WILTON, Calif. — On a balmy day last week south of Sacramento, a group of women took turns grinding and preparing acorn flour, and then used fire-heated stones to cook it with water in woven baskets. It was a slow and sweaty process compared with how they prepare meals at home. They did it to pay homage to how their ancestors cooked and sustained themselves over the centuries.
But these women — members of the Wilton Rancheria — were not looking back, they were looking forward. This weekend, Sacramento will host a major international gathering affiliated with the “slow food” movement, and to the surprise of some, the Wilton Rancheria is the top sponsor of the three-day Terra Madre Americas. The event is expected to draw roughly 100,000 people for culinary demonstrations, panels on sustainable agriculture and food politics, live music, and of course, delicious food.
The rancheria, whose members are descendants of Northern California’s Miwok and Nisenan tribes, has recently been building wealth from its local casino, and tribal members have been using that to both raise their stature and showcase their cultural heritage. The $500,000 the tribe is contributing to Terra Madre, they say, is aimed more toward the latter — including demonstrating the health and environmental benefits of traditional food practices.
“Native people are the original slow food people, right?,” said Jesus Tarango, chairman of the Wilton Rancheria, which has more than 1,000 members. “My people have tried to live in balance and with a constant relationship with the land. …Terra Madre, to me, speaks to my people.”
California is home to 109 federally recognized tribal nations, some small and struggling, others with successful gaming operations and growing ambitions. The Wilton Rancheria’s Sky River Casino sits off Highway 99, south of Sacramento. Last year, it became the first tribe in North America to assume majority ownership of a men’s professional sports operation — the Sacramento Republic FC soccer team.
But leading the sponsorship of Terra Madre Americas is something new for this California tribe. Every two years in Turin, Italy, Slow Food International holds Terra Madre Salon del Gusto — the largest food conference in the world and catalyst for a movement that advocates that food be “good, clean and fair.” Last year, Sacramento landed the opportunity to host a U.S. version of the event — a coup for the state capital, which will host it every two years for the next decade.
Tarango sees it as big opportunity for California tribes to share their experiences on a global stage, while also learning from the hundreds of Indigenous delegates expected to visit from Latin America and elsewhere.
“The most exciting thing is just being able to connect with other people that are like-minded,” said Tarango, who previously helped manage a major FedEx hub before becoming tribal chairman. “People doing the things that we’re doing but just in a different country, maybe a different way, maybe with different foods.”
Back before California was settled by Europeans and others, the Miwok and Nisenan subsisted on a hunter-gatherer diet of acorns, venison, salmon, pine nuts, elderberries, and other berries and plants. Some of the Miwok’s food preparation grounds can be seen at Indian Grinding Rock State Rock — about an hour east of Sacramento — which has more than 1,000 bedrock mortars, the largest collection of its kind in North America.
Settlers and later the U.S. government ruthlessly suppressed and exterminated the Miwok and other tribes. In the 20th century, Tarango’s ancestors worked to win back some of their land. But they were robbed again when Congress passed the Rancheria Act of 1958, which terminated land trust obligations to dozens of California tribes. (Rancheria is a Spanish term for a small tribal village.)
Finally in 2009, the Wilton Rancheria regained federal recognition, which allowed the tribe 15 years later to assume control of a 77-acre parcel in Wilton, not far from the Cosumnes River. There the tribe has built a senior center and a shaded arbor for its ceremonial gatherings, including the making of “nupa,” the Miwok word for acorn soup.
Traditionally, only women of the tribe make “nupa,” although the men help with building the fire and carrying huge sacks of acorns. Last week, several of these women demonstrated the process. As some heated rocks in the fire and others cracked and used stones to grind acorns into flour, the smell of burning oak logs permeated the air.
Rachel Williams, the vice chair of the rancheria, sat on the ground, grinding acorn meat in a stone mortar that had been handed down by her great grandmother. The art of making nupa survives today because the Miwok and Nisenan made sure that each child was taught these kinds of ancient customs.
Williams was asked what she thought about as she was grinding the acorns.
“You always have to think with your heart first,” she responded. “If your heart takes first place, then that permeates your body, and it goes down into your arms, and it goes to your hands. So all of that power and all of that love travels through to your fingertips, and it goes through these rocks.”
While Williams was grinding, her mother, Daveen Williams, was lifting rocks from the fire with a pair of long wooden poles.
“These rocks are like microwaves,” she said, quickly dipping them in buckets of water to remove the ash.
The rocks were then placed in a woven basket with water and acorn flour that had been rinsed and re-rinsed over several days, to remove bitter tannins. A friend of the tribe, Amanda Geisdorff, then used a tool to quickly swirl the rocks in the basket, making sure the basket did not burn and that none of the scalding liquid spilled on her.
The soup — slightly sweet and comforting — was ready in just a few minutes. Daveen Williams said she was pleased with the result.
“It is a pride among us women to make sure we don’t make nupa that tastes bitter, or has ash in it,” said Williams, who prepares the soup during ceremonies multiple times a year.
The making of acorn soup will be featured at the Terra Madre Americas event, and the three-day program also includes panels on sustainable farming, impacts of climate change on wine and beer and meals prepared by celebrity chefs such as Jeremiah Tower, Mary Sue Milliken and Sean Sherman, an Oglala Lakota Sioux cookbook author and restaurant owner. Alice Waters, of Chez Panisse fame, is one of the speakers, along with food experts from UC Davis, Latin America, Italy and other parts of the world.
By coincidence, Terra Madre launches on the same day, Friday, that California tribes hold their 58th annual California Native American Day — a mixture of networking, information-sharing and cultural activities — at the state Capitol.
As preparations accelerated this year for Terra Madre, Sacramento organizers grew wary that President Trump’s immigration crackdown might discourage some foreign visitors from attending. Those fears have since been borne out.
Last week, the Sacramento news site Abridged reported that some Latin American farmers and chefs had decided to stay home, despite initially wanting to be part of the event.
“I think there has been some trepidation,” said Mike Testa, president and chief executive of Visit Sacramento, in an interview. “What it ultimately means remains to be seen.”
The potential setback comes after Sacramento spent several years laying the groundwork for Terra Madre.
With the help of Waters, Testa and Sacramento restaurateur Patrick Mulvaney built a relationship with Paolo Di Croce, the general director of Slow Food International. They and others traveled to Italy to further develop the city’s ties with the organization. According to Testa, Sacramento was able to land an agreement with Slow Food before other cities were even aware of the opportunity.
Testa — after connecting with UC Davis and its network of food specialists — then reached out to the Wilton Rancheria, which did not hesitate, he said, in agreeing to sponsor the event.
“We tend to think outside the box a little bit when it comes to situations or opportunities,” said Tarango, who also persuaded the Pala Band of Mission Indians and the Southern California Tribal Chairmen’s Assn. to contribute. “When Terra Madre came along, we wanted to jump on board.”
Surrounded by farmland, Sacramento sits at the confluence of the American and Sacramento rivers, and as it turns out, “confluence” is a leading theme of this year’s inaugural gathering. Tarango hopes it will jump-start a wider conversation on how Indigenous people can come together to influence U.S. agriculture and more healthy diets.
“We are trying to find the intersection that we’re between traditional food ways and modern health solutions,” he said. “We’re trying to tie things together.”
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