My mother was sent away from everything she knew to learn to not be Indigenous. She had to leave me so, she left me with my gramma. In that time I learned to speak Cherokee as my first language + learned about all out foods that were provided by God in the wild. We had crawdads (fried or as a soup) Grape or Huckleberry dumplings, bean balls, these are just a few of what we ate. I think my favorite was bean balls because I could carry them around to eat, I couldn’t be still for too long so this was my to go food. I learned to cook all these while I grew up at Gramma’s.