Native Traditions

Much of what is considered to be “Maine” foods—lobster, blueberries, clams, and fiddleheads—are the same resources that drew Native people to the region in the first place 12,000 years ago. Today, a traditional meal for Maine’s Native American tribes might include hulled corn soup, stewed moose meat, baked salmon, wild rice, and a salad made with the “three sisters”—corn, beans, and squash.

“Those are the foods I most often get asked to make when I’m catering tribal events,” says Esther Attean, a Native Passamaquoddy who is helping to keep food traditions alive. Attean, 41, moved to Old Town in 1983 while her mom attended the University of Maine, and she now lives on Indian Island with her husband, Phillip, and their four kids. Her kitchen cupboards are covered with photos of smiling children and art projects, and colorful bowls filled with equally colorful Native dishes sit on the countertops. When she’s not cooking for friends, family, or community events, Attean works as a training specialist with the Catherine E. Cutler Institute for Health and Social Policy for the Muskie School at the University of Southern Maine.

Attean’s menus build on hundreds of years of cultural history as well as her personal family traditions. Growing up in Sipayik (aka Pleasant Point), fish played a large part in her family’s diet. “My dad had two fish weirs, so we ate a lot of fresh fish and we would preserve it by salting, smoking, or pickling it,” she says. “We always had stacks and stacks of canned sardines in the house.”

While she doesn’t eat as much wild fish today as she did as a child, she occasionally is able to procure wild fish and game from friends and relatives. She recently made a salt-fish and potatoes meal for seniors on the reservation. They said they wanted to try harbor porpoise—so she asked her cousin to hunt one. Porpoise meat is calorie-dense and dark red. Some of the elders liked it; some didn’t.

“There’s plenty of things we used to eat that we don’t anymore—like muskrat,” Attean says. “I don’t know how to cook a muskrat, although I bet my mother-in-law would. We don’t eat anything from the river.” Though tribal members in Maine have rights to fish in local rivers, most have elected not to exercise those rights to protect both struggling fish populations and their own health—many of the fish are laden with harmful toxins like mercury, dioxins, and polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs.
Sitting around her kitchen table with a few of her friends, the conversation turns to another kind of traditional food as the group munches on puffy pancakes called frybread—something Attean refers to as Indian soul food. “Any food that connects you to your people, your community, and your heritage is soul food,” Attean says. “Whether it’s freshly picked fiddleheads or potatoes and pork, it’s food that sustains your body and your soul.”

Frybread is cheap and made from government-issued food that Native people learned to survive on. “Frybread is just an example of making the best of the worst,” Attean says. Across the country, as Native Americans were dislocated and forced to give up their traditional ways, they learned to make do with what they were given from the government: rations of molasses, salt pork, potatoes, and white flour. Dependence on these foods has helped propel disproportionately high rates of diabetes in Native Americans. According to the Maine Climate Future report, published by the Climate Change Institute at UMaine, Maine’s indigenous people experience higher rates of obesity than nonindigenous residents. Tribal health directors cite as barriers to a healthier population transportation issues, low income, shortages of qualified health personnel, and a lack of access to culturally appropriate health care.

Making traditional dishes healthier has always been a part of Attean’s cooking. “I believe that we are continually changing how we prepare traditional dishes, sometimes to make them more healthy and sometimes because ingredients aren’t as readily available,” she says. “It is a reflection of the resiliency of Wabanaki people.”

Attean readily shares her recipes, and her cooking is in high demand for cultural events around the state, although she prefers to stay closer to home. She loves to cook and views her catering as a hobby and a service to the community. “A lot of people could make this food but haven’t had anyone show them how,” she says.

Three Sisters Salad

Ingredients:
1 medium butternut squash, peeled and cut into cubes
1 large green pepper, chopped
1/2 red onion, chopped
1 can low-sodium corn, drained and rinsed
1 can low-sodium kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 tomato, chopped

Dressing:
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
1 Tbs. cilantro
dash Worcestershire sauce
2 cloves garlic, crushed
pepper to taste

Sauté squash, pepper, and onion in olive oil until tender. Set aside. Once cooled completely, mix with corn, beans, and tomatoes and chill. Mix dressing ingredients and toss with vegetables just before serving.