The Cultural Conservancy - “Traditional Foodways of Native America – Oral Histories of Native Food Revitalization” Audio Recording Project
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Jacquelyn Ross
Biography
Jacquelyn Ross is from the Pomo and Coast Miwok people of Sonoma and Marin counties and is an enrolled member of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. She is a traditional fisherwoman, food gatherer, and basketry student. Jacquelyn works in the University of California system, working on tribally focused education efforts. She also serves as a policy consultant to non-profit organizations. Her articles on health and environmental concerns have appeared in News from Native California, News from Indian Country, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency web site.
Interview Tanscript
My name is Jacqueline Ross. I’m Jenner Pomo and Coast Miwok, and I currently live in Yolo County California. My tribal territory is actually Sonoma, and Marin County’s on the coast of California.
Traditional native foods are the foods we’re supposed to be eating. And they’re the foods that link us to the beginning of our time here. And so I believe they’re the foods that are key to the way we’re put together and the way we’re supposed to live. So they’re important to me because of that. But they’re also important because when you’re living in the environment that they do, they’re part of that system with you. That’s all a network that works together. And it’s better for the environment overall if you can eat that way, and don’t have to bring foods in from other places.
We’re very fortunate in having a lot of traditional native foods, and we’re doubly fortunate to have a lot of those still available to us. We may not be able to eat all of them, but we can see them still and we can talk to them and have a relationship with them, which is good. One of our most valued and most delicious native foods is abalone. There used to be six to seven varieties of abalone in California depending on who you talked to and which you you’d classify that scientifically. We use primarily the red abalone, which is the largest abalone species in the world. And abalone shows up in our earliest stories – or maybe I should say we show up in abalone’s earliest stories as having relationship. We acknowledge her as one of the oldest beings in our world, and she has a place in our early stories about how the world was made. And she’s delicious, and wonderful, and has cousins all over the world. So when you eat abalone you become part of a very big family.
Abalone’s incredibly nutritious, so if you have nothing else, but you have abalone, you can.. you can live quite well. And it can be dried, and you can use.. you can use abalone throughout the year. It’s a shellfish, a large shellfish. And we are able to use every part of it. As a species, she’s fantastic, and as a food, almost complete utility, with no waste, which is ideal.
The muscle is the biggest part of the abalone outside of the shell. And so you use it. It’s called the foot really, but it’s basically one big muscle that clings onto rocks or whatever surface the abalone goes to. And then underneath the rim of the shell all the organs are trucked. When you dress an abalone, you see everything. It’s a perfect arrangement, everything fits beautifully under the rim, you know, in this kind of oval or semi-oval as you get in there. We use that viscera for bait. Abalone has a very, very powerful smell when it starts to decompose. It has a strong smell when she’s fresh and alive also, but when she starts to decompose it’s really, really strong, and quite strong enough to spread under water really well. A lot of good food fish like abalone, and so I grew up fishing with abalone gut, which is great. So you get to use all that inside part. We actually cook the fringe as well. And the fringe are the tentacles that poke out underneath the shell of the abalone that they use to sense before they move. We use the fringe. A lot of people don’t use the fringe, but we use the fringe and we eat that, and that’s delicious too. So using all the organs, and using all the fringe and tentacles. If you cut out any part, like the eye stems and what not, you can use those as fertilizer, you can use those as bait as well. And then the shell is really popular for a number of uses, and it’s become.. I think it’s been a trade item for probably hundreds of years across the U.S. And you see people wearing abalone shell from other parts of the world as well. So I think it’s kind of universally recognized as being valuable and gorgeous and highly ornamental. So people use that. And then people sometimes use the whole shells to burn smudge or incense, you know, in their own area. So it’s popped up as a ceremonial item in a lot of traditional areas that are far, far, far from the ocean, which is kind of nice too. Yeah, so, you know, full utility. Full utility with abalone, which is great. You don’t waste anything.
The abalone fishery in California used to be very, very healthy, you know to the point where people would go out and just not ever think there would never be an end to abalone. I remember as a child, my parents would dangle me under a rock, an exposed rock, so I could look at them, and you would see abalone hanging on top of each other, two to three deep, underneath the rocks. And it was just a magnificent sight, you know, and fabulous to look at. And you felt so abundant when you would see those abalone with those healthy populations under the rock. And you can dangle under that same rock today and you will maybe just see two to five individuals if it’s a healthy area. So it’s much, much diminished. When I was a child, I believe the limit was more around 10 to 12 abalone a day, and I don’t know what the yearly catch would be. And then it started diminishing when I really was abalone-ing a lot in my teens.
Now, in California, which is, as far as I know, the only place on the West Coast in the U.S. that you can legally harvest abalone, the limit is three abalone per day, and the total, I believe of 24 in a calendar year. And that’s much, much diminished from what it was in my childhood, which was not that long ago.
You know, the kind of childhood I had I’m beginning to acknowledge as really privileged, but also maybe one of the last generations to have that. You know even though we didn’t go out daily to do that, we went out regularly and often enough on a cycle that that I know what I’m supposed to do, when I’m supposed to do it.
We felt the impact with regulations. We can no longer legally harvest some of the species that we have close relationship with. I can’t have the same dishes on my table that my grandmother did. And she probably had less of them than her great grandmother did. But yet we walk those same places, you know. I acknowledged when I harvest an abalone that I’m the great, great, great descendent, and they’re the great, great, great descendent of people, species that knew each other. You know, we’re basically sharing.. sharing our lineage that way, our relationship lineage down through time, and that’s a very important relationship. That goes back to the beginning. You know, and so to lose that or to alter that, to mutate that by poisoning one or the other or both of us is a very serious thing.
Related Websites:
Federated Indian Tribes of Graton Rancheria: www.gratonrancheria.com
California Indian Basketweavers Association: www.ciba.org
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