FoodLove 5: Mackenzie Grinnell

Episode 4: Mackenzie Grinnell, Keeper and Teacher of Traditional Foods, and Two Hooligans Cider businessman

Listen to Jamestown S’Klallam tribe’s Mackenzie Grinnell, a Two Hooligans Cider businessman. He teaches traditional foods and ancestral love of the land to area high schoolers despite the tragedy of U.S. history with his tribe. At the heart of it, Mackenzie says, “My ancestors have always been part of this landscape with everything from the mountaintops into the waterways with the salmon and the seal that when we were removed, we weren’t the only ones getting sick eating this lard and eating this white flour, and getting diabetes. We didn’t have diabetes until the 1940’s. Now Native Americans have the highest diabetes rate.” 

In the 1940’s on the Olympic Peninsula, indigenous peoples were severed from their food sources and forced to remain on reservation land unable to hunt and gather in ways to sustain themselves with proper nutrition.

Out of love for the land, his tribe, and people, Mackenzie offers kindness and grace to help others forge their own relationships with the land to gather sustainable nourishment. His work is the embodiment of FoodLove: The Space Between Terroir and the Tao of Food. 

Learn more about Jamestown S’Klallam Tribal history.

Note: I’ve written to Gather Victoria for her Lemon Balm Stinging Nettle Cake recipe. If I hear back, I will share it. In the meantime, please go to her page and support her Patreon Account. She is a wealth of knowledge too.