Native American chef, television personality and Oklahoma City resident Loretta Barrett Oden is featured during the annual Red Earth Buffalo Bash scheduled Saturday, Oct. 23, 7-11 pm, at the new Red Earth Museum & Gallery in downtown Oklahoma City.
Chef Oden and Joe Jungman, proprietor of the Paseo Grill and downtown Oklahoma City’s Whole Enchilada, will create a one-of-a-kind menu for the annual fundraising event featuring authentic Native American cuisine. The Buffalo Bash also features live and silent auctions of American Indian fine art including jewelry, pottery, paintings, weavings, along with trips and other packages.
Oden, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation headquartered in Shawnee, OK, began her enthusiastic relationship with food as a child in her mother’s kitchen. She learned at an early age of the powerful connection between food and her Native American culture and has spent most of her adult years studying, teaching and adapting recipes to preserve the culinary legacy of her upbringing.
As the proprietor of the Corn Dance Café at the Hotel Santa Fe in New Mexico, Oden received international acclaim for her innovative menu and interpretation of centuries-old recipes indigenous to the Americas. She was featured in a 13-week series for PBS entitled Seasoned With Spirit, A Native Cook’s Journey, and has also appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America, the Food Network’s In Food Today and on the PBS series Savor the Southwest.
Native artists with works featured in the live and silent auctions include Kenneth Johnson, Benjamin Harjo, Jr., Scott Roberts, Michael Martinez, Dorothy Sullivan, Sharron Ahtone-Harjo and dg smalling.
Throughout the evening Indian Soul Men will be performing original R&B, soul and blues music. The band lead by Terry Tsotigh, an accomplished Native American Flutist and champion Fancy Dancer, is currently working on their first album of original R&B, soul and blues compositions.
Reservations for the evening are $75 per person and can be made online at www.redearth.org or by calling (405) 427-5228. Co-chairmen of the 2010 Red Earth Buffalo Bash are Shannon Edwards and James Lambertus. Other committee members include Leslie Blair, Jap Blankenship, Elsie Fischbein; Andrea Freeman, Joe Jungman, Beth Barnes hall, Barbara and Ben Harjo, Loretta Oden, Kim Searls, G Calvin Sharpe and dg smalling.
For more than 30 years Red earth, Inc has been dedicated to its mission to promote the rich traditions of American Indian arts and cultures through educational programs, the annual Red Earth Festival and the Red Earth Museum.
Red Earth is recognized as the region’s premier organization for advancing the understanding and continuation of Native American traditional and contemporary culture and arts.
