By Tim Trudell

    The diabetes test monitor showed a glucose reading (blood sugar) above 300. The average glucose for a non-diabetic is 100. To be considered in control, a diabetic’s glucose should be about 150. Anthony Warrior knew he needed to do something to bring his diabetes under control. He didn’t know at the time that it would end up creating opportunities to share Indigenous traditions.
    Warrior, a human relations manager at the Nebraska Indian Community College based in Santee, grew up around food. His mother ran a restaurant for several years in Bloomfield. Warrior, himself, worked in the food industry as a chef at casinos and restaurants. So, it was easy to grab something – usually unhealthy, but delicious – to cook or eat. As he aged, the citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, gained weight and became unhealthy.
    Knowing he needed to do something to control his diabetes, Warrior turned to his Indigenous roots.
    “I was starting to have tingling in my feet, in my hands,” he said. “Neuropathy was setting in. I’m not going to kill myself anymore.”
    Seeking healthy eating options, Warrior researched meal plans, eventually finding himself on a path involving traditional foods used by Native Americans long before the first contact with Europeans.
    “The traditional cooking ways has been kind of a lifelong journey,” he said. “From when we were kids going to ceremonies, and we’d see traditional foods around there. But, then, during my teenage years, I noticed things changing. People were bringing junk food, like bologna. There were hot dogs and sauerkraut. Then, pies and cakes. People couldn’t sustain themselves for three days of dancing because they were hooked up to insulin or too exhausted to dance.”
    Leaning on traditional food, such as fresh vegetables and meat like deer, elk and bison, Warrior began changing his diet. Bringing in food to cook for lunch in a small kitchen at the Knox County campus, others took notice.
    “No one had seen me eat a vegetable before,” Warrior joked.
    But they appreciated the meals he made. Soon, coworkers and students brought in items for him to use to create meals. The tradeoff was easy – Warrior would cook the meals and everyone else would clean afterwards.
    Owning a catering business on the side – Warrior’s Palate – the chef sought an avenue to share his knowledge of traditional foods along with a platform to help educate people.
    “Nowadays, when we determine hunger, when we say our brain is hungry, we’re in an addiction process,” Warrior said. “The stuff we eat today makes your body say that. It’s like after you drink a big can of soda, you’re thirsty again in 20-30 minutes because your mind is telling you that you need to drink more soda. Your body craves more.
   “Back in the day, when you had that whole sustainable food, a lot of times we didn’t eat for flavor like we do today. People knew what it took to sustain a village. They had to ensure food was going to last through the winter until the growing season came.”
    Indigenous people didn’t eat three meals a day, and sometimes went days between meals, Warrior said. They ate to sustain themselves, he said.
    “When they went on hunting parties, hunters would take a small pouch of cornmeal to eat over the next few days,” Warrior said. “The corn was so energy-packed. It was cultivated that way. The least amount of food that it takes to make you full was a prized product.”
    Today, Warrior travels around Nebraska and other Midwestern states sharing his story and encouraging a return to traditional food pathways.
    Dressed in Muscogee regalia, he entertained people attending a spring dinner at the University of Nebraska-Omaha while also showing them the benefits of a traditional Native American diet. Guests dined on bison meatloaf, three sisters salad (purple hominy, bean medley and summer squash with a maple vinaigrette) and strawberry boiled bread in wild berry wojipe (pudding).
    For Dr. Brady DeSanti, director of Native American Studies at UNO, Warrior was a natural choice to be the guest speaker at the annual John Trudell Lecture Series. The series is named in honor of Trudell, a Santee Dakota who was born in Omaha, but spent much of his youth on the Santee reservation in northeastern Nebraska. Trudell served as the national chairman of the American Indian Movement and was also a poet, spoken-word musician and actor.
    “The whole foodways was a good fit,” said DeSanti, a citizen of the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe Nation. “Food decolonization goes back to when I was an undergrad at UNO when there was a documentary about reintroducing bison to Pine Ridge (South Dakota). Anthony points out that not only are you reestablishing a particular relationship with food, but you’re also reinvigorating those relationships with plant and animal relatives, and the land itself. So, it’s just about food. It’s sort of a cultural renaissance.”
    As he continues to share his love of traditional foods, Warrior chuckles at a memory of when he was chef at a casino and management wanted to create a Native American menu.
    “They wanted me to make fry bread,” he said. “That was their version of Native American food.”
    He balked, because, while fry bread has become a favorite of Native Americans over the years, it’s made with processed flour. Fry bread became a dinnertime staple during early reservation life because grandmothers and mothers needed to find an easy way to feed several people.
    As more people strive to eat healthier, they need to break the cycle of food marketing, Warrior said.
    “Our people understood that the food we ate was genetically ingrained in us,” Warrior said. “We’re tied to this earth with food offerings. Our bodies recognize that by altering the food, we’re inviting in all the different problems, health issues, and difficulties with genetics. If we can break these behaviors, we could also explore what our bodies need, and break the addictions to sugar, fat and salts. We can start healing ourselves, our generations and the world around us.”