The following excerpt is a chapter from Survival Food: North Woods Stories by a Menominee Cook, released in fall 2023 by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press. In this hybrid work of modern foodways, Indigenous history, and creative nonfiction, Thomas Pecore Weso recalls the foods that influenced his youth in northern Wisconsin: subsistence meals from hunted, fished, and gathered sources; the culinary traditions of the German, Polish, and Swedish settler descendants in the area; and the commodity foods distributed by the government—like canned pork, dried beans, and powdered eggs—that made up the bulk of his family’s pantry, which his mom called “survival food.” Weso writes in his introduction, “I cannot tell a story without thinking of the food connected to it.” This chapter, titled “Commodity Foods and Mom’s Cooking,” features Weso’s recollections about the foods he and his family members ate in 1969, as well as a related recipe.
The completion of the first phase of tribal housing on the Menominee Reservation, in the late 1960s, stirred local resentments over a new demographic. Menominee residents from the cities filled the new Banana Island neighborhood. Some reservation residents were uneasy with the cultural values held by those returning from an urban diaspora. Some were members of an organization called Determination of Rights and Unity for Menominee Shareholders (DRUMS), formed in 1970 to regain federal recognition. They were not as militant as the American Indian Movement members, but they weren’t pacifists, either.
Some detractors of DRUMS began referring to the Banana Island neighborhood as Commot Lane. This pejorative nickname referred to the large number of inhabitants, perhaps all of them, receiving government-surplus commodity foods. In local dialect, the word commodity was shortened to “commot.”
Qualifications to live in these low-income tribal housing units were based on a complicated mathematical formula using federal income guides and the total number of residents per house. Approval to move into one of these new homes also could prequalify that family to receive commots. The tribe had streamlined the two application processes, so bundled paperwork for one program followed the applicant from one program office to another. The intent was to provide as high a standard of living as possible for these Menominees as inducement for them to return to their northern homeland. My mother and stepfather took the steps to house us and to acquire commots.
Things were hectic for my family in 1969. For three days a week—Monday, Wednesday, and Friday—I was alone. On those days, my mom commuted fifty miles each way from our home in Banana Island to Green Bay in order to work on a teaching degree at the University of Wisconsin. What was even more difficult for her, and the family, was that she did not drive. For eight semesters, three summer practicums, and a couple of internships, she bummed rides from a revolving list of students and factory workers who also drove those hundred miles daily. She managed to make all of her required collegiate special events and teaching internships, too. Just getting back and forth from home to school was a monumental hurdle for her to overcome, never mind all of the required classwork and studying. At the time, for that summer anyway, my White stepfather was gainfully employed as a tribal cop and took his meals elsewhere. My four siblings, two brothers
