ROGERS COUNTY, Okla. — Chef Nico Albert Williams presents Traditional Cherokee Foods and Foraging at the Rogers County Cherokee Association (RCCA).
The RCCA met Sunday at 2 p.m. for its regularly scheduled monthly meeting.
This month’s presentation combines traditional and foraged foods culminating in a dish that Chef Nico Albert Williams will share with everyone.
Free door prize drawings were drawn for attendees throughout the meeting.
Food and refreshments were also provided. Members were encouraged to bring a dessert to share with everyone.
Hostess Cheryl Rohr Backward assisted Chef Nico with the meal.
The Cherokee Business Moment was two minutes by Rachel Hutchings, owner of Chart Consulting, a small local Cherokee business that helps people and organizations reach their goals and implement sustainable solutions.
Following the brief business meeting led by newly elected President Cathy Grissett, Chef Nico discussed and presented traditional Cherokee foods and prepared a meal to share with all attendees.
The meeting and presentation were open and free to the public.
Chef Nico Albert Williams, a Cherokee Nation citizen, is a chef, caterer, and student of traditional Indigenous cuisines based in Tulsa.
She began her culinary education in California and Arizona, spending time preparing family meals in her mother’s garden and the kitchen.
After relocating to northeastern Oklahoma, Williams embraced her return to the post-removal homeland of her mother’s people as a calling and opportunity to reestablish a relationship with her Cherokee community through the language of food.
Her journey to learn traditional Cherokee ways, dishes, and the wild and cultivated ingredients involved in their preparation grew to encompass the Indigenous cuisines of tribes from all parts of North America.
It led to her involvement in Indigenous food revitalization and food sovereignty.
To provide access to knowledge of healthy traditional food and Indigenous wellness practices to families who live in the urban Tulsa community, Williams founded Burning Cedar Sovereign Wellness.
Burning Cedar Sovereign Wellness is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and urban Indigenous community wellness center with a mission to address socioeconomic disparities, health crises, and cultural disconnection affecting the Tulsa Native community by re-establishing ancestral foodways, birthing practices, and traditional medicine.
Burning Cedar Sovereign Kitchen programs center on providing educational opportunities to the Native community and include catering and consulting services of traditional and modern Native dishes as fundraising support for the overall mission.
Chef Williams’ efforts to expand her knowledge of traditional ingredients and techniques continue through research and collaboration with Indigenous chefs and traditionalists from all Nations.
Williams is the recipient of the 2021 Greater Tulsa Indian Affairs Commission Dream Keeper’s Award for Leadership in Business and the 2022 Cherokee Phoenix Seven Feathers Award for Culture, and she serves as a culinary diplomat for the U.S. Department of State Arts Envoy program, representing North American Indigenous foodways in international spaces.
Her work has been featured regionally and nationally by Food Network Magazine, USA Today, Hulu, Smithsonian Institute, BBC, Cherokee Nation’s OsiyoTV, King Arthur Baking Co, Atlas Obscura, PBS, PRX, Gilcrease Museum, and Philbrook Museum, among others.
Williams also serves as a board member for Matriarch, a 501(c)(3) Native-led program empowering Native women through education, community building, and direct services to create positive change within Tulsa and Oklahoma City communities.
To learn more about RCCA, click here.
