In her 2023 cookbook “Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky,” New Mexico-based chef and historian Lois Ellen Frank said the present era of Indigenous cuisine revolves around modern chefs understanding the ingredients and the farming practices of their ancestors.

“It’s now up to each Native American community and each Native American chef to decide what the New Native American Cuisine is and what they are going to serve on their plates,” Frank, who was advised by Navajo chef Walter Whitewater, wrote in her introduction.

Several young women chefs are doing just that in the Denver area, starting food businesses and planting gardens as a way to reconnect with the land and the traditions of the past. They are defining in real time what New Native American Cuisine can be, from cultivation to creation.

Their work is moving forward Indigenous cuisine in a critical time of repossession after the forced relocations of the 19th century and the food distribution programs of the 20th century, a recent period Frank referred to in her cookbook as “the most painful and most difficult in terms of health and wellness in Native American Cuisine history.”

Before the exploration of the Americas, most of the Indigenous diet in the Southwest and Four Corners region came from farmed foods such as corn, beans and squash (sometimes called “the three sisters”). After the country relocated Native Americans to reservations, they were issued government rations of mass-produced food different from what they were used to, Frank writes. To her and some of her colleagues, it amounted to “nutritional genocide.”

Denver has long associated Native American cuisine with Tocabe and its fry bread tacos, made with shredded bison, hominy and roasted green chiles. When Matt Chandra and Ben Jacobs opened Tocabe in 2008, the restaurant was billed as “the only American Indian-owned and -operated restaurant in metro Denver specializing in Native American cuisine.”

After learning that Jacobs, a Native chef, was using some of his family’s recipes, Micaela Iron Shell-Dominguez, 36, knew she had to work there.

An environmental and Indigenous activist — and actor with the Annishabae Theater Exchange — whose father is Lakota and mother is from the San Luis Valley, Iron Shell-Dominguez noted the sanctity of ancestral foods and emphasized the role women played in feeding Native communities.

“I remember after working there for a while, I told Ben and Matt I was so inspired by everything they did that one day I wanted to open and own an Indigenous restaurant just like them,” she said in an email to The Denver Post.

She is now a mother of two and worker-owner of Moonshell Pizza Cooperative (www.moonshell.coop), a roving pizza crew where her partner, Sid Farber, is lead dough roller. The bounty of foods native to the region, such as corn, berries and sage, makes it easy to base dishes around those ingredients, she said. Their buffalo chokecherry pizza is one such example, she added, the chokecherry plant being native to Colorado.

Iron Shell-Dominguez’s multidisciplinary and holistic approach to her Native culture is also shared by Indigenous groups outside of North America.

Andrea Condes, 39, was born in Caracas, Venezuela, and adopted into the United States, where she grew up and pursued a career in the culinary arts. It was in Colorado where the self-described “child of the Andes” landed. Although separated by thousands of miles, Condes saw many similarities integral to the experiences of the pre-colonial Americas.

“How people are treated, how the land is respected, how animal relatives and plant relatives are just that: relatives,” Condes said.

Drawn to root vegetables like the potato, which originated in the Andes, she started a catering company, Four Directions Cuisine (www.fourdirectionscuisine.com). She grows her own plants and is hosting meals two weekends a month through October as The Rooted Andina at her home in Arvada.

Learning about Indigenous foods and history, she said, helped her overcome the “cultural gap” of living in another country and brought her closer to her homeland.

“It’s definitely not something that I had language for when I first started walking down this path,” Condes said. “Reconnecting with those foods, I didn’t realize then, but I do now: It was me reconnecting with myself.”

Since growing food was a way of life, some New Native American Cuisine chefs are returning to the practice, what Frank equates with “food sovereignty.” Planting companion crops, such as the three sisters, is one of the cultivation methods Frank teaches in an effort to bring what she calls “traditional ecological knowledge” (TEK) back to Native communities.

Narissa Ribera, a member of the Navajo Nation, started planting out of necessity. She was always fascinated with food systems, a jack-of-all-trades who learned to garden as a child and had years of experience baking cottage foods.

The lifestyle developed into Ch’il Indigenous Foods (www.chil-indigenousfoods.com), a meal pickup service she started three years ago. She works out of a commercial kitchen in the Wheat Ridge Center for Music and Arts in Wheat Ridge, baking cookies with ingredients grown by Indigenous harvesters and other delicacies, like blue corn ice cream. (She’ll soon open an outdoor eating area at the arts center.)

The city of Wheat Ridge lent her two commercial plots of land behind the city’s community garden, where she cultivated the beans, corn and squash (including Apache gourds and Lakota squash) along with sunflowers. It’ll be a couple of years until the crops are ready to harvest, she said.

Until then, Ribera is preparing to launch a Native cookie and tea business with the ingredients for the tea grown in her garden, she said. She received federal grants to help with marketing and her brand, which she would one day like to see in supermarkets.

“I want representation,” Ribera said.

Although she welcomes non-Natives who support her work and want to learn about Indigenous foods, her main concern is reconnecting Native people to their ancestral foods.

“So much was taken from us, including so much of our food,” she said. “You’ll find a lot of Native people… they’re just not interested in cooking.”

She solicits social media followers to help tend the Wheat Ridge gardens and visits classes at Jefferson County schools, showing students how to make Indigenous dishes.

At a winter holiday market, Ribera sold a box of cookies that came with a paper describing each one and the history behind its ingredients. For her, the joy was in having an authentic option for Indigenous people to gift their friends and family.

For much of the last century of American history, barbecues and potlucks have dominated the Fourth of July feast-ivities.

Hot dogs and hamburgers accompany sides of macaroni and cheese, potato salad and watermelon slices in ecstatic union in backyards and front porches across the country. Coolers full of beer and soda crackle as the ice melts throughout the hot summer day. Ice-cream sandwiches, popsicles and pie await as the sun sets and fireworks light up the night.

But those aren’t the only kinds of American foods. Immigrants from other countries often celebrate their patriotism with twists on the classics, or other foods entirely.

And with its proximity to the Southwest, Colorado has a few of its own traditions for the patriotic holiday, including green and red chile, corn, beans and tortillas — foods eaten in Hispanic communities long before there was a Colorado or a Fourth of July.

In fact, anthropologist Carole Counihan documented Fourth of July foods in Colorado’s San Luis Valley in a report published in a 2009 anthology, The Globalization of Food. She observed special dishes such as posole, deviled eggs and pasta, noting the holiday is represented by dishes from all over the world with a heavy emphasis on grilled meats.

Below, a group of Denver chefs share their personal spreads for the Fourth of July. Some, like Munetoshi Taira at Sushi by Scratch and Manny Barella at Riot BBQ, which opened this year, weren’t born in the United States. Others, like Ni Nguyen of Sap Sua and Darren Chang at Pig and Tiger, are first-generation Americans. Lastly, one chef shares a recipe inspired by his annual travels to Italy for the Fourth.

The grill and the outdoors are what tie most of their respective menus together.

Manny Barella, Riot BBQ (2180 S. Delaware St.): “BBQ culture was a huge part of my upbringing in Monterrey, Mexico. Every gathering revolved around open-fire cooking and outdoor grilling. Tending to the grill on your own is a rite of passage. We celebrate the Fourth of July here in the U.S. by honoring those same grilling traditions. You can count on me having carne asada, ribs al pastor and grilled vegetables on the table. We also like to smoke chimichurri, a classic element of Monterrey cookouts thanks to the strong Argentine influence in our region.”

Erasmo “Ras” Casiano, Xiquita (500 E. 19th Ave.): “We go all out with a giant backyard BBQ that is exactly like the gatherings we had back in Mexico. We throw carne asada and chicken on the fire and make a bunch of salsas: salsa Mexicana, pico de gallo, salsa ranchera. And of course, fresh corn tortillas and rice. We wrap onions in aluminum and throw them in the fire. Once they are good and roasted we hit them with some lime juice. The day is all about great food and gathering with family and friends. That’s the best tradition of all.”

Darren Chang, Pig and Tiger (2200 California St.; opening this summer): “My dad grilled Taiwanese street corn every Fourth of July growing up in [Los Angeles]. Some of my best summer memories are standing around the grill and eagerly awaiting that first bite of succulent corn. At Pig and Tiger, our Taiwanese street corn starts with fresh Olathe corn. We use my dad’s original shacha sauce recipe (only difference is that we make it vegan), then we give it a dash of sweet soy for a perfectly savory-sweet bite.”

Anna and Anthony “Ni” Nguyen, Sap Sua (2550 E. Colfax Ave.): “Every year, we make BBQ pork skewers, Americana-style. We skewer quartered onions and bell peppers along with pork shoulder marinated in lemongrass. We still don’t miss out on the hot dogs, though! We throw them on the grill right alongside the pork shoulder and serve them with Vietnamese accouterments. Our favorite is bratwurst with our version of pickles: lacto-fermented garlic, baby eggplant, daikon, and carrot. It provides the perfect, briny, acid pop. Don’t forget the brown mustard.”

Munetoshi Taira, Sushi by Scratch Restaurants (1441 Larimer St.): “In my kitchen, I enjoy blending traditional American Independence Day dishes with Japanese flavors. For instance, I often prepare yakitori-style grilled meats alongside classic barbecue fare, and I like to incorporate ingredients like miso or shiso into familiar sides such as potato salad. This fusion not only honors the holiday but also reflects the harmonious blend of cultures that I cherish.”

Darrel Truett, Barolo Grill (3030 E. 6th Ave.): “For the past 15 years, I’ve spent the Fourth of July in Italy with the Barolo Grill team on our annual staff trip. One of the things I always look forward to on a hot day during that first week of July is Panzanella. It’s an Italian bread salad with mixed greens, tomatoes, cucumbers and toasted bread tossed in a beautiful red wine vinaigrette. And I usually make it when I come home from the trip — shortly after the Fourth of July — to offset all of the incredible food and wine we indulged in.”