From seed to supper: Husband and wife duo share passion for local Indigenous food

Juan De La Cruz, a citizen of the Oneida Nation, has been working as a professional chef for almost two decades. After 13 years of working in high-end, James Beard-award-winning restaurants, Juan said he started to lose his passion for cooking, only gaining it back when he began to connect with the traditional Native foods he grew up with. Now, he shares that love for traditional food with others and teaches them how to cook good, nourishing meals.

As a husband and wife team, the two have been sowing the seeds of food sovereignty on their reservation and around the state. They host community cooking events, sell fresh food at farmers markets, plant community gardens and encourage others to eat healthier.

“Where we live, there’s no grocery store,” said Juan. His family lives in New Town, North Dakota, where the closest grocery store is a 40-minute drive. “So a lot of people go to the gas station to get gas station food to eat. It’s all like super-processed, gross food.”

Juan said they want to teach people in their communities how to grow nourishing produce, which is Ruth’s specialty, and how to cook traditional foods with that produce, which is Juan’s specialty. Juan said some people in town refer to them as “chef” and “the garden lady.”

Together, they’re a food sovereignty power couple.

“We both have our cultural backgrounds and then our professional backgrounds,” similar but in different areas of expertise, said Ruth. “We’re able to come up with even better ideas than I think we would have just on our own.”

Recently, through the Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College, where Ruth works as the food sovereignty director, the duo taught community members how to make fire cider, a traditional cold-prevention tincture made by infusing apple cider with garlic, ginger, onions, peppers and other spices.

They have also been hosting a series of community cooking classes. Juan said they recently made green chili pozole — a brothy, Mexican soup made with hominy and meat — using tomatillos, jalapenos, onions and garlic straight from their garden. The night before that, Juan taught a youth cooking class where kids made their own creme brulee french toast with homemade sourdough bread donated by a community member, topped with juneberries picked right from their backyard.

“What was crazy was that out of the 12 kids who were in our group, only two had ever had juneberries,” said Juan, but after initial hesitancy, they “went to town” on the juneberries. “We want to share these local things that are right in our backyards.”

Braised bison and corn husk flowers

Along with passing down cooking knowledge, Juan said an important part of their work is sharing cultural practices, values and traditions, which they did last March at a series of dinner gatherings called Aurora Nights.

Hosted by Prairie Sky Breads in Minot, they fed and taught 100 or so people over three nights, said Jazmine Schultz, co-owner of Prairie Sky Breads and one of the organizers behind the event.

Juan served a family-style, four-course meal of wild rice fritters, Mandan white bean and hominy soup, braised bison, maple syrup pie and the Hidatsa cornballs. Ruth instructed guests on how to make corn husk roses, and each attendee left with a full belly and a new understanding of traditional Native food and harvesting practices.

“The message that they’re sharing and what they’re trying to do with their work is so powerful,” said Schultz.

Juan said a participant, an MHA Nation elder, came up to him after the meal to thank him. Crying happy tears, she told him it had been roughly 60 years since she’d eaten “real” Native food, so she ate as much as she could.

Each dish came with a story told by Juan about where, how and why its ingredients were harvested, said participant Sonya Abe, a citizen of the MHA Nation and a Navajo descendant.

“For them, it wasn’t just like we’re going to cook a meal,” she said. “It was very intentional.”

‘The seed is still here and so are we’

Abe works with Ruth at Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College to gather, protect and multiply traditional MHA seeds, another one of the De La Cruzes’ efforts to bring back traditional foods.

Ruth said the college has kept a seed cache for more than 25 years, but Ruth was inspired to expand the cache when her grandfather, who came from a long line of gardeners, shared his personal collection of traditional seeds with her. Ruth said when gifting the cache he shared his wish “to have gallons and gallons of seeds available for our community members to be able to grow.”

After that, the collection really took off. In 2022, the United States Department of Agriculture returned a variety of traditional seeds to the college and provided funding to start a seed rematriation and multiplication program, said Ruth.

Since then, a handful of individuals and a museum have returned seeds to add to their cache, which now includes varieties of corn, beans, squash, sunflowers and watermelon, according to a report by Ruth and the program staff. Ruth said they partnered with six farms and several small community gardens to multiply their seeds in the hope of making Ruth’s grandfather’s wish a reality.

And fulfilling that wish, they are. They already have gallons of corn seeds and hundreds of squash and watermelon seeds.

Abe said the multiplication of the seeds reflects the growth of Native people and culture.

“We’ve come through generational trauma, historical trauma, present-day trauma,” she said, referring to the smallpox epidemic in 1837 and the loss of the tribal land through allotment acts in the 1890s and flooding in the 1950s. “The seed is still here and so are we.”

Along with securing and protecting the seeds, the college offers courses on traditional gardening practices. Through their community outreach, Ruth and Juan have been encouraging people to use the traditional seeds to plant gardens of their own, and people have been, said Juan.

Some are even coming up with their own ways to contribute fresh foods to the community. Their nephew is raising chickens to sell eggs, and another young relative wants to start a lemonade business. Juan said word is traveling fast, and the community is really coming together behind the food sovereignty movement.

One of the goals of any movement is ensuring the work will continue even when the main players are no longer in the game. And while Juan and Ruth plan to keep educating and cooking for people as long as they can, Juan said it’s promising to see the younger generation get excited about traditional ways of eating and living.

He said they’re going to “keep putting out those seeds” by sharing their joy for gardening and cooking.