse Prevention Specialist who said, “In the recovery world, there’s a ‘biopsychosocial model’ [emphasizing the interconnection between biological, psychological, and socio-environmental factors in substance abuse], which is about how a person is affected by addiction, and how they’re going to heal or get better. Native or Indigenous Food Sovereignty hits on those three clinical quadrants, but it also hits a fourth one, of spirituality—and I feel like that’s how it’s healing people, emotionally and mentally.”

Yesterday we took the time to get to know each other’s thoughts on Food Sovereignty, science, arts & culture, storytelling, and the negative impacts we’re seeing in the health and wellness sector today.

I have an invitation to join him on some great ideas, and I’m looking forward to it.

For those who haven’t seen the latest documentary on his journey. Watch “Gather” on Netflix. Very proud of this brother.

Safe travels my friend, and I'll keep you updated on the timing of things.