Our foods consisted of corn, beans, various types of squash, agricultural produce, and local game. More specifically, our ancestors from the Southeast consumed fish as a regular part of their diet. Many of the foods that our ancestors ate, we still eat regularly today.
For example, we eat almost every form of fish as a regular part of our diet, including baked, grilled, sautéed, in soups and more. Our ancient ancestors from Central America, prior to settling along the Mississippi River, ate a corn porridge, both the aristocrats and the less fortunate, alike. Many families still eat a corn porridge that is referred to as grits, made from white corn.
As our ancestors before us, we continue to use corn as a daily staple within our diets. Examples of our corn used today includes, but is not limited to:
Berries and nuts were also a part of our ancestral diets, as it still is today. I recall visiting my grandmother in the southeast, as a young child, and I recall her allowing me to go pick berries from her home garden to put into my breakfast cereal.
As young children we were encouraged to play outside much of our day, and I recall many of the neighborhood children collecting multiple upon multiple pitchers of wild black berries to eat and to use in desserts for our families.
Just as we still use our ancestral skills of agriculture today, our ancient ancestors were more advanced agricultural scientists.
Our medicine practices are best described as Paleo-Indian and Aboriginal Natural Science.
When I was a young child, maybe around seven years old, over 40 years ago, I was playing around and joking with my father, while my mother was ironing clothes. We were visiting my maternal grandmother who lived in a very rural town, not far from a railroad track.
Nonetheless, my arm hit the bed where the hot iron was sitting, and the iron fell on my arm and burnt through my skin---I recall only seeing my skin split open and a mass of white inner skin. I was skinny so the iron didn't have many layers of skin to get through to the layers of skin underneath. Today, I still have a small scar shaped like the letter V where my skin split open. At some point, my aunt mixed up a salve and bandaged my injury. I never had to go to the hospital despite the severity of the wound.
Today, many of our members use a combination of Aboriginal Natural Science and Modern Medicine.