A FEATHER AND A FORK ~ Crystal Wahpepah with Amy Paige Condon

Like Buddhist Tibetans and the Three Wise Men of Christian mythology, I have felt my way to my ancient identity by my own efforts. And through dreams and synchronicities. The mythical, to some, Native ancestry I’ve felt since my earliest days, has puzzled but not entirely mystified me.  Fortunately in my hometown environment of Putnam County, Georgia, ancestors of that land left behind an enormous eagle made of stones to remind descendants that our tribe had once been there. They were amazing to have thought of, and done that. A connection so weighty that, unlike teepees or wooden houses, it was not likely to be removed.  Though they themselves were enslaved, murdered, or sent on the deadly “trail of tears” away from their peach trees and roses, from which not one of them returned.

I’ve noticed that since DNA testing the Native American grandmother has, more often than not, been relegated to myth. Or even to amusement.  So I am glad my grandmother’s mother, a Cherokee woman, left her name embedded in my own mother’s name.  That, and the mound of stones, is all we have.  But is it?

I remember a friend sneering at my choosing- at a multi-cultural event – the somewhat monotonous Native drumming – a circle of men (until I asked to join) – pounding on a huge ceremonial drum, over the much more lively and intricate African/African-American, drumming.  I did not “know” why I was drawn to this drumbeat, yet it seemed inevitable that it would synchronize with my heart.  It did.  And, it seemed, with memory itself.

Never abandoning my love of my African roots, for many years I was also drawn into the American Indian resistance. And felt completely at home there. The  Native American and African American struggles complimented each other powerfully.

Bill Wahpepah, a Native American resistance leader and Medicine man, and his wife Carol, a talented sculptor, became special friends.  So that it seems now, inevitable, that I would find my way to this cookbook by his niece, Crystal Wahpepah, and that I would sit in her restaurant, Wahpepah’s Kitchen, in Oakland, and taste something else that I had feared lost in my herstory.~aw

We are children of the sun. Sculpture by Carol Wahpepah.