Good morning, good morning, good morning, Welcome, welcome, welcome. It is nine forty five time for Native beat and John Weston is doing with us. How you doing today, sir, Well, I'm doing great.
Tom. It's you know, a little chili considering it's supposed to be springtimes. It really is. Yeah, I'll definitely be glad we see that seventy sundergree temperatures later this week for sure, the last for two weeks will be in the hundreds. Exactly, Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we'll have spring for just about two weeks. That's about right. So what's going on? I much just a lot of stuff happening here in
Washington County and around the reservation Oco Nagata. Hello everyone, Osta Sonali, good morning and happy Monday, or as we say in Cherokee Benada dog quanta. See as always, Tom, it's great to see you. Despite and like we talked about the freezing weather we're experienced lately, spring seems to do with us now and for natives that means a few things. We're gonna start having a wild onion dinners, which we already have, uh and they've been harvesting those,
and also morell mushroom hunting there you go. Yeah, that's that's one of the things My favorite things my brother and I always love to do is go mushroom hunting. And if anyone goes mushroom hunting out there, you know, the tip that I picked up not long ago is make sure you carry a mesh bag with you. And I learned this from an elder Cherokee because that just helps spread those spores even more and creates even more
little mushrooms. So but yeah, it's it's delicious. You put those roll those a little bit of flour, you you know, fry those up, and man, they are delicious. And that's what people may be noticing around a lot of the organizations for our native groups is as we are having
wild onion dinners. And like I said, we're going to talk about that more in a bit, but before beginning today's show, I'd like to thank our sponsor, haaw Field Cooperative for oud Union is always It's one of the things you can impress me most about CCCU is that you get a hometown field and you walk through the door. Of course, I know Lyle the president up there and the folks. He's a Cherokee, very dedicated Cherokee, and they
all treat you like members of the family. And if you're a market for a car loan, financial planning or needing a little extra cash in for the holidays, which I'll we have tax Day coming up, so you know, that's one of those things that it might be a little painful for some people. So headed up to caf Field Cooperative Credit Union. Lyle hooked me up with some awesome swag bags to give away on the show, and so I still have some of those left. They have
a neat sun visor in them. They have a thermal lunch box and pens, a really cool flashlight led flashlight, which I every once in a while'll look for a flash light and I'll take one out and use it. It's it's really terrific. And some pens and some other things like that in the bag. And if you want to enter for a drawing to win one of these bags, we just need you to comment in the Facebook comments section CCCU and we'll enter you into a drawing to
win one of those bags. Call Field Cooperative Credit Union. It's where you belong. Injured by NCUA. Check out their web page at Cooperative CUD and we'd also like to thank you are listeners. Without you, we wouldn't be here. And as always, we get feedback from our listeners. It's
great to know that people are listening. Sometimes they provide programming suggestions, which I think is great because I don't have all the answers and I don't have all the ideas, so it's great to actually hear from people who have some pretty good ideas. So they are yeah, it's right, and I welcome those comments and our listeners. It's just really nice to know that people are listening. But it's also nice to know people are listening to the station.
You know.
I'm I've been a faithful listener of the station since I was in high school, you know. And and the weather coverage is always great. I've always enjoyed that. I always enjoy the banter back and forth between some of the on their personalities, and you know, I always enjoyed listening to you guys. So, as we mentioned earlier, wild onion dinners are becoming becoming pretty common right now. They're
prevalent Native culture. A lot of people may not know the significance of them, and Cherokee would call wild onions sugay e. The growth of wild onions sold special to significance for many tribes, not just Cherokee tribes. They have social gatherings around it, especially a lot of our southeastern tribes. It's something that kind of brought with them when they
came over on the trail and they were removed. And the meals focus on the spring appearance of wild onions, of course, and a food that's familiar to most of the tribes east of the Mississippi, because that's the area where it's gonna grow. It's not gonna grow in the arid desert of you know, the southwest. So anyway, families often gather wild indians together from February to April. The plants can be found in urban areas. In fact, I
have been. You drive along and you look around public utility easements and things like that, and you'll see them everywhere. You look in people's yards and their wild onions growing everywhere. So it's people don't really they think probably we need, but they are actually wild onions that are growing there.
In fact, I can remember as a child playing on the playground of Copan elementary school, as kids would go out and we would pick them and we would probably to the chagrin of our teachers would peel them and clean them and eat them there on the playground. But typically they're made with fried scrambled eggs, which is really delicious. Poke salad can be added. I'm got a bit, I'm not a big fan of poke salad. And it's the sort of a grape looking thing. When it grows, it
sort of has a purple stalk to it. My grandmother, she was just really adamant. I always wanted to weed eat her pope down when I would take care of her yard, but she would stand at the door and make sure I didn't cut her pope plant down because she would want to have poke salad. So yeah, but fry bread and corn bread and beans and other things
are pretty typical. The dish that they serve along with wild onions and typical assert we have is grape dumplings, and historically it's made from the juice of indigenous grapes, which are commonly called possum grapes, and today the dumplings are often made from frozen grape juice and biscuit mix, which we have made them down at the community quite a bit. It's really delicious, not great when you're diabetic because of this, the sugar and the great choice. Exactly.
Yeah.
But these feasts are often held at cultural clubs, Indian churches and stomp grounds. They can include gospel singing or prayers, and tribal languages. Stickball games are also commonly associated with them, and that inspired I don't know, maybe he'll know this, but the French they adopted our stickball games as lacrosse, and so that's kind of where they came with lacrosse.
Interesting side notes. I did my research on this. The name of the city of Chicago, and this always kind of cracks This kind of cracks me up because I think of New York as being the Windy not the Windy City. It's the Big Apple. But you know, Chicago is known as the Windy City. But it's also the literal name Chicago comes from a Jibwe word which means place that smells like onions, because that used to be a big gathering place for wild onions. So make of
that what you will. So in nineteen thirty two, there was a cookbook published by the Indian Women's Club of Tulsa suggesting subsuiting scallions with one club of garlic for wild onions to be fried in bacon grease. And I'm gonna tell you, I don't know any recipe is made better by bacon grease, and that includes wild onions. So you know, you cook them in a little bit of bacon grease, you boil them in some water, and then
you add your eggs and it's really good stuff. I know, it's a miracle meat, it really is.
Yeah.
But the Barsoladian Women's Club, it's tell an annual wild onion festival for over half a century. So for more than fifty years I've been observing that my Delaware grandfather I used to go out and gather wild onions for my grandmother and she would clean and cook them. We
would also go to the possum grapes. And one of the reasons, of course, people are like, why do they call them possum grapes, Well, they will grow on vines and structures that are hanging high in the air, and that's just as a possum hangs from a tree, you know, that's exactly right. Yeah, So that's kind of how they cope with the phrase possum grapes for these these indigenous
greens apes. But we would make jelly and jams from those grapes, and man, I tell you, I'm doing hyry just thinking about it, so, in addition to other things, will make you hungry. For a few months now, at the Washington County Cherokee Association, we've been distributing meat from the eighteen thirty nine Cherokee Meat Company through our Nude Food Sovereignty program. Let me be clear on a few things regarding the program, because there has been some confusion
about it. Here are the requirements for being served by the program. You must be a Cherokee tribal member and not be receiving SNAP benefits or commodities. Elders, veterans, Cherokee speakers, they all receive preference. But families who are in need of assistants who don't qualify for SNAP benefits or other programs will be able to help feed their families every month. They're also encouraged to come and be served by this program.
And it's actually a gap program, just sort of designed to meet those needs of people who don't qualify for SNAP benefits or tribal commodities. But yet really you're struggling to get along and fay the food bill and you know, let's face it, with the inflationary period that we've had in the United States, it's gotten really harder and harder to keep food on the table.
So nobody falls through the crack.
That's exactly right, that's what we're trying to prevent. This program is slated to run for a year. They will gauge it success in the term and its continuation after that period. We're allowed thirty packages to distribute at our community building, which is down in Oceled It's right next door to the Kodyscue Health Center. And these packages include five one pound rolls of hamburger meat, four one pound rolls of pork sausage, and one two pound pork tenderline.
And let me state this, the program is first come, first served. Be sure to bring your tribal ID when you come to pick up. We will require that information when you sign in. The tribe needs to know who's actually receiving the benefit of this. We'll hold our next distribution on May third at eight am. Last time we distributed, in fact, it was just last Sturdy distributed all of our meat within thirty minutes.
Wow.
So that demonstrates the need for this program in a dramatic way, I believe, and it was if you knew was happening. In between eight and eight thirty that morning, it was pouring down rain. It was so people were showing up in the cold, pouring rain to pick up meat. And that really says a lot about the need for this program. You must appear in person to pick up your distribution if you qualify for the program with the criteria I just mentioned. We will not be allowing you
to pick up for people who aren't there. We feel that it's unfair to do so because there are people who made the effort to come down in person and pick up. Also, I saw her there was a comment on one of the page that somebody had driven two and a half hours to come pick up the meat distribution. You don't have to do that if you're on a Cherokee reservation. Most CCO affiliated Cherokee communities are participate beating
in the program. So you should be able to find a community close by to you where you don't have to drive two and a half hours. Yeah, to try to take advantage of the program. So just check around your local communities and see, you know, if you can get signed up for it or whatever stipulations they have
on it. We are seeking to serve the Cherokees at Washington County and those who are members of our community, you know, and we welcome those who are Cherokee to come and take advantage of the program.
You know.
We asked that if you did receive the meat distribution last month, try to skip a month because we want more people to have the opportunity to pick it up. And we distribute everything beginning at am and once it's distributed, we're done for the month and we close up shop. And this allows us, you know, everyone to come in and have a chance. And if you're interested in the program, please reach out by emailing me at WCCA pres at
gmail dot com. I'll be also discussing in greater detail at our May meeting in the Washington County Cherokee Association on Thursday, May first at six pm. If you're not a member of our community, I highly recommend you consider membership.
We will have membership forms of the meat distribution as well as other meetings our early meeting on Thursday evening May first, you'll receive updates about events s it's the meat distribution program as well as other things we have to offer such as our language classes, our cultural classes, and special presentations and meetings. Plus you get the chance to build community with our fellow Cherokees, which I think
is invaluable. Now, speaking of things that we're having happened at the Turkey at the Washington County Cherokey Association, it's a busy month. Let me tell you. Tuesday, April eighth, at six pm, we'll be hosting a Cherokee Nation Smoking Cessation class. If you smoke cigarettes, use a vape, or use smokeless tobacco and you want to quit, this class will help you. Julie Blessing with the Public Health Department of the Kuisui
Health Center, she'll be instructing these courses. It all add years to your life if you want to kick the habit, and I highly encourage everyone to do so. Thursday, April tenth, at six point thirty, WCC will have its Knife Collecting Group meeting for those interested in knives. Jim Pratt, who's the vice president of the Washington County Cherokee Association, he leads this group. He has an amazing collection of knives and they're always interesting to check out. In fact, he
had won one of our last meetings. It was actually in the shape of an eagle feather with the blade and it was just really awesome and I've never seen anything like it, so well, that was really Neat April seventeenth, there's gonna be a new tradition for us. We're hosting our first ever bingo fundraiser and we asked that you bring a prize for the prize table. We're paid twenty
dollars at the door for entry. We'll be having big goods for sale and selling popcorn for a dollar bag during our games, and it should be a fun night for everyone. That's just before the Easter holiday. We kind of wanted to do on a Thursday night rather than the weekend because we realized that some people may be going to visit family.
So we're just gonna be help.
That's gonna be hell. At the Washington County Cherokee Association, we're on the East West twenty nine hundred road, about a mile and a quarter east of highways or west of Highway seventy five, right next door to the Koubi Scoobee Health Center.
Beautiful piece of land. Yeah, it really is.
It's nice out there and it's improving all the time. We're making some great improvements on it with some of the projects the Cherokee Nation has been doing. We're getting some tribal housing put in next door, and we've get a nice beautiful digital sign out there now. And I'm just looking forward to what we have in store. Lights in the parking lot, the lights in the parking lot, exactly right. Yeah. On Saturday, April twenty sixth, from ten
am to three, we'll have our Spring Cultural Celebration. This event is hands on for the public and we invite everyone to attend. We'll have a lot of make and take activities. We'll have feather painting, beating projects, wink finger weaving, medicine bags, copper impressions, and corn host dolls and a lot more. We'll have outdoor events like tomahawk throwing and cornhole games. I mean, you can't have anything now without cornhole games, right. We'll also be having community pot look,
so bring a dish. Our friend Carmen Catcher who is now Carmen Johnson. You know her well, Tom She'll be cooking traditional foods like five bread and like I said, all this will be happening with the Washington County Cherokee Community Building just east of the Kuizkui Health Center. We're located a mile and quarter east of Highway seventy five on east West twenty nine hundred road. Also be to check out Sure to check out our Delaware Indian or
actually the Delaware website. No stage facebook pages. I want to make sure we include those folks because they always have something going on. And also be sure to catch our friend Chris Crane on Frybred Journeys in the mighty sixth ninety KGGF. Check out their Facebook page. You can catch Native Beat on the Barzel Radio Facebook page. You're on demands of the Barzil Radio app available in the Apple Store. A big waldeau, as we say in Cherokee, one ishi is the Delaware would say, wansi as the
Osage would say. And to all of you listening, de goha e until we meet you know it certainly adds to the government's ability to fund itself