Corn Dance: Loretta Barrett Oden’s Native American Cuisine
COWBOYS & INDIANS MAGAZINE - Loretta Barrett Oden pulls out the massive cast-iron pot that belonged to her grandmother on her father’s side, a piece of hardware that just might have come over on The Mayflower, and fills it with water in the kitchen of the new house she is still moving into just blocks away from Oklahoma City’s funky little Paseo Arts District. It’s her first time cooking in the new kitchen, so she is still finding the right place for all her tools.
“I cedar-smudged the kitchen before you came over since this will be the first meal I make here,” she says, pouring in quinoa to boil for her Three Sisters Sautee with Sage Pesto, one of the dishes from her first and still-newish cookbook, released in late 2023. “It’s always wise to do a good smudge before you cook the first meal.” Press).
On the still-barren counters, a wooden bowl filled with red, orange, and sunshine-yellow bell peppers, vine-ripened tomatoes, fat avocados, and pineapple sits next to jicama root and black beans. On the stovetop, the Dutch oven is ready and waiting. Loretta’s first dinner in her new home will be the Three Sisters Sauté and the Pineapple, Jicama, and Avocado Salad, both favored recipes in Corn Dance: Inspired First American Cuisine.
Oden, her shiny silver hair pulled back into a loose ponytail, explains the heritage of the ingredients she’s working with as she slices the jicama into thin straws. “I love jicama,” she says. “It adds a great crunch to everything. You can cook it like a potato and mash it, but raw is how I prefer it.” As Oden prepares the salad, I nibble at one of the jicama straws. It’s slightly sweet and earthy, and, yes, it has a delightful crunch.OTOGRAPHY: ©2023 Mette Nielsen).
Loretta Barrett Oden is adjusting to life back in Oklahoma. An award-winning chef, Native-foods expert, and television show host, she is an enrolled member of the Potawatomi Nation of Oklahoma. In her distinguished career, she has done many things, but it wasn’t till her second act that she turned her attention fully to food. She had a whole life before embarking on her quest at age 48 to bring Native foods to the mainstream. Over the last three decades, she hosted the Emmy-winning PBS series Seasoned With Spirit: A Native Cook’s Journey and ran one of the first successful Native American cuisine restaurants at the time in Santa Fe. She returned to Oklahoma, where she’s been consulting and working with various restaurants. And in her eighth decade, she published her first Native American cookbook, with the University of Oklahoma Press.
The Sioux Chef Sean Sherman, who is chef-owner of the Minneapolis restaurant Owamni, calls her a friend and mentor. Crystal Wahpepah (Kickapoo), who is the chef-owner of Wahpepah’s Kitchen in Oakland, California, says “Loretta has blazed a trail for Indigenous women like me who seek to revive our connection to our land and our food as a way to heal in all the ways that word intends.” Now, at age 81, Oden is still evolving, and her life’s work and influence are still growing.
Born in Shawnee, Oklahoma, Oden came into two families that couldn’t have been any more different from each other. “I was born on my mom’s 18th birthday, and my parents were so young, but I had a whole slew of grannies and aunties,” she says. “Between my Potawatomi grandma and my white grandma, I was literally raised by them. My grandmother on my dad’s side is a card-carrying member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and Mayflower descendant. I have one side of the family coming in on the boat and the other side on the shore waving and saying, ‘Come on in’ without knowing what was in store.”
Her Grandma ’Dini taught Loretta manners and how to fit into modern society. She took her to ballet and piano lessons and taught her to set a proper table and dressed her “properly.” “Grandma Peltier literally had me in the kitchen and the garden, telling the stories of the Potawatomi people. She told me about the constellations, the myths, and how she planted by the moon. She could make anything grow.”
Oden left Oklahoma at age 48 to “learn about the world.” After moving to the West Coast, she met other members of her extended Potawatomi family and began tracking down Native American traditional cooks who practiced the old ways. “That’s when I realized that you could go anywhere in this country and find Thai, Mongolian barbecue, Italian, French, and whatever. But there was no representation of Native American food, except for fry bread and Indian tacos.”
She set out to do something about that. With one of her sons, Clay, Oden opened the Corn Dance Cafe in 1993 in Santa Fe, the first restaurant at the time to truly showcase Indigenous foods. The authentic fare and quirky Southwestern vibe attracted instant fans, including celebrities like Native actors Graham Greene and Wes Studi, Gene Hackman, Ali MacGraw, and more. After Clay died, she moved back to Oklahoma in 2002 to be closer to her grandchildren.the Emmy Award-winning chef’s first cookbook (P
A founding member of the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, Oden wrote her first cookbook as a way to share Native food traditions with all people. With little plate recipes like Spicy Sage Popcorn and Sweet Potato Griddle Cakes and entrées like Achiote and Sassafras Marinated Quail and Cornmeal Dusted Rabbit, Corn Dance: Inspired First American Cuisine advances her mission to celebrate the variety and diversity of Indigenous foods and ingredients.
“I’m really, really proud of the cookbook,” she says. “It’s different from the foods that I served at the restaurant, where we had huge fancy presentations. I wanted this book to be for the home cook.”
As Oden places some Three Sisters Sauté with Sage Pesto on the plates, I pour another glass of wine. We sit at the kitchen bar to eat, the rest of her new house still waiting for furniture to arrive. Like generations of women who have come before, we laugh and share stories about family, love, and life, creating a singular, memorable moment over a delicious, simple meal.
