Arts Council of Greater New Haven Blog

Sherry Pocknett Brings Mashpee Wampanoag Flavors To Arts & Ideas

Culinary Arts  |  Food & Drink  |  Gateway Community College  |  International Festival of Arts & Ideas Kapp Singer | June 26th, 2024

Esther Chiang (right), Melanie Barocas Mayer, and Sherry Pocknett (left) make corn cakes. Photos Kapp Singer. Esther Chiang added a few cups of cornmeal, some baking soda, and a touch of salt and pepper to a bowl. She slowly poured in water until the mixture was the consistency of thick pancake batter. After stirring in a few scallions and cranberries, she scooped it into a hot pan. “I want to cook, I want to eat, and I want to hear the stories,” said Chiang, the food justice education coordinator at Common Ground High School. As she made corn cakes alongside two other volunteers, Chef Sherry Pocknett looked on, giving them tips—a little more water, a little hotter pan, “too much oil!” On Tuesday, the two came together at an Indigenous cooking workshop and dinner with Pocknett, a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe and the first Indigenous woman to receive a James Beard award. Held at Gateway Community College’s Cafe Vincenzo as part of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, the event brought in roughly fifty people. Diners enjoyed samples of venison skewers, salmon bites, and turkey meatballs. As they ate “Indian tacos” with fry bread and beef, blueberry fritters, and quahog fritters, Pocknett told stories about Indigenous cuisines of the Northeast and her own journey to becoming a chef. Diners line up to try the food. Her first food memory came on a trip she took with her father when she was eight, to Washburn Island off the southern end of Cape Cod. Her father dropped her and her siblings off on the island, gave them some matches and fishing line, and told them to fend for themselves. She remembers picking blueberries and digging for clams, quahogs, and mussels. “There was an abundance of food,” she said. “I learned well, and I try to teach my children the same.” Back at home, after receiving a Suzy Homemaker oven, she began cooking. She remembers stealing all the food out of the fridge at home and making a meal for her brothers. “I knew then I was going to be a chef,” she said with a laugh. As she grew up, she learned to cook at The Flume, her family’s restaurant on Cape Cod. Her uncle was the chef and her grandmother the baker. She eventually became the food and beverage director at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center in Ledyard, Connecticut. There, she transformed a menu of hotdogs and grilled cheese into one with dishes like turtle soup, venison, and smoked fish. In 2023, she received the prize for best chef in the Northeast category for her Charlestown, Rhode Island restaurant Sly Fox Den Too. The restaurant, which she opened in 2021, was meant to be a simple stepping stone for a larger farm-to-table location that she is planning to open in Preston, Connecticut. But while she fundraised to open the larger restaurant, her food started turning heads. “I got nominated and I was like ‘what the heck is the James Beard Award?’” she said. Pocknett. With the restaurant she is developing in Preston, she hopes to bring new life to the traditional foods of the Northeast. In addition to the dining room and kitchen, her plans include a cultural center and a two-and-a-half acre farm, which she’s already begun planting with raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, and sassafras. “I’m hoping to bring the beach plums back,” Pocknett added. “I don’t notice so many on the Cape anymore.” Pocknett recounted that, since she grew up on Cape Cod, she’s seen the toll that environmental degradation takes on Indigenous food systems and traditions. The ponds she swam in as a child have since been contaminated by the area’s septic systems and fertilizer runoff from lawns and golf courses. Combined with warmer water temperatures, frequent blooms of toxic algae make swimming dangerous. “My grandkids can’t swim in that lake anymore,” she added. “It just makes me so sad what’s happening with the water.” Not only does the algae cause the pond to be unswimmable, but it also kills fish, frogs, and other animals and plants, disrupting traditional Mashpee Wampanoag foodways. “Instead of making that grass green, just plant some food. That grass is poison,” Pocknett said. Despite this, Pocknett’s visit to Arts & Ideas was one of hope. Just a week before coming to New Haven, she found out that she was cancer-free after a years-long battle with the disease. She is finishing her chemotherapy treatment next week, just as she turns 64. “I’m gonna live to see my new restaurant open,” Pocknett said, as tears welled up in her eyes. That hope found its way into the food on Tuesday. Diners scraped their plates clean and fresh corn cakes were passed around. “My mom always says you have to put love into your cooking,” said her daughter and business partner Cheyenne Galvin-Pocknett. “That energy goes into your food.”