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Seattle has one and it's delicious. We also have/had another food truck. There are pow wows in the area that serve the best salmon. They exist.

Why don't we see any restaurants that make a big deal about cooking buffalo?

Oh... Right.

There's Owamni in Minnesota. The food uses pre-colonial ingredients. So no dairy, eggs, wheat, etc. They also source the ingredients from indigenous farms

Edit: No chicken eggs

"Most of them" is the understatement of the day. Our country killed nearly all of them.

There was a comedian who had a routine that went something like “my sister’s husband is German. Whenever he visits the US, he says that you just can’t get good bagels in Germany. I said, “and whose fault is that?” “

I remember when this came up a few years ago on Twitter. There are First Nations restaurants, most (white) people just don't go to them and where they are. Yes there are not a lot, it would be much better if there was more. The reason there isn't is because of colonization and genocide.

But we also have to be careful because presenting a minority group as already extinct exists to help continue the perpetuation of the genocide. As Judith Butler describes.

An ungrievable life is one that cannot be mourned because it has never lived, that is, it has never counted as a life at all'

There is a surviving first nations food culture that doesn't care whether Patrick Blumenthal has eaten it or not.

Also First Nations food has been heavily assimilated to into many cultures food. Mexican Food, Peruvian Food, etc When people eat these foods they don't think of it's relationship to First Nations, but there's a connection.

Finally stuff like corn, tomatoes, potatoes all of this food that is widespread everywhere is from North and South America and only hits Europe and Asia in the early modern period. What is and isn't a certain cultures food is not static but subject to forces of history.

This got me in a rabbit hole and I got curious about what indigenous/Native American cuisine would be like because I genuinely didn't know and came across a good list of indigenous owned restaurants as well as a bunch of new recipes to try, in case anyone else is curious.

https://www.afar.com/magazine/native-american-restaurants-in-the-us

https://www.tastingtable.com/1297689/native-american-foods-should-try-once/

https://www.beautybyearth.com/blogs/blog/native-american-cuisine-a-beginner-s-guide-to-indigenous-food

More than that, we completely transformed the native ecology of places such that they're nearly unrecognizable from what they once were. Native plants only occupy a tiny, tiny slice of the ecology that they used to, thanks to invasive introductions that came either accidentally or deliberately with livestock and agricultural imports. I know that in California, many of the plants the native people depended on are difficult to find anymore, and are almost never deliberately cultivated. We also took deliberate, calculated steps over decades to eradicate their cultures, and since very little was ever written down, it was largely successful.

In spite of all that, AFAIK there IS at least a Dine restaurant that they're using to try and teach their own people and others about their traditional culinary and food-ecology practices.

All of Latin America: Y'alls cuisines aren't heavily influenced by native peoples's? Damn bro that sucks

Also, a lot of their descendants were forced into re-education to replace their cultures with settler cultures. A practice even still ongoing.

Odd take because plenty of communities have lower populations and still have restaurants of their cuisine. But also because there are a bunch of native cuisine restaurants.

It doesn't help that a relatively equal society without extreme division of labor is probably not producing cuisine on the same level as cultures with extreme inequality. A class of jealous and idle nobles with personal chefs trying to outdo each other does a lot to push culinary experimentation.

Four Corners area. Navajo fry bread, I still dream about it. Also the Smithsonian has a Native American museum with a great cafeteria, all things considered. It was under renovation last time I went. I hope it still good, if not better.

To be more accurate, smallpox killed somewhere between like 65-95% of the native american population after contact with Europeans. And, of course, many of their remaining descendants ended up concentrated into reservations.

So, I imagine if you were going to find native american cuisine restaurants, they'd be rare but typically in and around reservations.

Here's a couple of NPR stories about indigenous people running restaurants that reflect their cultures:

https://www.npr.org/2022/10/24/1130505141/sioux-chef-sean-sherman-owamni-native-american-indigenous-food

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/26/1221706724/getting-into-the-kitchen-with-an-indigenous-chef-who-uses-north-american-ingredi

Tocabe in Denver is excellent too. It has some pretty unique flavor combinations going on.

If y'all get a chance, try Navajo Tacos.

I feel like this post doesn’t give enough credit to Europeans who also killed millions of native Americans before the US was even founded.

I've seen plenty of food trucks but it was in the South West. So your mileage may vary.

Because you arent looking?

We have a few here in my city... Maybe you just gotta actually go look around a bit more...?

Natv in Broken Arrow is pretty good.