- [Buki Voiceover] The original settlers of New Jersey?

No, not the Italians.

No, not the Founding Fathers.

Native American tribes have roots in New Jersey, stretching longer than any other group of people.

Back in March, we were invited to a communal bonfire to shake off the chill of winter.

We'll meet the elders, as well as the new generation of Native Americans in the state, fighting to keep their culture and their identities alive.

But first, superstar politician, beloved New Jersey resident, former Newark mayor and proud vegan Senator Cory Booker.

[upbeat music] - That is the cutest dog.

- [Man] That's Kobe.

It's the cafe dog.

- Hi, Kobe, how are you?

That's the Nutella pizza.

Do you mind if I take a closer look, no?

[all laughing] - [Buki Voiceover] Senator Cory Booker, raised in the suburbs of Bergen County with his older brother.

His parents shattered the glass ceiling by being one of the first black executives at IBM in the '60s.

That discipline and hard work inspired him to be an agent of change and was Newark's mayor from 2006 to 2013.

Senator Booker is thought to be the architect behind the revitalization of Newark.

He's the first African-American senator to represent New Jersey.

And as a chair on the Senate Agriculture Committee, which oversees farming legislation to ensure the food we get is safe and nutritious.

His goal is to revitalize the way we see our food.

- Thank you, Senator Booker, for joining us.

- I'm pretty psyched.

It's just nice to be interview with somebody that lives less than a mile from me.

[both laughing] - To get started, I mean, you became vegetarian in 1992.

- Yes.

- And then you switched over to veganism in 2014.

- Yes.

- What were you eating as a child?

[laughing] - I grew up in a black family, so.

- I know you did.

That's why I was like, what were you chewing on?

- My father even opened for a little while, a barbecue joint on Teaneck Road.

- What is his specialty?

- He made these ribs that would just melt in your mouth.

So, I mean, we ate what probably the typical American black family would eat, you know, and my and we had some Louisiana roots too, so there would be everything from gumbo all the way to my dad just making hamburgers on the grill.

It was very much a meat eating family.

- So then how did we get to vegetarianism in 1992?

[upbeat music] - So I was a competitive athlete.

I played football in Stanford and was always trying to figure out what would make my body run best.

And I tried this the switch, and within three months my body was feeling so incredible.

Better recovery after workouts, better sleep, more energy.

Then the more I read about food, the more I just said I can never go back to eating meat.

- So what did your parents think about you going vegan, especially Dad with his fall off the bone delicious ribs?

- The expectation was that that they might not greet it, but I think they were starting to become food conscious enough that they looked at me and said they knew that was the right way to go, even though they would never go that way themselves.

One of my big campaign team members, guy named Maldonado, he looked at me when I was running for office here and he said, "Just no way a black city "is gonna elect a vegetarian."

- Oh I thought that too.

- Yeah, "No way a black city is gonna elect a vegetarian "as mayor of their city."

But it turns out that people really don't care about what you eat, they care about how you serve, how you lead.

- [Buki Voiceover] During his time as mayor, Senator Booker was a lead-by-example type of guy.

He still maintains a residence in one of the poorest parts of the city.

He shoveled snow for residents in the winter months.

[gentle upbeat music] He ran into a burning building to rescue a neighbor.

And participated in the snap challenge to show what it's really like to live off of $40 a week in grocery assistance.

Senator Booker knows the dramatic impact food could have on the culture.

- Ginger.

And this is raspberry with health bread.

- [Buki Voiceover] And as a vegan he has a discerning palate for what's good.

Like these desserts from Sihana Cafe.

- Oh, my God.

- Our thoughts.

- Oh, my God.

I just need to thank Jesus for that.

[both laughing] - So, are you a vegan, as in let's do rice is grains, beans?

Or you're a vegan, as in you're good with the Impossible Burger and the fake cheese and the meat substitutes?

- That's a great question because there's junk food vegans.

- [Buki] Right.

- I prefer to be a whole food, plant based vegan, but I definitely have a weakness for ice cream.

- Mine is potato chips.

I need a potato chip.

So how do you maintain that being that you're a senator, on the go all around?

- Well, your gut is gonna adapt.

I love it, I mean, I really do enjoy the foods that I eat, the variety of foods that I get.

And it seems like the world is supercharged now, to get more vegan.

It's become a lot easier.

You know, though, Newark, back in the early 2000s, it was hard to find.

- I was going to say, when you first got here, was there any place to get anything?

- As a vegetarian, it was tough.

What's exciting to me now is that, you know, in the black communities in Newark, there's all of these vegan places are opening at a speed that's exciting to me.

So it's become a lot easier.

And I didn't know this, but African-Americans actually overrepresented vegans.

There's a higher percentage of us.

- Really?

- And if you go online and just type in black vegan on your Instagram, you're gonna see all these black vegans popping up that have really become nationally known.

[upbeat music] - [Buki Voiceover] One of these new exciting businesses is Urban Vegan, which opened in 2021 by Newark native Adenah Bayoh.

- Come visit us.

- [Buki Voiceover] Together with culinary designer, Emeka Onugha, their goal is to bring innovative taste to comfort classics using locally sourced ingredients at an accessible price point.

[upbeat music] - Oftentimes, people have this conversation that vegan foods are not going to satisfy that hearty desire people have towards eating.

It's not gonna feel decadent, it's not gonna feel comforting.

And all of those notions are challenged and destroyed here.

[people speaking indistinctly] I will say that on Cheesesteak really represents how we do it here in the North, in Brick City.

You know, we add mayonnaise, we catch up.

That's our style.

This is a soy product.

But it's 100% vegan and believe it or not, it melts very much like dairy-based cheese does.

So as you see, it's a nice amount.

This is a Brick City Cheesesteak.

With some ketchup.

- So is that why you got on to the Committee for Agriculture last year?

- It is.

- And then why did it take you so long to get on there?

[both laughing] We've been waiting.

- If you had told me when I first got to Washington that I was going to be trying hard to get on the ag committee, I would have laughed at you.

What's a guy from New Jersey being on the ag committee?

Little did I know when I became senator is, agricultural community here told me it's one of our top drivers of our economic strength in New Jersey.

People don't realize our farmers are going out of business at record rates.

So you have farmers in crisis.

You have rural communities in crisis as these monopolizing companies are driving rural communities economically to their knees.

- So what can we do?

And as normal regular, smegular people, what can we do to promote food equity?

- Begin to talk about it, begin to look at your own family and how you're affected by it.

We are all in crisis when it comes to access to healthy foods, to our food systems, to the chemicals that are put into our food systems.

But we have a massive nutrition problem where our kids have access to food.

But it's the kind of food that is driving epidemic-level obesity and sickness within our communities.

- I was shocked that Newark, Elizabeth Plainfield, New Brunswick, Jersey City, where a one bedroom apartment will cost you $3,000 a month.

And there are food deserts.

How is it still possible that there are people that don't have access to fresh fruit and vegetables?

- Right, and so we call them food deserts.

I would call them nutrition deserts because we have access to cheap, hyper processed, unhealthy foods everywhere.

And so we're debating how to provide health care.

The real debate is why are we having so much of a demand for it?

Because people can't get access to healthy food.

- Back in 1992, when you first came.

- Yes.

- No options.

Black people were not for it.

- No.

- And here we are at 2022 and they're outpacing.

What was the change?

- Well, I think the one is a consciousness in the black community that we're not eating like our great grandparents did.

And as a result, we're a lot less healthy.

Black men, especially, have the lowest life expectancy, except for maybe Native American men.

The number one killers for the black community are not gun violence.

It's not car accidents.

It is diet related diseases that are killing us.

And so I think the black community is responding to that.

You're seeing more civil rights leaders starting to talk openly about we need to do something about giving getting our our communities access to healthy foods.

[gentle upbeat music] - [Buki Voiceover] In the central ward of Newark is Blueberry Cafe an enterprise run under the watchful eye of Rasheena Burroughs.

And at Blueberry Cafe, the fresh produce is front and center.

- We took a chance when we opened Blueberry Cafe.

Our goal was to open a real food, healthy, vegan restaurant.

[upbeat music] Everything that we use from these dandelion greens, which are a powerhouse of nutrients.

All of our food is 100% organic.

We wouldn't have it any other way.

We're cooking with clean, filtered, alkaline water.

[upbeat music] - [Buki Voiceover] If Urban Vegan was meant to showcase comfort food, Blueberry Cafe focuses on fresh, nutrient rich ingredients.

You want not only for the food to taste good, but we really want you to get a cellular benefit from it.

- My favorite is the Spelt Porridge.

I get this all the time.

I drove an hour, I live in Freehold, so I drive an hour to come down here.

I'm not totally vegan.

But this makes me feel good.

[upbeat music] - [Rasheena] My goal is to expand within urban communities because that's where it's really needed.

- [Buki Voiceover] You wouldn't think that a vegan restaurant would survive here.

But Rasheena and her crew are thriving.

Blueberry Cafe has two neighboring restaurants that are also vegan.

Together, they emphasize wellness within their community.

- These new restaurants are more than just vegan food.

It is definitely a home for the community.

We do lots of events.

We have yoga people come out and do yoga.

We have open mics.

We decided to cover it from A to Z, you know, just give the place a home, a network.

And even if you're stressed out for a day, just come and sit.

- I've heard that politics may not be the end all for you.

- I may not be in politics forever, but I do want to live a life of impact.

And what that means is, doesn't necessarily mean changing the world, 'cause I can make a world of change to my mentees that I work with here in Newark, who are now like family to me.

- Now, will anything stop you from possibly running for president again in the future?

- What's the saying?

"The best way to make God laugh "is to make plans for yourself."

- [Buki] That's right.

- Yeah, so who knows?

I'm not writing anything off as a possibility.

- Well, if you decide I need you to need to call me up.

- [Booker] Okay.

- Because I will, Olivia Pope this.

[Senator laughing] All right.

- [Buki Voiceover] Senator Booker has always rooted for the underdog.

And not only has he set his sights on food equality, but environmental equality as well.

Last year, he reintroduced the Environmental Injustice Act to right environmental wrongs that have disproportionately harmed communities of color, low income and indigenous communities.

Senator Booker knows long before Columbus arrived on our shores, indigenous people were calling this land home.

[gentle upbeat music] Let's take a look back at the past.

40 miles north of Newark is Mahwah, New Jersey.

Once the ancestral home of the Ramapough Lenape, these lands are still sacred to the people who descended from these tribes.

Even of suburban developments and municipal buildings are creeping into the hills.

We've been invited today to meet some of the younger members.

They now keep their traditions alive through gatherings like this one.

This dedicated group is here to play games, share stories, and give me a front row seat along the way.

Starting with seventh generation Keshia, a 26-year-old educator and dynamo who is wise beyond her years.

- Fire is sacred in the sense that it holds energy, it gives energy, but it's also a community thing, the same way food is.

This is something that I would say we used to do often as a as a community, and we're trying to get back to that.

In a lot of ways, this is the start of a new fire.

And I think we've lost a lot of elders across the new country and across Turtle Island right now.

And we need new fires because we're losing some older ones.

- [Buki Voiceover] And Two Clouds of the Turtle Clan who is more than enthusiastic when it comes to talking about his culture.

- I'm going to show you how to chop wood like a mountain man.

- I don't think I'm dressed to be a mountain man today.

[all laughing] - It doesn't matter what you wearing, it's about the spirit.

When you bring it down, allow the gravity in its own weight and bend down yourself, and that'll split the wood.

- [Woman] Nice.

- So, and then so, it's like that, right?

- [Two Clouds] Yeah.

- All right.

[people speaking indistinctly] [man laughing] I feel like with Native American people, there's no waste.

Everything is used.

Everything has a purpose.

What were you guys really eating back then?

- Everything from bear, deer, beaver, groundhog.

You know.

- [Buki] You're eating groundhog right now?

- Don't knock it 'til you try it.

Groundhog stew with a nice chunk of potatoes and carrots in a crock pot, the meat fall off.

- What does a groundhog taste like?

- [Two Clouds] Groundhog.

[both laughing] - [Buki Voiceover] Groundhog is not on the menu today, but Keshia is showing me how they'd hunt for similar game, the atlatl.

- So that little almond looking notch goes right into the hole.

You want to bring your hand to the handle and then your pointer and thumb to the spear and hold them in place.

- This is specifically for hunting?

- Yes.

- Got it.

- So envision what animal you need right now.

- Okay, my enemies, got it.

- Okay, that works too.

[gentle upbeat music] - [Woman] Nice.

- That's the one.

You see, you can feel it, right?

You can feel it.

- [Buki Voiceover] Learning how the Ramapough got their food thousands of years ago is fascinating.

And these younger generations are so eager to carry on these early traditions.

Most Native American tribes have been kicked off their land.

Many were ousted from the eastern part of the country and forced westward by white settlers.

[gentle music] Keshia was generous enough to escort me around the land, that means more to them than we'll ever know.

- Given the Native American 101 because we barely were taught.

We know Wigwams and we know Cherokee, and we don't mean Jeep Cherokee.

- [Keshia] It all starts with the land.

That's important.

Because regardless of where you're born, you are on indigenous territory.

All of my teachings, it starts with being able to connect with the land, literally.

- Now there have been a lot of different legislations to teach these different cultures, but there's no law on the books to teach Native American culture.

- Not federally that I'm aware of, no.

It's heartbreaking and it's also really concerning because that's where the mentality of, natives don't exist any more, comes from.

Being indigenous is also a political stance in a lot of ways.

You learn how to dance and you learn these stories for the people that can't do it anymore.

There are a lot of nuances, I guess, in a ways to what indigeneity looks like, and that indigeneity has been forced to be in one bubble and one box.

And I think my generation and all of the generations after me, we're really demanding that that box be erased.

- [Buki Voiceover] We made it back to the bonfire just in time to meet the elders.

- You know, I'm Nigerian, I grew up in all white neighborhoods and schools.

I was the lonely chocolate chip.

[all laughing] And if it were not for my family and the foods that we made and all that, I would not have a tie to it.

So where does that thirst for it come from?

- It has been my passion all my life to teach the children.

And we're we're responsible for the next seven generations.

And my elders taught me.

So I feel the responsibility to teach the younger one.

- [Buki Voiceover] And one of the biggest lessons is traditional Native American cuisine.

I was lucky enough to join Carla and Keshia in the kitchen.

First item on the menu, wild rice.

Wild rice is one of the few foods from the ancient indigenous diet that we still prepare in its original form today.

- Wild rice or Manoomin.

Manoomin, it means good berry in Ojibwe, and essentially it is the berry portion of the wild grasses and the sedges around riverbeds.

It starts off pretty black and then it slowly turns like a reddish brown.

And as the skin of the rice more or less starts to open, it almost looks like oatmeal.

- [Buki Voiceover] While Keshia is stirring up a feast, Carla is cooking frybread, a dish that reflects the colonial imprint that the tribes have come to embrace.

For them, it's a symbol of overcoming.

Before it became a powwow and festival favorite, frybread was a food of necessity and survival.

It can be traced back to the Navajo tribe as early as the late 1800s, when the United States government forcibly moved indigenous peoples to remote reserves, which were often food deserts.

So Native Americans did what they do best, made it work and adapted using what the government rationed.

- They give you some flour.

- Right.

A little bit of salt.

[Carla laughing] - A little bit of salt.

Some sort of lard.

- Right.

- [Buki] And make it work.

- That's it.

- [Buki] And you made it work.

- We did, and that's what we're still doing it.

[both laughing] We're still making it work.

- In Nigerian culture, we make something called Puff Puff, when it's like.

So we usually make those, you know, celebratory times.

So when you consider frybread like a celebratory dish?

- Basically, yeah.

It's kind of a remembrance of where we came from.

We did what we had to do to survive, and we're still doing what we have to do to survive.

It helped us to get through all of those tough times.

So it's something to be celebrated to at a point, because without it, a lot of us wouldn't be here.

And that's part of your culture, part of your traditions and part of your history.

- [Buki Voiceover] To better learn this tradition in history, I hopped to the other side of the counter and did some frying myself.

- And roll it in flour.

So that you're able to use it without.

- So it's pliable, yeah.

- [Carla] Bet you got to do the same thing, right?

- Oh, yeah.

Well, yeah, when we do it, we would like, kind of squeeze it and like, squeeze it into it, yeah.

All right, so.

The flour.

- Just kind of stretch it out after, kind of like a little pizza.

- What do you think, good enough?

- That's good.

- All right, we'll drop in.

- They don't hae to be so round.

- Don't have to be prefect.

[both laughing] Well, thank you for the lesson, Carla, I appreciate it.

- You're welcome.

- I can't wait to eat it.

[both laughing] - [Man] Burners burning, choppers chopping, and with the meat's stewing, tribal member Owl, shows me something significant that has stood on their land for thousands of years.

[gentle upbeat music] - You call it in the English language, we call it Cradle Rock.

So this is a wonder of the ancient world.

When you see it from a distance, you don't really necessarily see that it's perched on four smaller stones.

So this stone is about 5,000 or 10,000-years-old.

And it was marker put here by the ancients.

- For what purpose?

- It appears to be related to underground water flows.

A lot of these features on the surface here are meant to show where water is flowing and how water is moving.

Because the ancients had a certain wisdom, that I feel we've lost in the modern world, is that we have to be very conscious of where our water comes from.

- What do you think it says that, still today, that this rock still remains, what do you think that says about your people?

- We're resilient and that we are survivors and that we have a message, as you know, for people to do bring to the world still.

I think that's what these sacred stones say, the sacred sites is, you know, while we are definitely concerned about where we're going into the future, that we need to remember our connection to the past.

[gentle music] - [Buki Voiceover] After a sage session to cleanse the room, Owl and I are back.

And like many cultures around the state, this meal cornbread, frybread, sweet potato, corn and beans, wild rice and stewed pork, started with the prayer.

[speaks in foreign language] - [Owl] Thank you all for sharing this food together.

[speaks in foreign language] - And thank you Carla, for preparing.

They look really good.

Okay.

- [Carla] Kind of fruitier, huh?

- Kind of fruity, but tender.

- You know, what's nice about it is that you don't have it bogged down with other spices.

So you actually taste what the food is.

You know, and you're tasting something that was the same taste that ancestors would have had.

- Do you eat like this all the time?

- When we're doing this as a community, yeah.

Our whole church becomes a kitchen.

And it's amazing the conversations that you have in a kitchen.

Because not everybody's cooking this in their house, we have to be honest.

You know, kids are more likely to go to.

- Carla say, "I do."

- Carla does.

And that's why Carla's always giving her leftovers to people, because we don't have it.

[all laughing] - So are you, like, whipping up this frybread every day?

- Not every day, no.

Every two weeks, I'll probably be like, hey, you guys won't frybread tacos?

And it's like, all the hard work that you put into the bread, 'cause you've got to knead it, it's so worth it at the end.

It's just way fresher and is way better and it tastes way better.

It's like you put love in it.

- And that's what makes this food, this plate right here so special, because it's not something I get every day.

It's not something I learn every day.

This is something I take home and share with my family because look what I had today.

- So you would say the food anchors the community?

- [Patricia] The food anchors.

- I mean, it's all interconnected like with the language as well, there's stories about the, you know, the corn and the strawberries.

They are part of the culture and the language.

The Hudson and the Matsi language is called Mahicantuck, the river that flows both ways.

You know what we're doing to the fish affects us.

- But it's deeper than that.

It's the water that runs, the fish that swim in that water and it's the plants that benefit from the water that's contaminated.

- [Buki Voiceover] From 1967 to 1974, a subsidiary of the Ford Motor Company disposed of toxic waste, including car parts and paint sludge at a nearby Ringwood landfill.

Today, it's a Superfund Site, one of the over 114 in New Jersey.

But before the cleanup efforts, the pollution changed some of the aspects of this tight knit community.

- Our water source was the reservoir in Hillburn and the reservoir was right next to the dump.

So that caused a lot of health issues on every house down our street.

Everybody was related.

Somebody has died from cancer in every single house.

- Now was there, sort of like a string away from food or these types of foods because who knew what was in it?

- We stopped eating from the land.

It's changed what we eat.

It's changed how we eat.

You get to a point where you're trying to figure out what's going to keep you healthy and everybody's sort of trying something different.

- [Buki Voiceover] And this type of setback makes it all the more important that they pass on their food knowledge and traditions to the next generation.

- Being that we're a Native American church, we always include our children, our young adults.

We make them get involved in everything so they know our traditional foods.

They know the things that we do.

- And through food, there's a memory.

So when we're having good memories when we were kids and we get older, it's like, "Oh, I remember doing this as a child."

Like my mom and my grandmother would have me in the kitchen peeling beans and.

- Oh yeah.

- Where I'm at now, we're in the city, so there isn't any of this.

So I'll drive from Newark, East Orange, all the way to Mahwah, just for my son to see a different world, a different part of our own culture.

- I've never really heard of a Native American restaurant in New Jersey or anything like that.

- [Patricia] We can start one.

- I was gonna say, where we're going to start the Native American restaurant?

- [Carla] I'm ready.

- Oh, I know you're ready, Carla.

[all laughing] - I was like, well, do we have any Native American restaurants around here?

So I look it up and I'm like, well, we don't have anything.

I said, I guess I'll be the first.

I'm gonna open a food truck.

- Really?

- I'm working on it.

- Okay.

- [Buki Voiceover] The Ramapough people have endured so much, but what's truly endured is their effort to keep the spirit of their culture alive, right here in New Jersey.

- We always had open door policy too.

I can walk into his house and eat, I can walk into his house and eat, walk into her house and eat.

You don't need an invitation.

If we're there, we're all family.

- [Maggie] I still do that.

- So do I count as family now?

- [Carla] Absolutely.

- Okay, I need a couple to-go plates.

- I got some more.

- Little boxes.

- Just like this.

- And we're ready to go.

Thank you guys so much, I appreciate it.

- You're welcome.

- [Owl] We appreciate having you here.

[gentle music] - [Buki Voiceover] From New Jersey's proudest politician to a group of people whose culture and wisdom runs deeper than the trees are tall.

I've received a history lesson and hope for the future.

[gentle music] And I just hope I can remember that frybread recipe.

- Yeah, that touch of sweetness from that sugar, Carla.

- [Carla] Absolutely.

[sings in foreign language] [laughing] - Yeah, you walk too loud.

I heard your footsteps in the leaves.