Marquette’s Delft Bistro holds first-ever Indigenous Food Sovereignty Symposium

MARQUETTE, Mich. (WLUC) - People in Marquette enjoyed a different cultural taste during the Delft Bistro’s first-ever Indigenous Food Sovereignty Symposium.

As a pop-up extension of the actual food symposium happening at Northern Michigan University, the restaurant teamed up with Wild Bearies, a nonprofit founded by the Ho Chunk Tribe in Wisconsin.

Food offered included bison sirloin, vegetarian wild rice balls topped with a berry sauce, and blue corn cake with coconut chia pudding.

The event’s main goals were to strengthen alliances with indigenous communities and their foods and to build awareness of food sovereignty.

“We’re looking at addressing food security and reclamation of our traditional food systems,” said Elena Terry, Wild Bearies Co-founder and Executive Chef. “Hopefully at some point, we’ll be able to get to a place where we were able to feed ourselves again with our own traditional food.”

“To have this exposure here really brings an awareness to the community that we want to be involved with anyone on the land,” said Kris Stuckard, the Executive Chef at Delft Bistro. “It’s important for us, especially in the U.P., to take care of what we have.”

The main symposium will be at NMU for the rest of the weekend. The Wild Bearies and Delft Bistro hope to make this pop-up an annual event and spread this to other local U.P. restaurants.