TPS Cofounder to appear on PBS’s The Great American Recipe

Tahoma Peak Cofounder Maria Givens will be a contestant on PBS’s The Great American Recipe. Tune into the premiere on June 19.

Maria Givens (Seattle, Washington) is a member of the Coeur d’Alene tribe in Idaho and grew up in her ancestral homelands on Lake Coeur d’Alene. She first learned about the importance of food in her community through her father’s work as a lawyer fighting for the ownership of the Coeur d’Alene lake as a means of food production for the entire reservation. When Maria wasn’t accompanying her father to court, she would go fishing and berry picking with her mother in the Idaho mountains. In college, Maria pursued degrees in both political science and American Indian studies.

She has worked in the U.S. Senate, the National Congress of American Indians, and the Native American Agriculture Fund. There she helped pass legislation supporting food sovereignty for the Columbia River tribes, bringing her community closer to their ancestral food sources through federal policy. For Maria, food is vital in uniting her community and as a means of continuing to practice her culture. Maria’s signature recipe is Wood-Fired Salmon with Huckleberry Sauce cooked Coeur d’Alene style over bedsprings and an open fire.