New cafe creates cultural, culinary hub for Native Seattleites – The Seattle Times

On the snowy Tuesday morning of Nov. 29, members of Seattle’s Native American community lined up alongside non-Native Washingtonians for blue corn mush — a dish topped with fresh berry sauce and made from a mix of juniper ash, Navajo Nation blue cornmeal and water — among other Native foods after leaders cut a ribbon to celebrate the opening of ʔálʔal Café in Pioneer Square. 
For Seattle’s Native American community, the ʔálʔal Café — a Native-owned and operated eatery inside the Chief Seattle Club in the Pioneer Square neighborhood — is a new, welcoming community space where people can bring their full selves. The cafe is an outgrowth of Natives reclaiming their footprint in the Emerald City — and a symbol of the intersection of Indigenous food, heritage, health and connection. 
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“It’s Native people doing things for Native people,” said Derrick Belgarde, executive director of the Chief Seattle Club, a nonprofit that provides social services and housing to Native people experiencing homelessness in the Seattle area. “You’re not the only Native person in that cafe, you’re not the only person wearing tribal artwork on your shirt.”
Belgarde, part of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians of Oregon and Chippewa-Cree from Rocky Boy, Montana, described ʔálʔal Café (pronounced “all-all”) as a place where Native people can find connection and “be enough just as a Native person.” The cafe’s name means “home” in Lushootseed.
With its November opening, the ʔálʔal Café follows the success of other food businesses in Seattle that comprise a growing Native food scene, including Off the Rez and Native Soul Cuisine.
Native foods nutritionist and educator Valerie Segrest said the ʔálʔal Café adds to a growing movement to increase the visibility and recognition of Native foods, with many establishments focused on food sustainability, equity and education. 
“We have to learn to value the foods that originate from this country, as well as the people,” said Segrest, of the Muckleshoot Tribe. “ʔálʔal Café is significant because it is the first of its kind to make a true nod to our foods, and therefore our identity, since pioneers came to the shores of Seattle.” 
As customers stop in for coffee and bison tacos garnished with sliced radish, they can expect a taste of Native American artwork, too.
An exhibit of multicolored glass salmon created by Seattle-based artist Dan Friday of the Lummi Nation hangs from the ceiling. “Changing of Worlds,” a mural by Roger Fernandes of the Lower Elwha Band of the S’Klallam Indians, is featured on the wall, marking a testament to the resilience of Native cultures. The massive centerpiece depicts Chief Seattle in front of Mount Tahoma, as Mount Rainier has been known to Native peoples for thousands of years. 
The menu is an ode to Native cuisines, honoring first foods like salmon and bison and corn, beans and squash, also known as The Three Sisters. Segrest said these foods, which represent an organic connection to Native cultures and history, have become increasingly popular in recent years. 
“These foods have gained recognition for their nutrition profiles and novelty look and feel,” Segrest said. “For us, they tell a story from the beginning of time and ground us in a sense of belonging and identity.” 
Anthony Johnson, the cafe’s manager and a member of the Red Lake Nation, said the menu is a way to restore Native history.
“When you look at Indigenous foods, those are foods that are pre-contact, pre-colonial … that were on Turtle Island before colonizers showed up,” Johnson said. “[Colonization] really fragmented the connection that Indigenous people have to their foods.” 
Seattle-based Native restaurant owners agree, like chef Jeremy Thunderbird of Native Soul Cuisine, who added that food can help fight the erasure of Native communities.
“I believe food is a universal language. It is also a history book,” said Thunderbird, who is part of the Squamish and California’s Ohlone and Chumash tribes. “For so long, Natives have been left out of history, and the expansion of Native-owned food businesses in Seattle is long overdue.” 
The cafe is part of the Chief Seattle Club, a nonprofit that provides permanent and transitional housing for Seattle’s Indigenous community. The new eatery opens as Native populations in Seattle and the U.S. face outsized rates of food scarcity and homelessness. 
Native people make up 9% of homeless people in King County, though they account for only 1% of Seattle’s population, according to a report released this year by the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. Similar findings by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities show that roughly 1 in 4 Native people are food insecure. 
Providing the community with fresh foods that are sourced from Native businesses underscores the cafe’s mission. 
“Our community members are among the highest to experience hunger and are among the most food insecure,” Segrest said. “We must prioritize feeding our own first because we know and understand that our foods are our medicine.” 
“They feed us physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally, and for so many, that is the medicine we truly seek,” she added. 
Native communities continue to create their own sustainable food systems as a response to lingering effects of colonization. Starting in the late 1970s, the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations, also known as the Commodity Food Program, provided Natives with highly processed foods. This caused a severe disruption to Native diets that led to higher rates of diabetes, among other illnesses.
Defying this fraught history, Johnson said another priority for the cafe is serving food as natural as possible. 
“An important aspect in decolonizing your palate is tasting foods with minimal processing and minimal additives,” Johnson said. “So that the traditional foods are at the forefront of what you’re eating.
“That’s my goal here: Serve the foods as tasty as they can be, but don’t also hide them under the guise of fat and sugar.”
Thunderbird lauded ʔálʔal Café as a safe, easy way for non-Native people to embrace foods from other cultures. He doesn’t see Seattle’s burgeoning Indigenous food scene slowing down anytime soon. 
“It’s definitely been growing and I think that will only continue,” Thunderbird said. “Everyone takes their own spin on food and has their own specialty. Just like there isn’t only one place to grab a good burger or bowl of pho in Seattle. I can see it becoming a staple in the food scene.”
Belgarde, the Chief Seattle Club executive director, hopes the public can understand that food is more than just sustenance for Native communities — it’s a way to remain connected to traditions that for so long have been erased. 
“Our diet, even our food systems, there’s a strong connection there,” Belgarde said. “There’s a reason we have that food and there’s a story behind it.”
The opinions expressed in reader comments are those of the author only and do not reflect the opinions of The Seattle Times.

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