And I personally have had a historically very fraught relationship with food. A lot of that is due to how processed food is. A lot of that is due in part to societal pressures. So many of us have such a fraught relationship with food. In some ways, through foraging, you are helping people reconnect with their own history and the ways people used to eat off the land, in a seasonal, sustainable way. And the thing that stuck with me was she was just like, "You're doing this for the culture." Man, I'm starting to tear up just thinking about it now. I cried for like a solid 20 minutes because that's - oh my gosh it's, like, almost overwhelming. I got to give her and her mom a cut-leaved toothwort leaf so they could taste the spicy brassica-y-ness from it.Īnd the way that her and her friends and her mom's face lit up, I went home and I cried. So I got to take her and show her what I was there harvesting. One of the best days I think I've ever had in my life, I was out foraging and a girl who also happens to be Black - probably a teenager - she runs up to me and she's like, "You are that girl from Tik Tok!" And I was like, "Oh, my god yes!" And she was so excited. And I am one of myriad people who is actively trying to combat that.ĭo you feel like it's working? Like, what kind of feedback do you get from your followers? So it was kind of like a three-combo punch to us culturally moving away from getting to know our natural spaces. For the sake of your safety, that's not a space that you would want to necessarily be in. Foraging very much got looked down upon because the thinking was, why would you be heading down to the creek to gather pawpaws when you can go to the grocery store and get a banana?Īnd in the 1950s and 1960s, being a Black person out in nature, out in the woods, out in predominantly white spaces was a very scary thing to do. So foraging kind of became taboo even if you did have the knowledge to do it - and that was regardless of race. Yeah, you have this really weird thing happen in the 20th century where everyone is, like, wanting to show off wealth. There's been this cultural separation between a lot of Black folks and the outdoors.Ĭode Switch Code Switch Podcast, Episode 2: Being 'Outdoorsy' When You're Black Or BrownĪnd is it true, then, that when there was an opportunity to go foraging once again, some people thought, 'Well, I don't have the handed down knowledge, and anyway, only poor people would do that'? And I'm very lucky to be a Black kid who grew up with two Black parents who were also very outdoorsy, because not all of us get that. It was really this kind of coming together of the two things - cooking and gardening - that I enjoyed doing with my parents most as a kid. On my dad's side of the family, his mom is also of an Indigenous ancestry - Iroquois ancestry - so as a kid, he was being exposed to foodways that some of his peers weren't necessarily. Did you get your love of food and gardening and the outdoors from your parents, do you think?Ībsolutely. You know how we sometimes cook with green onions? You can cook with that too." And warning, if you tell a five-year-old that, they will just start breaking plants in your yard and seeing if magical smells emanate from them.Īnd probably eating them! So your mom was very into plants, clearly. I break it and suddenly, the air is perfumed with garlic. So my mom tells me to go and break some for her. And my mom pointed out some grass in our yard that looked different than all of the other grass, which, until she pointed it out to me, I had never noticed. One day stands out in my mind when I was probably not helping at all. I remember gardening with my mother at the house I grew up in. Their conversation, hosted by Manoush Zomorodi, has been edited and condensed for clarity.ĭo you remember the first time you went foraging as a kid? Our play cousins at TED Radio Hour spoke to Nelson about foraging, followers, and finding cultural (and literal) roots. It's a way to connect with African American and Indigenous food traditions that many people were discouraged - or actively prevented - from accessing. For those not familiar with the term, Nelson says foraging is essentially "a very fun way to say, I eat plants that do not belong to me and I teach other people how to do the same thing." The videos she posts showcase her collecting and cooking everything from acorns to yellow dandelions to dead man's fingers (AKA the seaweed codium fragile.)īut for Nelson, foraging goes beyond rummaging around in other peoples' shrubbery. Known on social media as "Black Forager", Nelson has drawn in more than 2 million followers. The recipe for a wildly successful TikTok account - at least, for Alexis Nikole Nelson - is to post entirely about foraging. Alexis Nikole Nelson is behind the popular TikTok and Instagram videos based on her experience and advice on foraging.
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