Israel is at war with Hamas.

Israel

The Story

Israel is at war with Hamas. 

What happened? 

On Saturday, Hamas — the Palestinian militant group that controls the Gaza Strip — invaded Israel by land, air, and sea in a surprise attack. The Israeli military said Hamas fired more than 2,000 rockets and infiltrated over 20 locations in southern Israel. More than 700 Israelis have reportedly been killed and dozens of civilians and soldiers have been taken hostage. Hamas says that the assault is in retaliation for years of occupation and violence — including recent police raids on the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Now, the attack has led to some of the most violent and deadly days Israel has experienced in decades.

What’s the response been?

Israel is retaliating with airstrikes — reportedly killing more than 400 Palestinians and injuring thousands of others. The country also formally declared war on Hamas, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing to inflict an “unprecedented price.” It’s not clear if that’ll include a ground invasion of Gaza. Meanwhile, the Israeli government faces serious questions over how the surprise attack could have happened, suggesting an intelligence and security failure. Some have also questioned whether Israel's judicial overhaul may have played a role. Many fear the fighting could spread — particularly after Hezbollah, a militant group in Lebanon, launched rockets in solidarity with the "Palestinian resistance." The US, along with other world leaders, vowed to stand by Israel, with President Biden offering “all appropriate means of support” to the country.

theSkimm

After decades of tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, the conflict is now heading into dangerous new territory.

Restaurants in the US serve up dishes and ingredients from around the world. But often missing from the menu? Indigenous foods. That’s why chef Sean Sherman, a member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux tribe, has spent the past decade cooking up awareness — through his widely acclaimed cookbook, nonprofit, and James Beard Award-winning restaurant, Owamni. Here’s what he had to say…

Q: Growing up, what was your experience with Native American food? 

I grew up on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation. We had one grocery store that served an area basically the size of Connecticut. There was very little food access ... [A lot of what we ate] came from the USDA’s Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations, so it was canned vegetables and fruits, lots of white carbs, powdered milk, and “government cheese.” Just all this not healthy food ... [But] we had bits and pieces of Native foods. One thing we still utilize at Owamni today is a berry sauce called wojape. Traditionally, we made it with chokecherries. We’d harvest those as kids on the reservation because they grew all over — it’s a real traditional food for Lakota.

Q: How does a kid subsisting on the processed food available on a reservation get to the forefront of Indigenous cuisine in the US?

As soon as I turned 13, I started working in restaurants, which I did throughout high school and college. [Then] I moved to Minneapolis and worked my way up into an executive chef position ... but I burned out and moved to Mexico ... I got really interested in the Indigenous community there — Huichol — because I saw a lot of similarities between how I grew up and [their culture] ... Something struck, and I realized I could name hundreds of European recipes, but I knew nothing about true Lakota food.

… I reached out to elders in my community, especially [my] family that spent their entire lives on the reservation. But they’d gone through boarding schools and assimilation, so they’d lost a lot of culture … I dug through history books and ethnobotanical texts … I started to learn which plants are really valuable and which are indigenous to the area.

... [My] work became focused on how we could return this knowledge back to our communities and have a deeper understanding of Indigenous foods … [That ultimately meant] cutting out colonial ingredients to showcase what was here — which is an immense amount of diversity in foods, proteins, and plants.

Q: When you talk about cutting out colonial ingredients, what does that actually look like?

We cut out things like dairy, wheat flour, cane sugar, beef, pork, and chicken because those things didn’t exist here. [Instead], we focus on different animals, [like] birds, fish, mollusks, and insects. We use a lot of wild plants … When we’re making recipes, we [want it to] make sense [in terms of] the region and culture. So where I am right now — which is the Great Lakes in Minnesota — we might have walleye, blueberries, rose hip, balsam, highbush cranberries, and white cedar. You could stand in a single spot on the lake and see all those ingredients.

… [At Owamni], we really try to make food taste like a place. We’re not necessarily recreating traditional foods. We’re not trying to cook like it's 1491. We’re showcasing modern Indigenous food — and hopefully, planting the seeds of creativity in a new generation of Indigenous chefs to take it further.

Q: We’re nowhere near being able to go to any city and easily find Native American restaurants. Do you at least see progress in that direction?

When we started, there were just a few of us focused on Native foods: Chef Nephi Craig, Lois Ellen Frank, and Loretta Barrett Oden. Now, there’s so many. We’re seeing other Native chefs win James Beard Awards. We're seeing other Native restaurants, small catering operations, and food trucks appearing ... and it’s not just here in the [contiguous] US. I'm headed to Hawaii next week. We were in Australia earlier this year. And we’re connected with lots of people — chefs from Africa, from the Sámi people in Northern Europe ... I think people are starting to look at the world differently and are pushing away the values that European colonialism forced upon so many of us. We’re seeing the importance, as Indigenous peoples, of having a really strong voice in the world today.

Looking for ways to experience Indigenous culture? Here are six Indigenous artists, authors, and creators to follow…

Teri Greeves. When you think of Native American beadwork, embellished Converse sneakers and stilettos probably aren’t what come to mind — unless you’re already familiar with this Kiowa artist. Greeves uses a pictorial, narrative style to tell the stories of the Kiowa people from a modern perspective.

Kali Fajardo-Anstine. Despite growing up in “an excessively literary family,” Fajardo-Anstine never came across books with characters that resembled herself or her family. So the Denver native — who identifies as a Chicana woman with mixed ancestry — decided to write them into being. The result? “Sabrina & Corina” and “Woman of Light.”

Tia Wood. Like other Indigenous creators, Wood — who’s originally from the Saddle Lake Cree Nation in Canada — uses TikTok to shine a light on her Cree and Salish culture. She shares traditional songs and dances with her 2.3 million followers and puts a spotlight on some of the important issues facing Indigenous women today. 

Karissa Valencia. Growing up in the Chumash community, Valencia longed for Indigenous stories on screen. Now she’s making it happen — as the creator and showrunner of Netflix’s “Spirit Rangers.” The animated series, which has an all-Native writers’ room, follows three siblings who transform into animals while living and working in a national park.

Elisapie. The Inuk singer earned a Juno Award nod (essentially, a Canadian Grammy) for her solo music. Now, her fourth album, “Inuktitut,” strikes a new chord: Covering pop and rock hits, from Queen's “I Want to Break Free” to Cyndi Lauper's “Time After Time,” in her Indigenous language, Inuktitut. 

Louise Erdrich. Over the past four decades, Erdrich has written more than 30 books — from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Night Watchman” to children’s books like “Chickadee.” Not to mention that she’s also opened her own Minneapolis bookstore, Birchbark Books, which emphasizes Indigenous American writing.