How Chef Elena Terry Revisited Heritage Seeds to Cultivate Hope

“How can you be a good ancestor?” Chef Elena Terry asks the audience at the 2024 Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

As a trained butcher and wild game specialist, Terry’s approach to processing and preparing food centers on strengthening ancestral and community connections. She is a member of the Ho-Chunk tribe from Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. The Ho-Chunk tribal territory historically included parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois, but the tribe has been displaced at least sixteen times since the Indian Removal Act of 1830. These displacements have had profound impacts on the tribe’s access to traditional food. With each forced relocation, tribal members sought to save their ancestral seeds by sewing them into their moccasins, clothes, and even hair.

Access to ancestral ingredients is a crucial component of preserving the community’s history and narrative. Organizations such as the Indigenous Seed Keeper’s Network, which collects and distributes seeds from ancestral fruits and vegetables to safeguard and preserve culturally significant foods, have helped return seeds to be farmed on Ho-Chunk land. “Each one is like a relative coming home,” Terry explains. “These seeds have traveled with the tribe and provided for them…They bring us hope when they come back to tribal lands.