Transcript: The Acorn: An Ohlone Love Story
Note: Episodes of Outside/In are made as pieces of audio, and some context and nuance may be lost on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.
--OPENING: Working with the acorn--
--MX start--
Vincent: We're going to start off with cracking the acorns first.
Vincent: See like right there, the skin just slid off. See how perfect that is?
Louis: I'm peeling off some of the skin, that's after you shell them there's a skin on the acorn that you have to remove before you can make it into flour.
Vincent: So after we get the acorn like this, what we're going to do is for the ones that are all done, we're going to start to make them into a flour, which they're still not edible yet because they still have the tannic acids. And then after, then we have the flour, then we'll start to leach it to take out all the bitters. So ummm...Can you imagine our ancestors did this every single day, not just even to make a small amount, but to feed the entire village.
--MX fade--
--HOST INTRO start--
SEB: You’re listening to Outside/In, a show about the natural world and how we use it. I’m Sam Evans-Brown.
And you’re hearing Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino, grinding Black Oak acorns in their backyard in San Lorenzo, California, and teaching kids from their community how to process the nuts.
Vincent and Louis are partners, in many senses of the word: partners in food, in business, and in life.
They’re both Ohlone people.
And acorns are at the heart of their story.
Vincent: [Speaking Chochenyo] To everybody: My name is Vincent Medina. My family is Indigenous to the East Bay, which is where we're at right now.
Louis: [Speaking Rumsen] My name is Louis Trevino. I'm Rumsen Ohlone. My family comes from the Carmel Valley in the Monterey area.
SEB: They’re also partners in their shared purpose of reviving Ohlone languages, and increasing the visibility of Ohlone culture.
The Ohlone are a group of around 50 tribes, each with their own related language.
Ohlone land stretches from the coast of San Francisco through to Monterey Bay down to the Salinas Valley.
The Bay Area of California, where Vincent and Louis live, is a place Ohlone people have called home for thousands of years. A place they continue to call home.
--MX start--
Audio for this documentary was gathered before the pandemic, and it was produced by Michelle Macklem, Zoe Tennant, and Vincent and Louis.
We’ll start in Vincent and Louis’ hometown, in San Lorenzo, near Oakland California.
--HOST INTRO END--
--PART 1: Language--
Vincent: Where we're at right now, we're in the marshlands. So traditionally, this whole area is a great willow thicket where our people would go and get basketry materials, be able to get tulle, be able to gather pickleweed, gather salts, shellfish, go fishing.
This area, it's it's long been lived in. You know, that's why it's so irking when people say that this is a new world, because this place is very old, you know, and it's been lived in for, you know, forever.
The world around us has changed. No question about it. And we're not far from downtown Oakland where, you know, there's city and then across the bay from here is San Francisco, which is just exploding right now with tech and with gentrification. Also are planes, we're on a plane route, which is because Oakland Airport, which is a major airport, it's about five miles away from here. But right here where we’re at, you don't have to look far to see nature, even though the city’s all around us.
We hear crows and geese and mallards and then we hear planes right after them as well and it's a reminder of just how complex it is.
--MX fade--
Vincent: The East Bay it's this incredibly, you know, diverse area with ranges and valleys. The landscape of the East Bay gets embedded within our language itself.
Louis: Our Indian languages, they connect us in a way that is very difficult sometimes otherwise to do. We have sounds in our Ohlone languages that don't occur in English, and there are sounds that occur in English that don't occur in our Ohlone languages.
Vincent: These highs and these lows that are there. These contrasts. There’s all of these hard and soft sounds that make it what it is. There are these long vowel sounds that are there. Like this phrase that I love, which is [Chochenyo phrase], which is, everything here on Earth, is beautiful.
Louis: And so, we are in many ways allowing our tongues to be taken over by our languages. And you have to give yourself to it in order for that to work properly.
Vincent: An example of this is when we talk about the seasons being described, you know, during the season that we just left of springtime, we call it [Chochenyo phrase], which means the earth has begun to flower on us. And during this time of flowering our ancestors would celebrate this abundance of flowers. They would make flower crowns for themselves. Instead of talking to each other, they would sing to each other, just because it's such a beautiful time of abundance, you know. But it also means that it's happening to us, like we're part of that blossoming as well.
Louis: And when you fall into this system of sounds and the system of grammar and syntax that is in line with what our people from before used every day and thought every thought in, and and sung every song in, then in some ways we sort of fall into this track that is in line with what they did. And then we can begin to think in ways that they thought and to see landscapes in the way that they saw them, to relate to plants in the way that they related to them and to communicate with one another the way that they did.
<<SCENE: Vincent and Louis talking in Chochenyo and Rumsen>>
--MX start--
V: Do you want to start?
L: Sure. So in Rumsen we call acorn [Rumsen].
V: We call it [Chochenyo].
L: To crack the acorn we say [Rumsen]. And then once they’re cracked [Rumsen].
V: We would say [Chochenyo].
L: Yeah, so the acorn flour, after it is crushed to crush it is [Rumsen]. And so it becomes [Rumsen]. Crushed.
V: For us it would be [Chochenyo], which means be broken into pieces.
L: Acorn soup is [Rumsen].
V: See that word is weird. Ours is [Chochenyo].
L: Our acorn bread is [Rumsen].
V: [Chochenyo]. Our acorn bread is [Chochenyo]
--MX fade--
Louis: As a child I was given a small black notebook and at that time, our family didn't have a lot of knowledge except for who we are. A lot of language had gone. But I was given this little black notebook and in it were these word lists from Ohlone and Chumash languages. My grandmother, Mary Lou, she told me to pay special attention to the Monterey column because that's our language. That’s us.
Louis: And I remember just reading it over and over again and getting the sense that there was this language that is ours. And even though it was very new to me, it wasn't at all foreign or unfamiliar, that it was our family language. And yet it was a very short list of words. And for a long time I thought that that's for a long time. I thought that that's all that there was. I still have that notebook.
Louis: And it seemed so small and yet so like enormous, as a child to see that... it sparked a lot of curiosity, like what else was there?
Pause
--MX start--
Vincent: Growing up, I always knew that I’m Ohlone that I'm from this place that my family has always lived here. That's something that I grew up proud about. And as a teenager, I started to see these word lists these very simple word lists that were in my language, Chochenyo, and those were really my first real glimpses into our language.
Louis: Vince and I met, at a conference called Breath of Life, which brings California Indian communities without speakers together to go through those archival materials.
--MX fade--
--PART 2: The Recordings--
<<ARCHIVAL: Isabel Meadows pronunciation>
Louis: So for our Rumsen language Isabel Meadows was recorded the most. And she was born in Carmel Valley. Her mother was born in the Mission, her grandmother and her great-grandmother, who she knew were born in a pre-contact world.
<<ARCHIVAL: Isabel Meadows pronunciation>
Louis: Isabel spent the last five years of her life, until she passed away in 1936, in Washington, D.C., being recorded, telling all of these stories.
<<ARCHIVAL: Isabel Meadows pronunciation>>
[fade out]
Vincent: Well, there's, there's a lot of really big feelings that come up with these old recordings. So when our people were were sharing this information, it was at a time that was physically unsafe for Indian people to share this with people outside of our community.
Vincent: John Peabody Harrington. He was an anthropologist and a linguist from the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. And he was especially focused on California Indian languages, primarily working with our community, the larger Ohlone community, and also the Chumash community.
Vincent: And he also developed these really long-standing, you know, I don't know what to call them necessarily, but working relationships, I guess, with people who he called informants, like Isabel Meadows right, you know, and for such a long time, Harrington would be the one that would get all of this recognition and credit for this work, which, you know, we don't want to leave him out and say that his work wasn’t valuable. But we put the recognition on those people who were sharing that information because without those people, none of this would be possible. And I mean, there wouldn't be any archives anywhere unless Native people wanted to share and give testimony to all of these things. They did it on their own and we deserve to give them credit for that.
--Music start--
Louis: And in those archived materials, our people recorded so much of our language
Vincent: they even teach us, you know, how to properly pronounce our words, you know, how to borrow from neighboring languages. They teach us our stories
Louis: so much about our foods, our songs
Vincent: about dance time, how beautiful that regalia was. They talk about it. They talk about, you know, the family structures, our values.
Louis: our traditional religion, our old stories
Vincent: They talk about the stars.
Vincent: Sometimes there's gossip in there, you know, people talking about other people like it, not always in bad ways, but sometimes even in fun ways. Don't you have stuff about some people over-salting their food?
Louis: Isabel says that there was a woman who called Isabel flatchested and she said that she was much she was more flat-chested than I was. Set the record straight.
Vincent: I love it, you know, because I could totally identify with so many people in my family using that exact same tone, you know, over almost 100 years later.
Louis: All of those things, everything that they could remember was written down.
Louis: All of a sudden that notebook, that little pinhole that I was peering through is opened up. And it has become like our, the central like core thing that we go to to learn about those old days. Those archived materials and our living elders, that's that's how we know the way.
--Music fade--
<<ARCHIVAL RECORDING: Harrington Recording 2: Isabel Meadows pronunciation>>
Louis: Isabel spent every single day for those five years being recorded. She lived across the street from the Smithsonian. The latest note that I've seen from her, she's in Gallinger Hospital. It's two weeks before she passes away and she's still going over pronunciations for us.
<<ARCHIVAL RECORDING: Harrington Recording 2: Isabel Meadows pronunciation>>
Louis: There's some at least 80,000 pages of notes that she's left for us, if not more. And in these she talks about food. She also talks about our acornbread, Pullum, and she talks about its place in our creation and also about the Pullum that she ate as a young person.
<<ARCHIVAL RECORDING: Harrington Recording 2: Isabel Meadows pronunciation>>
Louis: And she talks about exactly that texture, that jelly-like consistency on the inside and how when it is baked, it gets this crisp edge on the outside. And she talks about just how delicious it is. She says that she wishes that she could have some right then when she's being recorded.
<<ARCHIVAL RECORDING: Harrington Recording 2: Isabel Meadows pronunciation>>
--Music start--
Louis: And she's thousands of miles away from home and the people that she is describing, having made it passed away a long time before then. And yet this there's this imprinted memory of the flavor and the texture and the people who made it and a real longing for that.
<<ARCHIVAL RECORDING: Harrington Recording 2: Isabel Meadows pronunciation>>
Louis: So when we read about that acorn bread, you really want to you want to make it and you want to feed her and you want to try it, too. And so that's what we did. And the way to feed those people is to feed our family who are here today to revive our language and to make story again in the world.
SEB: Outside/In will be right back after a break.
--Music fade--
--PART 3: Acorn at the center--
SEB: This is Outside/In, a show about the natural world and how we use it. I’m Sam
Evans-Brown. Let’s pick up the story of Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino, Ohlone people in the Bay Area of California, and the acorn at the heart of it all.
--MX start--
Vincent: I think the best starting point for people to learn about Ohlone food is acorn bread, and the reason why is because it's one of our most traditional foods. It's a food that goes way back into the ancient and it's one of those foods that's so pure, takes so much work, so much time, so much intention. And you can only do it for you can only make it when the acorns are in season. And during fall time is when our community goes out and goes acorn gathering.
<<SCENE: acorn flour>>
And after the acorns are dried, which take several months, then they have to be processed and made into a flour, which means the tannic acids have to be taken out. They have to be leached, they have to be peeled, they have to be shelled. You know, they have to be ground in a mortar into a flour.
<<SCENE: acorn flour>>
And after this long process, which takes, you know, a lot of work, then the acorn flour is ready. But then the bread, it takes an extra step. It has to be at the right consistency. Rolled and then baked. And then after it's made, it has this delicious taste that is crisp on the outside, soft and gelatinous on the inside, sweet slightly sweet. But also it's just so full of like these flavors that we know all of those generations before us, I’m like mouthwatering right, all those generations before us, you know, that they would eat. And when I eat the acorn bread, there's something that's there. When you think about all of those family members before you eating that same exact flavor, there's like a connection that you can have through taste, you know?
--MX fade--
Louis: We are taught that we should have acorn with all of our foods in that creation time, to have acorn bread with each of our food is a verb just for that which is [Rumsen], which is to have whatever food with your acorn.
Vincent: It's similar for some cultures, like having rice for part of the diet or for other cultures having wheat. You know, acorn is that staple for us. And I think when I eat acorn, there's like a lot of memories that just flood throughout my mind, throughout my body. I remember the the first time I ever had it, I, I just I just remember I just didn't know what to say because, you know, for so long so many of us have just read about it, you know, because it's been such an inaccessible food for our people. It takes so much work. And when we get to eat it, it just it it gives us some clarity, you know, into how delicious that old world tasted
Louis: I know that when we made Black Oak acorn bread for my grandmother, it was her first time having that acorn bread. And I remember we were there eating with her, and she treated it like a very fine, delicate thing when she ate it. And it was exactly that. It was exactly the meaning that we that we give acorn because it sustained our people and because today it is a treasure to us. It feeds us in a way that's more than just physical.
Vincent: In the old days, all around, I mean, we just have to look to the name of the city Oakland...you know, the city it's called Oakland because of all of the oak groves that have been and those have been nurtured by our people for generations. We taste from those same those same trees that we know our our ancestors did. We taste the acorns from the same trees. The truth is, though, that with the city around us today, those oak groves are becoming increasingly threatened. We can go up into the hills and gather some acorn, but it's harder and harder for us.
--MX start--
--PART 4: It was sleeping--
Vincent: A lot of the traditional ways, those practices like our language our stories, I wondered why those things weren’t being practiced. And I started to ask my family and they immediately would tie in the suppression of those ways to colonization. That suppression that hit us, everything was attempted to be, you know, erased.
Vincent: The California Mission system was the very first stage of colonisation here in California. There were churches as well as these places where the Spanish were trying to forcibly bring in Indian people to to try to remove our culture. Now, from our perspective as Native people, what happened was when our homeland was invaded, the Spanish forcibly removed our people from those old villages, forced our people into these really claustrophobic, close-quartered Missions where people couldn't leave.
Vincent: And, you know, and then when you read the popular narrative that's out there, it it just adds salt to the wound because they make it seem like none of those things happened and the narrative that's often out there is that Indian people chose freely to go into the Missions. However, evidence and the oral tradition of our families, they they disprove that.
--MX fade--
Vincent: I used to work at Mission Dolores, which was one of the Missions that that mine and Louis ancestors were both forced to be in. And I worked there for seven years trying to change that story, to change that narrative. I worked as a curator there, a museum director, and it just got so hard because I was always reminded by that sadness. You know, if I went upstairs, I saw those old diaries that the Spanish kept of the death records. And you just see page after page after page of mass graves. You know, you you see those accounts of the Spanish abusing people. You see the accounts of the violence, of the humiliation that people had to endure.
Vincent: In these Missions, every aspect of Native culture was attempted to be changed. Our language was banned. Our religion was banned. Our traditional political leadership was banned. Marriage structures were changed. People couldn't pray in that traditional way. If people went to go and gather traditional foods, they would often be severely punished, flogged, kept in stocks, beaten.
Vincent: Growing up, there was so little that was around. We we would have to go to the Missions to feel really any kind of connection to our culture. And, you know, that's like, you know, Jewish people go to Auschwitz, you know, to to feel connection in in so many ways because those Missions they they attempted to destroy so much.
Louis: When we talk about those times with my grandma Mary Lou about when these things stopped being done for a time, she says that they were put away for that time and she says that they would be put away so that our family, those older people could protect their children.
Louis: And our family was afraid. Our elders today tell us, that those elders who they heard use language but who did not teach them language did that, they made that choice to deny their children language for a time, because they were afraid that if our neighbors and if the people at school had evidence and could prove that our children were Indian people and learning these things, that our family would be wiped off of the face of the earth. Is what our elders tell us, because they saw exactly those things happen to other people. And so my grandmother says that those things were put away so that we could be kept safe and that now that we are at a time where we are safe, when it is safe to do these things, that now those things are still there for us to take out again.
--MX start--
Louis: It made me think of a story that Isabel tells of a time when her mother, Loretta, prepared a [Rumsen], a seed soup entirely from tarweed, which is the seed that we gather. And tarweed as a black oily seed. And so the soup was black and oily and it had a strong perfume smell. And there was a man who lived nearby, one of our traditional doctors named Fortunato. He was born before the Mission time and he was forced into the Carmel Mission and he survived it. And she brought this soup to him and she said to him to take this whole bowl, this whole basket of soup and to have it and it excited him, he was a very serious man in all the stories. But it excited him. And he says, ‘Yes, I'll eat it and let's eat it together and let's eat it and let us let it make us happy like it did before.’ And that's what we do, is we when we use these foods, these foods heal us they heal our families. They make us think of those times before those happy times, and they help us to heal that time in between when it got very hard.
--MX fade / mix -
--PART 5: Cafe Ohlone, the revitalization--
<<SCENE: Cafe Ohlone>>
Louis: We're here at Cafe Ohlone at 2430 Bancroft Way in Berkeley. We are getting all set up right now for our lunch tasting. These are violas and nasturtiums. These are California hazelnuts that were roasted, wet-roasted with salt from San Francisco Bay. That's a red abalone shell from the central coast of California, San Francisco, Monterey Bay...
Vincent: We run Cafe Ohlone in Berkley, which is the first Ohlone restaurant in modern times. It's something that we've we've needed for a long time in our community.
<<SCENE: Walking through the bookstore into the back area>>
Vincent:So you walk through these very narrow passages, full to the ceiling of books. Its an old bookstore, that makes me feel really good walking through here,
Vincent: We created the space. It's in the back of a bookstore in a patio where we converted the space patio to reflect our culture, reflect our values, reflect our aesthetics.
--MX fade--
Vincent: Unfortunately, for such a long time, California cuisine has been associated with European cuisine that would sometimes embrace farm-to-table traditions. California cuisine is not anything that has an avocado on it or goat cheese pizza, you know, like. But what that does in action for us as Native people is it erases us from that story.
--MX start--
Vincent: The truth is that California has these rooted food traditions. And so much of this is shaped by the landscape of California, it’s full of valleys and full of ranges, of mountain ranges. And so we push back against California cuisine as it's presented often, which is embracing those Western ingredients. And we say California cuisine is what's Indigenous to California.
Vincent: Hello everybody. Thank you all for your patience. We’re just about ready to get started for our Thursday tasting. But before everybody comes back we’d like to invite you to sit at our communal redwood table...close to our families old villages...
SEB: The pandemic struck after most of this documentary was recorded. Cafe Ohlone has closed...for now.
This final part of the story was recorded by Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino in their home near Oakland, California.
--PART 6: Present day --
Vincent: Testing, one, two, three.
[Counting in Chochenyo]
--MX start--
Louis: Testing. Testing. Testing.
Louis: We're here in Xučyun, in San Lorenzo, California, the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. It is coming upon winter solstice.
--MX fade--
Vincent: In early March when we saw how serious the pandemic was becoming here in California and across the world, globally, we immediately went to our elders and we asked our elders of what we should do. They have so much wisdom. And the eldest generation of our family also survived through the end of the last pandemic, which was the Spanish flu.
Vincent: And they told us that we should take this very seriously. And as a result, we closed Cafe Ohlone.
Louis: And even in those archives that were recorded in the 20s and 30s, our people talk about times of pandemic and epidemic diseases that came here to California with colonization were devastating to our people who had no specific ways of treating those illnesses.
Vincent: So over this history, we know that there's ways from our elders to be able to do our best to make sense and survive through it.
Louis: But we also know that during those times our people looked after one another. And so we've transitioned into this time of a lot of community. We've turned inward right now. And it is a very difficult time, but it's also a very beautiful time because of that togetherness.
--MX start--
Vincent: Both of our languages right now are seeing so much hope and so much strength that's connected to more people speaking, our language becoming more common. We’ve shifted our language classes entirely over Zoom, which it turns out works really well. You know, I feel like the pandemic's like showed us all like different ways of doing things.
Vincent: We've had thirty-two solid weeks of uninterrupted language work, and that's it's been so wonderful. In our classes, we have elders, our Auntie Dottie, who's going to be 90 years old. And she's there as well as babies who are being named in Chochenyo right now, listening in from the earliest months of their life.
Louis: A baby came in the morning after he was born. The mother Zoomed in from the maternity ward and there he was.
Vincent: Right.
Louis and Vincent laugh together
--MX fade--
--pause--
Louis: Of course, during this time, the work of Cafe Ohlone has continued.
--MX start--
Louis: Cafe Ohlone is more than a physical space, it's an idea, it is a community, it is the restoration of our traditional foods. It is the safety, security and celebration of our living Ohlone community.
Vincent: So we started to think of how we could be able to keep this public component of Cafe Ohlone. And what we came up with was these curated meal boxes.
Vincent: They're these cedar and Redwood handmade boxes from salvaged cedar, salvaged Redwood from right here in the Bay Area. And when you open up one of these boxes, there's foods that we gather right here in our homelands
Louis: Beginning with acorn
Vincent: this delicious black oak acorn soup. Sometimes acornbread or Bay nut truffles with watercress and dried California strawberries
Louis: And also our hazelnut biscuits, which are delicious and savory, our Ohlone salad.
Vincent: Things like local chanterelles and oyster mushrooms with a side of walnut oil.
Louis: Shellfish, mussels and clams...
Vincent: They get cooked in a kombu seaweed broth with the seaweed harvested not too far from here and with lots of pickleweed that comes from the marshes in the bay.
Louis: A dessert course...
Vincent: such as Louis’s, now famous, acorn flour brownies or hazelnut flour brownies that are so rich and so good.
Louis: And this is to continue the work of educating the public, even during this time that they know this place here in the East Bay and the Bay Area all the way down to Monterey and Big Sur continues to be Ohlone land and continues to be the homelands of our families.
--MX fade--
--brief pause/ break--
--MX start--
Vincent: Always have faith that better days are ahead of us, ewweh ṭuuxi huyyuwiš. Brighter days are ahead. This moment that we're in right now, we'll get through it, it will pass. Even for us, it's good just to remember that, because it helps us get through moments where this pandemic feels like it just isn’t ending at all. But to know that ewweh ṭuuxi huyyuwiš, that brighter days are always ahead of us, that's something that keeps us sane and makes our hearts feel good.
CREDITS
Sam Evans-Brown: This episode of Outside/In was produced by Michelle Macklem, Zoe Tennant, Vincent Medina, and Louis Trevino, with support from Justine Paradis, Taylor Quimby, and me, Sam Evans-Brown.
Erika Janik is our executive producer.
For links to more of Michelle and Zoe’s work, and for Vincent and Louis’ work at Café Ohlone, visit outsideinradio.org or check out the show notes.
Music in this episode came from Blue Dot Sessions.
Our theme is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Outside/In is a production of NHPR.