N.A.
PHOTO STORY: BIRCH BASKET
This is an unpublished photo essay originally assigned as a project for a course on visual journalism in the fall of 2018.
Hillel Echo-Hawk is first and foremost a cook, not a chef. After gaining a traditional culinary school education, Echo-Hawk was exposed to the full gamut of French cuisine and kitchen hierarchies. Although, there were aspects of the French standard that did not fit her central identity.
“I don’t like being called a chef, it’s a very colonial term,” she said. “In indigenous culture, we don’t have that hierarchy.“
Echo-Hawk is the founder of Birch Basket, a catering / private cooking company that specializes in pre-colonial indigenous foods. On Sunday, Nov. 3, 2018, Birch Basket served dinner at the Pink Carpet Project’s Food Justice Workshop. The dishes represented different facets of Echo-Hawk’s cooking background and heritage; all the things she learned way before culinary school.
Echo-Hawk belongs to the Pawnee tribe, though she grew up in the Upper Ahtna Athabaskan region in Alaska, where the indigenous diet included salmon, spruce, birch, and wild berries. As she visited relatives in Oklahoma over the years, she learned about the Pawnee’s “three sisters,” a combination of squash, corn, and beans. As she got older, she researched her Pawnee heritage further; which influenced the way she cooked, transforming it into an educational experience.
Culinary school was the exact opposite; where Echo-Hawk learned about different international culinary traditions, but continually had to remind her teachers of the mere existence of indigenous cuisine. She was saddened by the fact that indigenous food was not considered real, nor indigenous cooking techniques relevant. This is why Birch Basket is about so much more than cooking; it’s about raising awareness of foods that are native to the land we live on.
%20-%20mushroom%20rack.jpg)
Echo-Hawk glances through a rack of roasted oyster mushrooms while cooking in preparation for the Food Justice Dinner on the morning of Sunday, Nov. 3 2018. Birch Basket’s focus on only pre-colonial indigenous foods has proven to be a confounding revelation for some clients who may not approve of Echo-Hawk’s clear anti-colonial message. “[Sometimes] people don’t know that I’m gonna talk about genocide… and [they] get very uncomfortable when you talk about genocide and colonialism,” she said. “In part I understand their ignorance, but I also feel like as adults, you should be able to handle someone telling you how you’ve survived this long in the world.”
%20-%20pause.jpg)
Echo-Hawk pauses in between shakes of a bowl filled with slices of squash covered in oil and salt. Squash is predominant in the cuisine of the Pawnee tribe; mainly located in the central / midwestern region of the United States, where the food system is largely based on the plain grassland features of the Oklahoma landscape.
Pieces of salmon stored in plastic bags and thawing in the sink as Echo-Hawk prepares blue corn mush for the Food Justice Workshop dinner. Cognizant of the mainstream romanticizations of organic and heirloom foods, Echo-Hawk has struggled with the lack of recognition of indigenous cuisine (which uses heirloom ingredients) in culinary school. “But I don’t remember ever once them taking into consideration – without me prompting them – the indigenous [cuisine],” she said. “It’s so tragic to me that people don’t consider indigenous food… or our techniques of cooking to be relevant, or to be real.”
Echo-Hawk takes a moment to taste a piece of freshly cut jicama. Though Echo-Hawk manages most of Birch Basket’s operations, she often cooks with the help of her friends. In a traditional indigenous kitchen, there is no hierarchy, unlike French kitchens, “When you hear ‘chef,’ ‘suchef,’ all kitchen stations, if you’re saying it properly nowadays in professional kitchens, it’s all French terms,” Echo-Hawk said. “In indigenous culture we don’t have that, everybody did everything. There were the grandmas who were the head of the household pretty much, but they still did everything. Whereas in the kitchen chef culture, it’s very limiting in what you do, because there’s a hierarchy.”
%20-%20salmon.jpg)
Echo-Hawk checks a salmon fillet for small bones, which she extracts using a small pair of tongs, and places on top of her hand. The cuisine of the upper Ahtna Athabaskan tribe made up the indigenous foods (especially salmon) that she got to know while growing up with people who maintained knowledge of the surrounding environment. “I grew up with people who just went out, walking around, ‘you can eat this, you can’t eat that… this is used for medicine… we use that for ceremony'.” She said. “It very much influenced how I cook and how I teach people.”
%20-%20sharpening.jpg)
Echo-Hawk sharpens her knife before peeling the tough skins of jicama and kuri kuri squash. Echo-Hawk is not the only member of her family involved with Seattle’s indigenous community. Her sister works at the Urban Indian Health Institute (part of the Seattle Indian Health Board). Echo-Hawk has collaborated with the institute in the past by catering dinners and luncheons, and preparing dry soup packets to hand out at tabling events. “They’re just amazing people,” she said. “They serve indigenous people in a way that mostly has indigenous people running it, and treat the people who come in like they’re human, which we don’t get a lot.”
Cut and de-boned salmon files rest in the rack before roasting. Salmon, along with spruce, birch, wild cranberries and blueberries, is one of the Alaska-native-sourced ingredients Echo-Hawk uses in the dishes she cooks for Birch Basket. She also uses squash, corn, beans, and sunflowers, inspired by traditional ingredients of Pawnee cuisine. The different ingredients’ association with different localities is largely influenced by their ecosystems. “In alaska, there’s everything from rainforest to tundra. And the Pawnee lived in the plains… And so those two food systems are totally different,” Echo-Hawk said. “The [plat] river is not a clear river, it’s a muddy river… In Alaska, most of the rivers are nice and clear and clean…. In the plains, you get tornadoes, and it doesn’t snow a whole lot, it gets cold. But in Alaska, I know three story houses that get completely snowed in, and so it’s just totally different.”
%20-%20garnish.jpg)
Echo-Hawk garnishes roasted salmon fillets with tomato and jicama pico de gallo before serving at the Pink Carpet Project’s Food Justice Workshop on Sunday, Nov. 3 2018. In the past, Echo-Hawk has had to clarify her company’s mission to clients who request colonial-era foods, such as fry bread, which was developed particularly in reservations. “I think it helps that in the initial part of our conversation, I’m just very clear,” she said. “For my company, I don’t cook things that are brought over by colonizers… and so I think it just kinda shuts that… question off automatically.”
%20-%20presentation.jpg)
Hillel Echo-Hawk gives a presentation to attendants of the Food Justice Workshop hosted by the Pink Carpet Project on Sunday, Nov. 3, 2018. One of the dishes Birch Basket prepared for the dinner was a Pawnee blue corn mush with honey and toasted pecan. Because Echo-Hawk belonged to a big family and lived in Alaska, she did not get many chances to travel back to Oklahoma, which consists of Pawnee historical land. “I just didn’t understand our food, and now that I’m older and I’ve done research, tried it, I’ve gone back, and over time, I get it,” she said. “I’m understanding our food more and more. And that definitely has a huge influence in how I cook and what I do… how I teach people.”
PHOTO ESSAY:
SEVEN DAYS IN THE LIFE OF CHRISTIAN STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
This is an unpublished photo essay originally assigned as a project in a course on the anthropology of visual media in the winter of 2016.
Micaela K is a leader of a small prayer group at the University of Washington. In the past couple months, her group has been participating in a challenge to pray every day for 40 days. Micaela posted a public online invitation on a group I was a part of, therefore I decided to come to their meetings and observe the nightly prayers for seven out of those 40 days. My main intrigue with this group was to understand what it is that keeps a group of busy students able to congregate every single day in such an informal matter, and participate in an occasion that is usually very institutionalized. Because the group never has a specific location, we prayed in a different room every day, which dramatically affected the overall atmosphere of the prayer on any given night. The behavior of participants also changed with every night, sometimes somber and introspective, others joyful and lighthearted. But regardless of the volatile nature of these daily meetings, the urge of the students to pray, share their thoughts, and reconfigure their spiritual identities as a collective remained consistent throughout the entire week. I chose to present the final photographs in black and white because color was never an important factor, therefore the monochrome aspect of the images is meant to let the viewer focus on the gestures and expressions of participants, and the temporary spaces in which they prayed.
