Making a Common Food for our Native American Studies

Corn. It’s the center of the indigenous world in north America. As I researched various nations of native peoples across the United States for the beginning of our native American block, several consistent, unifying concepts kept coming into place. Impressions like reciprocity, the moon, and its phases, the relationship to the land, animals, and plants, but particularly to corn. 

With that in mind, I searched for some projects that we could do with corn. The first was to make corn husk dolls using instructions from the book A Kid’s Guide to Native American History: More than 50 Activities by Yvonne Wakim Dennis. The second was to make hominy.

In this post, you’ll find:

Importance of Corn to Indigenous Communities

Corn changed the world significantly during the Columbian exchange, causing populations in other areas of the world to increase. It was and remains one of the United States’ main crop exports. Its importance to the native communities in the Americas cannot be overstated. 

Corn is one of the main staples of the native diet, providing nourishment to their people, and now the world. Like much of the relations of native peoples, the relationship to corn is reciprocal. Corn nourishes the people and the people nourish corn. It was developed by native ‘scientists’ by the cultivation of an ancestral plant, teosinte. 

Teosinte is much smaller than the corn we know today. It is only roughly two to three inches long and has five to seven kernels. Through domestication, and choosing the seeds that grow the best plants, the native peoples have developed corn. However, corn no longer grows wild, so this means that it requires cultivation from humans, particularly our indigenous communities. 

Types of Corn

There are several different types of corn. Sweet corn, dent, popcorn, waxy, and flint to name a few. These are classified by the hardness of their endosperm or outside shell. Hominy is usually made with flint corn, but we did not have any flint on hand, so we made our hominy using popcorn. Popcorn’s endosperm is a little smaller and harder than flint, but it worked for us. 

Native Wisdom of Nutrition

Native wisdom is so interesting to me. Corn has a valuable nutrient, niacin, but it cannot be accessed as it is. Unlocking the nutrient value of corn was one such piece of wisdom known to the native communities. To make the niacin bioavailable with the ability to be absorbed, breaking down the outside husk of the corn kernel is essential. Many of the indigenous nations did this by soaking and cooking the corn in hardwood ash. 

Wood ash dissolved in water causes an alkaline (basic) solution. You may have heard of this before as ash-water solution was often mixed with fats to make soap. This alkaline solution breaks down the outer coating of the kernel, allowing the corn to swell with water. This process also released the niacin, the lysine, and tryptophan amino acids, making the corn more nutritious and more easily digested.

Instructions for Making Hominy from Sacred Seed

Like our entire block for native America, I searched predominately for native voices in our books and resources. These, like the pine needle baskets, were both taught by a native person. The instructions that we used are from Sacred Seed. The mission of Sacred Seed is 

“…is to increase education and awareness around indigenous environmentalism. We do not sell our seeds, but rather look for ambassadors to house a growing location. We strive to move away from harmful industrial agricultural practices and embrace native techniques.”

Here are the links to their sites:

Facebook

Website

Tips from our Experience

First, I want to reiterate that flint, not popcorn, is usually used for hominy. Though our popcorn did work, and I would suggest it if you do not have easy access to flint corn, flint is preferable. I think the length of time that we needed to cook, and the overall consistency of the hominy would have been better with flint corn.

In addition, in my research there was some debate over whether the corn should be soaked in the ash water before cooking or simply cooked. We chose to simply cook it. It is a long process. We left our hominy to cook throughout our day. However, I feel like our hominy would have benefited from being soaked in the ash water overnight before cooking. Below is a video of our process.

Video of our Process