The Corn Dance Café closed in 2003, but Oden continued to evangelize, including in an Emmy Award–winning television series, Seasoned With Spirit, which aired on PBS in 2006. Currently she’s consulting with the Wilton Rancheria Indians about opening a Native American restaurant as part of their proposed casino project in Sacramento County, California.
CRAIG TURNS off the main road connecting the community of Cibecue (famous for an 1881 Apache revolt) to Whiteriver and parks beside a two-acre garden known as “the People’s Farm.” The garden has been operating for several years with federal grants, tribal funds, and contributions from the Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health, which has a small office next to the Whiteriver Indian Health Service Hospital, where Craig was born. The farm employs four full-time tribal staff members, selling its crops on site and at a nearby weekly farmers’ market.
Craig is preparing for a tasting dinner he’s hosting tomorrow night for six people. Such dinners are uncommon in the summer off-season, when Craig operates with a skeleton crew, but he hosts these indigenous-cuisine showcases up to four nights a week during the busy ski season.
He wanders through the rows, picking out squash blossoms. Weeks earlier, he had taken rocks from the nearby riverbed to use as plates—“I’ll return them at the end of the season,” he says. On the following morning, Wednesday, the day of the tasting meal, I join Craig, his son, and two Apache assistants, Juwon Hendricks and Randal Cosen, and forage for edible plants among the aspen and pine trees surrounding the resort. We pick meadow rue, which has a delicate peppery taste; oxalis weed, which tastes like green apple; penny-bun mushrooms; and various wildflowers for plating.