Good Seeds

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A Menominee Indian Food Memoir

Thomas Pecore Weso

An intimate exploration of food, culture, and tradition for the Menominee Nation of Wisconsin.

128 pages, 5.5 x 8.5
Hardcover: $19.95 | ISBN: 978-0-87020-771-6
Ebook: $15.99 | ISBN: 978-0-87020-772-3
Publication Date: 9/23/2016

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Front cover of Good Seeds by Thomas Pecore Weso

Description

To the Menominee people, the "good seeds” of life are the manomin, or wild rice, that also gives the tribe its name. In this unique food memoir, tribal member Thomas Pecore Weso takes readers on a cook’s journey through North Woods tribal lands, connecting Menominee food—beaver, trout, blackberry, wild rice, maple sugar, partridge—to the colorful individuals who taught him Indigenous values and traditions.

With a rare perspective as a Native American anthropologist and artist, Weso mixes a poignant personal story with the seeds of Menominee cooking traditions. He tells of the foods and the people who helped shape the person he became. His grandfather Moon was a medicine man, whose morning prayers formed the foundation for all the day’s meals. His grandmother Jennie “made fire” each morning in a wood-burning stove and oversaw huge breakfasts of wild game, fish, and fruit pies. His uncles taught him to hunt bear, deer, squirrels, raccoons, and skunks for the daily larder. Along with authentic family recipes, Weso recalls favorite foods served at the Menominee fair and at local diners.

In Good Seeds, adventurous cooks will learn from Weso's recipes, and readers of all stripes will appreciate the often-humorous stories about reservation life during the mid-twentieth century.

Author Bio

Thomas Pecore Weso was an author, educator, artist, and enrolled member of the Menominee Indian Nation of Wisconsin. He was the author of many articles and personal essays, a biography of Langston Hughes with coauthor Denise Low, and the children’s book Native American Stories for Kids. His follow up to Good Seeds, Survival Food: North Woods Stories by a Menominee Cook, was published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press in 2023. Weso was an alumnus of Haskell Indian Nations University and the University of Kansas, where he earned a master’s degree in Indigenous studies.

In Tom Weso’s youth, a meal for his Menominee family took an entire year to plan. Eating with the seasons, you get wild game, fish, maple, berries, squash, and other delectables. But you get them only once a year. It is this sustaining way of life that Weso narrates for us in “Good Seeds.” These stories and recipes make us appreciate the past, make us long for woods and waters today, and make us just plain hungry.

Heid E. Erdrich

Author of “Original Local: Indigenous Foods, Stories, and Recipes from the Upper Midwest"

“Weso tells his tale of Menominee history that began with his family in a house that had been an Indian service jail. There is necessary information here—diesel fuel gels at 40 below. Pines burst at 20 below. The whole Wisconsin winter he knew begins to thaw in Good Seeds. Weso says his grandmother used to start fire each morning. I want to say, it is Weso who starts fire, but the fire he builds is for the written word. It is language that sparks this work to life.”

—Diane Glancy, poet, playwright, and author of Pushing the Bear: After the Trail of Tears