Full transcript:

Emily Race 0:12

Welcome to the Founding Mothers Podcast, where we're imagining new ways of living with one another and our planet. I'm your host, Emily Race. Today's conversation is with Claudia Serrato. Claudia is an indigenous culinary anthropologist, a public scholar, a doctoral candidate and a professor of Ethnic Studies. She was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, predominantly on an indigenous Mesoamerican diet. At an early age, she began to cook alongside her elders, gaining time tested food knowledge. Claudia centered these knowledges in her academic studies arriving at the conclusion in 2007, that decolonizing the diet was essential to the survival of indigenous foods and foodways. This granted her numerous opportunities to present, speak, publish and facilitate workshops in her community, educational institutions, and conferences, gaining national and public recognition.

Claudia Serrato 1:04

The truth is, if we don't remember these foods, they're gonna go away. My elders have said to me over and over again, “Claudia, the work that you're doing is wonderful, because you're actually protecting and keeping these foods alive, because if we're not eating them, they're gonna be like, ‘What purpose do I serve? I don't serve a purpose.’ And then what happens? The colonial project wins”. And so for me, it's always been, “No, I refuse for this foodway to go away; I'm going to do everything I possibly can to remember, and relearn.” If I don't have a recipe, I'm going to figure it out. Because that's part of the re-indigenization work, because when we do that, we re-indigenize our palette, we re-indigenize our memories, we re-indigenize our landscape, and ultimately, we begin to create a different type of ecological reality.

Emily Race 2:00

Since 2014, Claudia has been actively involved in the Native food justice and sovereignty movement and has been cooking alongside prominent Indigenous chefs at cultural food gatherings, summits, and pop-ups throughout Turtle Island (North America). Claudia was a featured chef at the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society and the Association for the Study of Food and Society Conference in 2018 and in 2015 was granted an honorary title of sous-chef de cuisine by the Native American Culinary Association. She has been invited to speak on public radio and podcast programming such as Feminist Magazine, Animal Voices, Toasted Sister, Native American Calling, and For the Wild. Claudia has also been featured by the LA Times Food Bowl, LA Ford Philharmonic Association, New York Times, New York Times Cooking channel, ABC Primetime, Univision, Telemundo, Popsugar., and REMEZCLA. She is cofounder of Across Our Kitchen Tables, a women of color culinary hub and event series founded in 2017 that generates and supports socially responsible food-based work by women of color. Claudia holds a stream of degrees starting with a Bachelor’s degree in Gender, Ethnicity, and Multicultural Studies, a Master’s in Mexican American Studies, a second Master’s in Anthropology, and is currently completing a Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Washington, Seattle. She is currently a teaching scholar at California Polytechnic University Pomona (Cal Poly) and a primary researcher with First Nations Development Institute. Claudia lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.

Welcome, Claudia. I'm so grateful to have you on the podcast today. Thank you for being here.

Claudia Serrato 3:47

Thank you, it's a pleasure.

Emily Race 3:49

Would you mind starting with your story, who you are, and the “work” that you're doing in the world?

Claudia Serrato 3:56

Sure. I am an indigenous culinary anthropologist, I'm a chef, I'm a professor, I'm a mother. My work has been to truly work on activating and regenerating ancestral and traditional foodways, particularly through memory, cuisine and taste, specifically for the generations of today and the generations to come. This involves a lot of reflection, a lot of cooking, a lot of rememory work. Taking the time to tap into my ancestral memory, my cultural memory, my epigenetic memory, and navigate that, because not all of it is healed. And making the effort to create a different type of reality, so I can create new memories that I can pass on to my generations and to the generations to come.

Emily Race 5:05

Mmm. Beautiful. Share with us, if you can, this story of how this began for you. Was this something you were born doing? Or was this something that you discovered within yourself later on?

Claudia Serrato 5:17

It's such a good question. I always talk about it as this epiphanic moment that I had, when I was in my early 20s, living out in Humboldt County, spending some time on the landscape there. But I've come to realize, that wasn't my epiphanic moment, per se. It actually started when I was a youth.

I was raised in a village; back then I was like, “Oh, I don't have my parents around”, but no, they were working, and my grandparents stepped in. I spent a lot of time with them. It was really beautiful, because when I reflect on it now, it began with them. And it began with my mother. It began with the food they were nourishing me with. It wasn't processed food, it wasn't food that was pre-packaged, this was food that my grandmother went out to her front yard, harvested, brought in, prepared, and fed me.

It's something that has always been with me, but because I was navigating my identity, especially when my parents stopped speaking Spanish to me when I was in kinder, I began to grow up in this society where I developed this form of shame of being Latina, being Mestiza, being Mexicana.

Because that's how I understood who I was. I never understood it as “You're actually Purépecha, you're Huasteca”, and because that wasn't the kind of language my family was using, they really were focusing on creating an easier transition to assimilate, so that I can be welcomed into the community that I was in.

East LA is where I grew up. And so everybody looked like me; to me, I was like, “What are my parents trippin’ on?” But they were really talking about the outside world, because that's where they existed. When I went through my teen years, I always defaulted to my cultural foodways. Even though I was a little resistant to it, I wanted to be my own person, and I always felt like I had to evolve out of this, but moving to Humboldt County for a few years, grounded me and reminded me that I don't have to evolve out of this, but I can evolve within it. And reclaim who I am and reclaim my food. And really change this feeling of shame to being empowered, being prideful.

Being on the land, out in the Klamath area, there was something that happened to me. I felt this land connection, and I grew up around the land, I grew up walking barefoot on dirt all the time, especially when I was out in Mexico visiting my grandma and running around. But there was this feeling of “I've been here before”, or “this is how my family lived”. And it was just totally excluded, out in the bush, there was no running water, there was no electricity, there was none of that. This little home that I was in.

I remember freaking out, having this moment of, “How am I gonna survive? How's this going to work out?” Everybody was calm, cool and collected. I was given a basket. I was about 21, 22. The steward of that land was like, “Hey, we're going to eat” and I'm thinking, “What are we going to eat?” And he's like, “Here; here's a basket, you see that hill over there, go do some foraging there. You're gonna pick these berries, you're going to pick these flowers, you're gonna pick these greens.” And I thought, “Okay, it's not even a garden. It's wild.” And he was like, “Yeah.”

I did it, came back, we prepared food. And at that moment, I was really shocked that what I was eating, nourished me. I felt full. And so I began to question, “Why is this happening?” and they reminded me “Well, it's very dense; it's nutrient dense.”

So I took that moment and rode with it. I began to refind myself, come back to LA. My grandfather had a heart attack. We're all really concerned, we're trying to figure out what's going on with his diet. And during that time, I remember I had a visit to the doctor myself. It was a Western doctor, and they asked me the intake question, “Anybody in your family have cancer, diabetes, cholesterol”, and I’m like, “Oh, yeah, everyone.” And they're like, “Oh, well, you're prone to this.” But for me, because I'm Mexican, because I'm culturally raised this way, it didn't make sense to me. Because what I heard this person saying, without them really saying it, is “You're gonna die of diabetes or heart disease.” And I was like, “That's not fair. That doesn't make any sense.”

So I went down the rabbit hole, I began to really pay attention to what my grandpa was eating, presently, that caused heart attack, what he was eating in the past, and even from his upbringing. He was born in Mexico. He lived there all his life. It wasn't until he was an adult that he moved to the United States. I made this timeline of his foodways. It was really interesting, because not until he migrated into the United States, immigrated and worked here, that his diet changed profoundly; he began to eat a very heavily meat-based diet, cheese-based diet, also dairy, a bit more processed food, not as much, but what really rose was his intake of meats, and dairy and wheat. I asked him, “Grandpa, what did you eat growing up?”, and he was like, “Oh, mija, what we eat now, nopales, beans and rice.” And I asked him, “How often did you eat beef?” And he was like, “That was actually really rare. We ate it. But it was for a gathering or a ceremony or an event.”

I remember thinking about that, because in my upbringing, my father would bring home dried meat, but he would dry it. We had a clothesline in our kitchen, because that's just how it was back in the day, and we had meat hung there. He would always eat it very dried and like jerky. I remember my dad telling me this, that they would just kind of munch on it, it wasn't a huge staple.

I put two and two together, and I thought, let me explore this a little further.

I began to want to change my diet. I did not want to suffer, I did not want to be a victim. I began to study indigenous food ways of Mesoamerica, because that's where my family's from. I came to find that chicken, beef and pork, which is heavily in what people assume as a “Mexican” diet is really far from it. It was introduced as a result of colonization. The European body wanted to uphold the their idea of supremacy around body and their diet, and so those were the foods they wanted to eat. They didn't want to eat deer, they didn't want to eat quail, to them, that meant they were going to lose their power, they were going to default and become indigenous; again, these were the ideologies of the time.

I came to really truly understand that there was more of an inclination to eat plant based, because of the seasons and the geographies of where we were located. And so slowly and slowly, I began to piece together, as I also was really delving into my education, what I called an “indigenous veganism”. That really opened up the door for me in terms of thinking about “What does it mean to decolonize my body? What does it mean to decolonize my tastebuds? And what does it mean to decolonize my mind?” Because it's a holistic; it all happens one in the same.

And so I became an advocate of that. In 2007, 2008, as I was getting one of my first master's in Chicano Studies, I focused on health, diet, and nutrition from an indigenous perspective. That really opened me up to explore my cooking more. I already cooked a lot plant-based; I wasn't really a meat preparer. I was horrible at it, so I never tried it, never attempted it. I came to realize, these notions around veganism and how folks would always say to me, especially my family, “Oh, you're trying to be white.” And I'm like, “No, I'm not. I'm returning to my ancestral foodways. In the summer, we eat corn beans and squash, like, what's the problem here?” And then going around to many food places here in LA, I was looking at the food and I was like, “This is native; these ingredients here are native”, with the exception of the processed soy products, but everything else on the platter, I was like, “No, we need to reclaim this.”

And so, that's the work that I began doing. As I began to reclaim diet, I began to reclaim this notion around “white veganism”. I began to cook, as a way of resistance, I began to reclaim my kitchen. For me, my kitchen was no longer a place of oppression, it was no longer a place of that kind of power dynamic. It was where I was going to assert my power, it was where I was going to heal. In essence, becoming a quindera right in my kitchen.

I began to meal plan, I began to reintegrate native indigenous cuisine, ingredients and cuisine. Eventually, of course, you do the work, you get connected, you gravitate towards those people that are also doing the work. And that's exactly what happened. As I began to pursue a doctoral degree at the University of Washington, I was blessed to connect with the Native community members there, which are the Muckleshoot, and began to do work around indigenous foods, recipe creation, menu development. That opened up another world of being connected with other native chefs, doing this work around “ancestral activation”, is what we call it, and remembering work around cuisine.

I decided to go with that; that was the energy that was coming towards me, this was a direction that the universe set forth for me. One of the native chefs that I had created a really bonded relationship, Nephi Craig was like, “The food has been waiting for you, at this particular level.” Another chef was like, “The food chose you to do this work, to be a voice to represent food and the way that you do it, which is very honorable.” So for me, I'm like, “This is my calling, this is my responsibility.”

It's not just about us remembering the food, but it's about what does the food have to say to us, because the food also has messages. How do we listen to food, through our bodies? How do we engage with food? How do we have a relationship with food? What can food teach us in terms of ecology, in terms of decolonization, in terms of re-indigenization?

I have really done the work, to the point where I have elevated it enough to be a respected community member that has this type of expertise. I call it more of a deep relationship with food. Now, I teach around food, I teach around locality, wild foods, cuisine. For folks that want to go a little deeper thinking about this in terms of decolonial theory, decolonization, decolonial futures, indigenous imaginariums; how can we reimagine landscape? And then I cook alongside some amazing chefs, all natives, again, that's where we're I gravitate to, that's where my calling has taken me.

That's the work that I do on a daily now. It's a blessing, because it's definitely has taken me in and out of academia. But at the end of the day, it's all knowledge production, knowledge co creation, and sharing it at all capacities, at all levels. Sometimes it means, simply sitting down at a table, and eating with those people that are also aware that there's a way to resist, there's a way to heal. There's a way to reclaim, and there's a way to decolonize, by remembering our foods and our relationships to food.

Emily Race 19:25

Thank you for sharing your story to that depth. I'm sure there's more, that were little breadcrumbs along the way, but really what I took away from that is how you've been listening to yourself, listening to the food, allowing yourself to be guided to what your contribution on this planet is and can be.

There's a lot of follow up questions I have. There may be some folks who are like, “I'm actively decolonizing myself and my lifestyle” and then there's others who may not even know what that term is. Do you mind highlighting for us what you mean by decolonization and re indigenizing?

Claudia Serrato 20:08

Sure, sure. There's many ways to approach it. Because I'm a food expert, so for me, when I think about decolonization, which is a combination of my studies and lived realities, it’s we're doing everything we possibly can to get away from dominant narratives, dominant instructions, which are really situated in colonial realities.

Some folks might say, “Well, we're past that.” And no, we're not. We live in a very patriarchal, imperialist society. And in the development and making of this society, there were privileges established for folks to maintain this idea of hierarchy and power. And that is embedded in every part of life, from the way we eat, from the way we sit, from the way we love, from the way we educate, and the information that's being put into us, in terms of how we are to be social beings. Those ways of knowing, the ones that are very dominant and prominent, are not really taken into consideration, especially here, in the US, like other ways of knowing, other ways of being, other ways of existing, that have been here since time immemorial. I mean, beyond the 200 years that the US has really worked to be this powerful source and force.

And so, to decolonize, it means to get away from some of these ideals, by finding and seeking truth at its root. For someone who's interested in decolonizing their diet, depending on where you're at — because decolonization will meet you where you're at— so for some, it might mean getting away from processed foods. That's great, because that already is part of the colonial capitalist endeavor, in terms of food systems.

For some who perhaps are like, “Well, I no longer eat these processed foods, and I want to reclaim my diet culturally”, well, then that would mean looking at “What are your original food ways? How has that been tainted? With a European taste palette?" These ideas of taste hierarchy? How do you begin to get those foods out of your system? Or no longer make them dominant?”

For some folks, “It might not be a dominant feature of my foodways, but I still like to eat this and this once in a while,” that's fine. Again, it's going to meet you where you're at. But somebody like me, for example, when I began this journey, many, many, many, many years and full moons ago. I was like, “I'm getting rid of all these foods.” I was just really hardcore extremist, because I was super radical. And the first thing I did was eliminate beef, chicken, pork, cheese, because these were not part of my cultural heritage. For me, that was my decolonial experience.

And for somebody else, they might be like, “Well, I'm going to reintroduce new foods like bison, like elk, like moose.” And so for someone else, for another native, that could mean decolonizing, but at a different level; that's where the re-indigenization comes in. That's where you are decolonizing to re-indigenize. Bring back those indigenous or cultural heritage foods, that our bodies will respond better to. And for folks from South America, for example, there is the quinoa grain. Now, we see it here as a superfood and “woowoo”. But again, these were foods that were also outlawed by the Spanish because they're like, “No, we can no longer eat these. These are symbolic of this dark world”, but yet now, it's been culturally appropriated. And so it's become something different.

But for folks who are like, “I want to get away from eating white rice”, for example, it could mean eating more wild rice, or it could mean using quinoa instead.

And so, to decolonize the diet, it first it involves a type of awareness and understanding that our foodways have been colonized, our tastebuds have been colonized. If we're craving processed foods, that's something our grandparents and their grandparents would be like, “What do you mean?” That shouldn't be happening, that shouldn't be our default. To decolonize would be craving those ancestral foods like the cactus, like the beans, like amaranth and quinoa, for example. And then to continue with that food way.

Now, if someone like me has been doing this work for such a long time, I understand what it means to decolonize my diet on a different level. I think of it in terms of planetary, celestial, because I want to be more in cosmic alignment. So for me, I take in consideration the seasons. I think about “What season are we in? What should I be nourishing my body with?” And I also pay attention to a geography now.

So yes, I live in LA, there's a lot of citrus everywhere. It's not native, however, right? It fits the geography now of where I'm at. And it fits the season of where I'm at. So there's a way to negotiate how we're doing this decolonial foodwork. But the emphasis is always to remember our cultural heritage, cuisines and foodways. Because ultimately, those come first. And that, again, is where the re-indigenization comes in.

And the truth is, if we don't remember these foods, they're going to go away. My elders have said to me over and over again, “Claudia, the work that you're doing is wonderful, because you're actually protecting and keeping these foods alive, because if we're not eating them, they're gonna be like, ‘What purpose do I serve? I don't serve a purpose.’ And then what happens? The colonial project wins”. And so for me, it's always been, “No, I refuse for this foodway to go away; I'm going to do everything I possibly can to remember, and relearn.” If I don't have a recipe, I'm going to figure it out. Because that's part of the re-indigenization work, because when we do that, we re-indigenize our palette, we re-indigenize our memories, we re-indigenize our landscape, and ultimately, we begin to create a different type of ecological reality that is decolonial in practice.

So decolonial, or to decolonize, is not just a theory, it's not just an idea. It's something that manifests itself, right into the every day. And one wonderful way to do it is by decolonizing our diets.

It's really interesting, though, because I've talked to other folks on a global scale, and I had somebody from China say to me, “Well, we're looking to decolonize our diets too.” And I was like, “Well, what would be some of the foods you would eliminate or see less of?” and they're like “Tomatoes.” And I was like, “The tomato?” But I was like, “Well, no, because that was introduced to them.” And it really has changed their agriculture, and it has really changed their palette. And I thought, “Wow, that's really interesting”, so for some, some indigenous foods is colonial to them, because of the way it was introduced. And so again, this really speaks to where you're located geographically.

But since I'm here in LA, I'm on Turtle Island, I'm within the continent of the Americas, that's how I like to situate myself and that's how I honor the foods. And so thinking about trade routes, indigenous trade routes, that’s part of my decolonial reality. I do my best to re-integrate these foods or re-indigenize my diet. And sometimes that involves eating crickets with my guacamole, which back in the day, I would have been like, “Oh, no, no, no, I'm strictly Vegan. And I'm not going to do that.” But again, because I'm holding on to these western logics of “veganism”, I've learned to let go of that. That way I can truly understand what it means to decolonize, truly understand what it means to re-indigenize and understand that there's a time and place to eat a particular way.

And again, that brings back the seasons into perspective and you align, like in the spring it's a really good time to be eating our wild nettle. It prepares our bodies for the pollen and allergy season. It also creates opportunities to detox as we go into the summer, where we're going to be eating a lot of our berries, which are really high in anti inflammatories and all the fighting nutrients we need to really build our system up and makes make us strong as we go into the fall.

So there's different ways of aligning oneself, but that's been taken from us as a result of these global food, colonial imperial systems.

Emily Race 30:02

One thing that you've mentioned more than twice now, is around the reclaiming. I find that to be so powerful, right? Because if this co-opting, or the whitewashing of different ancestral ways; it's not just about shifting what you eat, but how you relate to that food, and the remembering process that you're talking about.

The other piece, that perhaps you want to add on to it too, is the idea that what we eat does really affect how we feel and how we think and I'm almost seeing as you talk, this spiritual alignment that can happen as that remembering process takes place.

Claudia Serrato 30:46

Yeah, and I feel like there aren’t even enough studies to really make that correlation. Those studies do exist in terms of how we feel. But again, there's all this pressure going on around us that we're like, “I need to eat quick.” But again, that has been created for us, that's this illusion that was made so that we eat this way, or that we don't eat a particular way.

At the end of the day, I enter my kitchen, it's not a place of rush, it's a place of healing, I prepare my food, I take my time with it, because it's an energetic exchange. I'm asking this food to continue to keep me alive, allow me to have some mental clarity. And then knowing where your food comes from, as best as possible, really creates a sense of ease, because then you know what relationships did your food or does your food arrive with? There's an energetic exchange there, too. If your food is being produced within a hyper violent system, then that food is not going to do as best as it possibly can, right? It's not going to be optimal. And so that's something that I really strive for, too, is this optimality that one can achieve towards healing our mindset. Healing our bodies, and doing it through the preparation of food.

I know, time is always the enemy. But how do we shift that time? And that's part of the decolonizing work, because we also need to let go of time. I was talking to a colleague yesterday, and I was like, “I really love when I don't know what time it is.” And he was like, “Yeah, I don't even know what time it is right now.” And it was this liberating feeling. And I thought, “God, I really need to survive more in this world without knowing what time it is.” So that way, I just listen to what my body is saying, right? I'm paying attention to the sun, I'm paying attention to different vibrations versus, “Okay, what time is it?” Decolonizing that, even.

Emily Race 33:02

It's all so interconnected, and we know that, but we forget it at the same time.

I'd love for you to now lean more into the painting the vision for us that you have for the world, and you started to touch on it, but what is your vision?

Claudia Serrato 33:18

I thought a lot about that, and I still think a lot about that. Kid you not, I'm constantly thinking about indigenous futurities, indigenous futures. When I go into epistemological work, I began to study how one knows what they know, at the end of the day, there is this global majority, right, this global major way of thinking about the world and how we move in it. And thinking about indigenous perspectives, and knowledge systems.

When I think about a global future, I think about indigenous leadership, I think about indigenous memories. How we go about making more spaces and braver spaces to allow for that kind of indigenous leadership to thrive. This is not to say that we need permission, because we don't, we see it clearly with the separatista movement, and they have developed their own autonomous leadership. But to see more of that, is what for me is ultimately going to allow us to begin remembering that work. Because we're all native to somewhere and some of us were taken from there because of migration and immigration and no history.

I know many people that are like, “I'm native to LA”, but they're not native, you know what I mean? But that's what they understand. When they're like, “My family comes from Europe.” I'm like “That's the work. What part?” “I don't know”, “Well, let's begin, let's this trace it, let’s figure it out”, because there are Indigenous ways of knowing everywhere; in Africa, in Asia and South America; I see this amongst all the people that I engage with.

When we begin to truly understand how important it is to preserve this knowledge, and how connected this particular knowledge is to creating healthier systems, not just for humans, but for all life, we can actually begin to learn, relearn. Here in California, the colonizers arrived, and they saw a lot of cultural burns happening, and they thought, “Oh, these native Tongva people don't know what they're doing”, but yes, they do, they were actually reenergizing, replenishing the landscape with the burned material that allows for life to thrive even more, to come back two fold.

If we begin to pause for a second, and maybe even accept that we don't know, everything, we don't have the answer — I'm talking about dominant cultural society — if we for once sit and listen to what indigenous communities have to say, because there are so many that carry these memories and carry this knowledge, and to recenter these perspective, I truly feel that we'll be able to really achieve what Gloria Anzaldua talks about as “planetary decolonization”, planetary healing.The cosmos need healing, too.

I almost feel that at this point, because of this type of knowing, and knowledge and movement, I feel like the planets all have something to say about this; the sun, the moon, all the other energy out there, the planets themselves, they're active in this movement, because they're still here. They haven't left.

I mean, corn wasn't supposed to exist, wheat was supposed to take over, but corn was like, “No, if we leave, people are really not going to know who they are.” So for me, it's really holding and making space for all life, and really, truly asking ourselves, “What does this plant have to teach me?” “What is the direction of the moon have to say?” And again, understanding “What are the indigenous teachings that are related to this?” How can I also dismantle white supremacy, hetero patriarchal ideologies that create oppression, not just onto people, but onto the landscape, onto the nonhuman animals, the insects, to the birds, even to the microflora, even to our gut, because we have bacteria that’s so oppressed, and why is that? Well, because of the way our food system has been established, it's been set to make us unhealthy.

How do we bring that knowledge back into perspective. So when I think about indigenous futures, I do think about he vision, what that can look like, and then the mission, the work that it's going to take. And it's going to take a lot of work, it's not going to be easy at all.

But some of us have access, some of us have privilege. Let’s use that access, use that privilege, to make the world a better place, not to create oppression, and not to create hierarchy, because we don't need more of that.

Emily Race 38:39

Beautifully said. You're talking about indigenous leadership, which is so powerful. Will our idea of leadership itself shift in this vision? I don't know if this resonates with you, is it indigenous leadership within each of us? Or are we looking at figureheads in the way that we think of leadership now?

Claudia Serrato 39:02

It's a combination. It's the leadership within us, and but it's also leadership within community. Understanding that we can have co leaders, it's not just one person.

Prior to the making of the US there was indigenous governance. And there's studies of that now; how do we re-indigenize government? There were systems that were very effective. There was collective, there were working groups, there were calpulli's, there was the Haudenosaunee, it was like composed of five tribes and people would bring their leaders within. And then also, you represent yourself as a leader, and so it's a multiplicity of leaderships.

Because that's ultimately what's gonna thrive. We humans and nonhumans, we have our own systems. Even leadership within the fungi world; there's leadership amongst the walnut trees, but yet we coexist. So there's leadership that allows for many leaders to come to an understanding, and when we recenter all life, then we can create a different kind of balanced system.

Emily Race 40:23

Following that thread a bit more, how might our relationship to food shift? Is it that we would all be eating local? This idea of eating local, it feels like what you're really doing is many layers deeper than just “locally”, right?

Claudia Serrato 40:39

Yeah. I like to use the acronym LESSON. Local, ecological, seasonal, sustainable, organic, and native.

When we begin to honor the lesson, we create and begin to engage in healing work. We begin to create an ecological balance and then other life forms get to eat; we're eating for everybody. It's like an unselfish way of eating.

I've always been told when you go out and harvest, when you go out and forage, you take what you need. That's a whole different concept. It's very old and ancient, but within a capitalist society, it's “take, take, take, take, take, don't leave for anybody else”, but my elders have shared with me over and over and time and time again, “If we're eating too much salmon, then there's going to be no food for the bears. And we need the bears for XYZ factors, and that's going to affect the water.” And so, “If I'm going to eat this, who is it benefiting? And who is it not?” How do we create an ecological balance? How do we think about our other kin?

That, ultimately, is what even got me to rethink my veganism many, many years back, where I was, like, “These animal factories, they're displacing the bears, they're displacing the beaver.” And because they want to prioritize and create these infrastructures that are just oppressive in many ways, I was like, “No, I'm going to do this to be in solidarity with the water, in solidarity with the worm that's been pushed off the land that is creating healthy soil for other life to thrive.”

When we recenter, and replace the LESSON of how to eat —Robin Kimmerer says this in her book, “Braiding Sweetgrass”, we ultimately then begin to learn how to become native to place. And when we begin to do that, then we begin to honor the landscape very differently, we begin to really understand what does it mean to be in relation with land, with the elements, with the generations to come on all levels.

I really strive for that, I truly do, every day. When I'm thinking about my meal planning, when I'm thinking about my snacks; not all my food is native, many of it is just seasonal. I live in California, and the soil here is quite awesome. And so yes, I do eat my citrus. Yes, I do eat my apples, but I'm also eating my nuts, and I'm eating my seeds. I'm eating other foods that are culturally relevant because it was introduced to me as a child.

And it speaks to my cultural heritage. Even though my family comes from Michoacán, my dad is P'urepecha, my mother comes from San Luis Potosi, she's Huasteca, we have a different way of eating. And so it's very integrated, right? It's in constant movement. And that's how food should be, it should be very diverse. It shouldn't be the same potato, it shouldn't be the same tomato, it shouldn't be the same. It should be in constant movement, right? We shouldn't have one food all year long like that. But again, it's what we have imagined to be the norm. And it's not, right? So decolonizing is also rupturing normative structures.

Emily Race 44:22

There was something you said about becoming native to a place and I see that as part of this vision that you're talking about where we're all becoming native to where we are.

Claudia Serrato 44:33

Yeah, exactly. And then there's a whole different way, because now you're in a relationship. And so you're gonna respect — I want to even cry, I'm so emotional, now. I think about that, because many natives and non natives not ask me, “What can I do?” And I don't always have the answers, but one thing that has been shared with me is, “You're going to have respect for where you're at. Who are the stewards of the land?”

When I teach classes, first thing I ask my students is “Who are the original stewards of the landscape you’re on? What land are you on?” And they're like, “Whoa”, and they rethink that. Especially if we're going to talk about the cultural politics of diet, food, health and nutrition. We can't tell that story if we don't understand the history of how we even arrived to be where we're at today. Right? This just didn't happen during the Industrial Revolution, this is something that really impacted native peoples because of the early colonial ideals that the European body was a superior body and their diet was superior. And their logic was superior and their agricultural systems were superior.

Some doctors refer with as a type of psychosis that arrived because you fear the unknown, and you fear that which looks different from you. But yet, the tamales, for example, I've talked to many people about this, I'm like, “Original tamales did not have chicken, beef or pork in it.” “What do you mean?” I'm like, “Sorry to rupture your bubble.” But that was an effective way to survive; native peoples needed to figure out “How do I survive while keeping the oppressor happy?” And then they wanted to also thrive. Wheat was out of season. At some points, they're like, “I guess we're gonna have to eat some corn.” However, if you add a little bit pig lard to that, because the earliest Spanish colonials ate very heavily a meat and fat based diet.

And so, again, let's interrogate. Let's ask the food, like, let's go down that rabbit hole.

And that's the invitation for folks. Don't be afraid to go down that rabbit hole. Do it. When I first went into this whole area of studies, one of my professors said, ”In order for you to understand Mesoamerican foodways, you have to study European food ways”, and I was like, “What? No way.” And sure enough, when I went down that rabbit hole, guess where I ended up? Studying Roman and Greek diets, I was like, “Whoa,” but again, because then you understand the logic that is deeply penetrated into the food systems that we have today.

Emily Race 47:25

So is that the inquiry or invitation for folks to go down the rabbit hole and unpack the history of the food that they're eating and where they are? Is everyone's journey a historical excavation, so to speak, or are there other layers to it?

Claudia Serrato 47:41

I like to refer to it as an “archaeology of the body”. Dig as deep as you can, and work from that point, work from that place.

My first early excavations went down to when I was a kid, and then I went deeper, and so, it's a way to explore and understand. Start with your originality. If you even want to start outside of you, you can do that too, right? Do an earth based archaeology, excavate what's around, and then when you're comfortable, and you feel safe enough, delve in.

It's a beautiful journey, because what a wonderful way to know who you are through food, through the story of food through the story of what you ate as a child, and who introduced that food? And where did that food come from?

For some folks, you might even discover that you might not know where your origins are today. But if you follow those foods and those recipes, you might just make that discovery, and you might be like, “This food is native to this place, then it's only two generations ago, three generations ago”, well, that means something, that says something, right? You are geographically tied to this location, to this place.

And it might not be the pinpoint, but guess what, it's all in relation. And food moved all the time; there were trade routes happening all the time. And it's a wonderful way to rethink identity, to play out identity politics, but more so to participate in something larger and grander, which is healing through decolonizing our existence and land existence. And one really effective way is by remembering the indigenous within us.

Emily Race 50:24

That was what I was going to emphasize too, because the way you described it earlier on is, on the other side of decolonization is re-indigenizing. So the fact that we don't just stop with the decolonization, but there's this beautiful reward on the other end of that.

Claudia Serrato

Gorgeous, exactly. Because that's the original knowledge that set us up to begin with, to be a thriving group of people. If we want to continue to thrive, then we need to return to those teachings. We just have to.

Emily Race

To close this out here, how can folks work with you, collaborate with you or learn more about the work you’re doing?

Claudia Serrato 50:31

What I really love and appreciate is when folks reach out with an idea, or with a plan, or with a vision, because we can always work on the mission. But when you arrive with a vision, and it's an alignment with where I'm at in time, place and space, then there's opportunities for that.

Reach out with a vision; I'm open to proposals. And if you know folks that are looking for people, for leaders, for representatives to be able to activate or create spaces of activation, connect us.

I'm independent, I work for myself. I have chosen to take on the responsibility that food wants me to do and make it a career. It's doing the calling and doing the work necessary as an indigenous food leader. And so I'm here to help with that. And bring more people together, to truly work on doing the regenerative work that that needs to happen in order for us to truly create restoration on all levels, land, water, work, food work, you name it.

Emily Race 52:00

The work that you have taken on, this responsibility to lead and do, is so important. I'm personally in so much gratitude to you.

I'm curious if there's any other way we can support you in what you're up to.

Claudia Serrato 52:12

Hire me.

I think a good way is to just share. I've been on podcasts. I'm doing some local events, if you can, come out, we always need people, we always need presence, we need energy. That's a really wonderful way to show support, and if you can't make it and you come across an invitation or flyer, reshare it, that's all we really truly can ask for.

We, the people that I surround myself with, we're always talking about this energetic exchange and sometimes that comes through monetary funds, sometimes that comes through elevating our voices. But at the end of the day, it's all rewarding, at the end of the day, it's really creating an addition to the movement.

Please attend, share, amplify, create opportunities to amplify other voices, my voice, community members’ voices, and again, reach out.

Emily Race 53:23

Amazing. I am so inspired by everything that you shared and my head is spinning, like, “I can't wait to follow this rabbit hole for myself.” Hopefully others are left with with some big questions to ask themselves and their families and their community.

Thank you for sharing this beautiful vision with us and everything that you're doing to repair and remember who we are.

Claudia Serrato 53:49

Thank you. It was a pleasure.

Emily Race 53:50

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Founding Mother's podcast. This podcast is produced and hosted by me, Emily Race, and edited by Eric Weisberg.

If you want to support the show, please leave us a rating or share this episode with the important people in your life. We'd also love to hear from you if you or someone you know would be a great guest to share about their vision for the world. You can email Emily@founding-mothers.com or visit www.founding-mothers.com/podcast.