Good Seeds: A Menominee Indian Food Memoir

Publisher's Description (Wisconsin Historical Society): For Menominee Indians, the "Good Seeds” of life are the manoomin or wild rice that also gives the tribe its name. This new food memoir by tribal member Thomas Pecore Weso takes readers on a cook’s journey through the North Woods tribal lands. Weso connects Menominee food—beaver, trout, blackberry, wild rice, maple sugar, partridge—to the colorful individuals who taught him Indigenous values, including his medicine man grandfather, Moon, and his grandmother Jennie. 

Author's Biography (Wisconsin Historical Society): Thomas Pecore Weso is an enrolled member of the Menominee Indian Nation of Wisconsin. He is the author of many articles, personal essays, and a biography of Langston Hughes with coauthor Denise Low. Weso has a master's degree in Indigenous studies from the University of Kansas and teaches at Kansas City Kansas Community College. He is a speaker for the Kansas Humanities Council library program Talk about Literature in Kansas with copublisher of Mammoth Publications. He is also an artist, with paintings in collections throughout the Kansas City area, and he has had solo and group shows at the Haskell Cultural Center, the Hutchinson Arts Center, and other venues.

Resource type: Book (Non-fiction)

Age recommendation: Grades 7-9, 10-12, Post secondary

Keywords: Indigenous food memoir, food, memoir, Menominee, fire making, making fire, hunting, fishing, farming, hunt, fish, farm, pow wow, powwow, pow-wow, coffee, Ojibwe, Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, hospitality, Indian Service jail, family, reservation, rez, matriarchal, matriarch, seasonal eating, seasonal meals, seasonal, routine, ritual, Native American Church, Catholicism, survival, dream, dreaming, Pe-yote, peyote, beading, Wesos, Weshos, preservation, preserves, Wolf River, Lake Michigan, community, recipes

Year of publication: 2016

Publisher information: Wisconsin Historical Society Press