Arts on Tap: Good Seeds Book Talk and Signing

Event Phone: 715-479-4060

A presentation and book signing by Thomas Pecore Weso, Menominee tribal member, artist and anthropologist. 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 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.

Cooks will learn “How to Cook a Beaver” and more from his authentic recipes — such as Rose Hip Tea, Wild Rice Casserole, and Maple Candy. Amateur and professional historians will appreciate his often humorous personal stories about reservation life during the mid-twentieth century, when many elders, fluent in the Algonquian language, practiced the old ways. With his rare perspective as a Native anthropologist and artist, he mixes a poignant personal story with the seeds of Menominee cooking traditions to write a memoir that showcases foods many cooks don’t have in their repertoires and details Reservation culture and cooking with humor and heart.

This event is free, with cash bar open.

This event is sponsored in part by the Olson Memorial Library and WXPR.