Season 2 of the uplifting cooking competition The Great American Recipe continues to celebrate the multiculturalism that makes American food unique. Among the contestants this season is Coeur d’Alene Tribe member Maria Givens, who grew up in her ancestral homelands on Lake Coeur d’Alene and now lives (and cooks!) in Seattle.
According to her Great American Recipe bio, Maria first learned about the importance of food in her community through her father’s work as a lawyer fighting for tribal ownership of Lake Coeur d’Alene as a means of food production. When she wasn’t accompanying her father to court, she would fish and pick berries with her mother. 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.
With so much already on her plate, we were curious to know if competing on a cooking show was even on her radar before she was approached by Great American Recipe producers. And we had a few questions about the magic that goes on behind the set and the camaraderie that is so apparent between the contestants. Shortly after Episode 3 of the eight-episode season aired, Maria joined us via Zoom to tell us what she could (no spoilers here — we won’t know who ultimately wins the competition until the final episode airs in August). You can read the Q&A below. We’ll also post snippets of our conversation with Maria online in the coming weeks. Follow us on social media to see those.
Stream previously aired episodes of The Great American Recipe anytime online or on the PBS app. New episodes air each Monday at 8 PM and repeat each Friday at 9 PM until the winner is revealed in August.
You were invited to try out for The Great American Recipe when a producer saw your food Instagram, Native Soul Food. Can you tell us some of the specific things you posted there that caught their attention?
Maria Givens: I’ve had my Instagram for about five years now, and I just post recipes that I’m cooking for my normal everyday, what I’m cooking for dinner, or if I’m cooking something special. Or if I’m back home in Coeur d’Alene cooking some traditional foods or even eating traditional foods, I’ll post those on my Instagram. The casting person who saw my Instagram, I think they were interested in the take and the stories I would tell in the captions. I’m not the best food photographer, I’m trying to improve, but I think it’s more about the captions and the story.
You’ve been working at the federal level to protect Native food sources. Was being on a cooking competition something that was even on your radar? Or was there something unique about The Great American Recipe that connected with the work you’re doing?
Maria Givens: Being on a cooking show was never a goal of mine or any type of thing in my orbit. I really was surprised when I even got the message to try out. I think why me and The Great American Recipe were a good fit is that it’s about those stories of where you come from and the food behind it. Another type of TV show that’s a more hardcore competition probably wouldn’t have been a great fit. So it was really nice to have that good fit find me. As Native people, we don’t always get the platform to share our stories and to share our foods, so when a platform does come along that will respect that, I definitely want to take the chance and use that platform. I think The Great American Recipe was a great fit for that.
The show is edited in a way that gives viewers the impression that the contestants live together for eight straight weeks somewhere near the barn where the cooking challenges are recorded. The contestants appear to complete both challenges in one day, back to back, and then return the following week for two more challenges. How much of that is reality?
Maria Givens: The reality behind all of it is that we were all staying in a hotel about an hour away from the barn and we would end up doing about an episode a day. So instead of being there for eight weeks, we were there for about three weeks. It was really fun! When you’re spending that much time with all the other contestants, you definitely get to know each other, get to bond, get to know that, okay, when we’re done with something, Leanna wants to ice her feet and just be done with that and check out. Or don’t bother Brad in the morning because he’s not a morning person. So we got to know even those little idiosyncrasies of everybody.
Can you tell us how much you know about a cooking challenge before you begin to cook? For instance, your first dish featured Salish salmon, huckleberries, and Red Lake Nation wild rice. There must be some prep time between the time you choose your dish and the challenge begins for producers to source those ingredients, right?
Maria Givens: Yeah, I was amazed to learn what a culinary producer is. I had meetings with ours weeks before heading out to Virginia, really ironing out all the recipes and figuring out even down to the smallest things, like are you going to use a ladle or a serving spoon to pull it out of the pot. Or what kind of plates are you going to use, or will this be a large dice or a small dice. They’re really helping us prepare for all that, but also, they want the contestants to succeed and have every option they need to succeed. And so they go out shopping a handful of days before, and because we’re cooking pretty unique dishes and we’re also filming in rural Virginia, it takes some time and some preparation to get those specific ingredients. There’s a lot of prep and a lot of work that goes behind that, so when you’re watching the credits and you see the culinary producers, the culinary shoppers and the food handlers, there’s just a lot of people who make all that happen and that really help you prepare for all of it.
One of my favorite aspects of this show is how the contestants seem to have each others’ backs and genuinely support each other, even though it’s a competition. I’m thinking specifically of a moment in Episode 3 when you stop in the middle of making your elk stew, which is causing you some trouble, and you help Abbe who is having trouble figuring out the pressure cooker. Can you tell us more about those friendly rivalries?
Maria Givens: We were all so close. We have a group text right now and I’m seeing notifications go off from the other contestants. But we bonded a lot, and I think one of the reasons why we did was because we all have a very similar outlook on life and on food in particular. We all kind of play the role in our families of being the person who cooks when the family gets together, we have that kind of caretaking role in our families. And then lump us all together and take away our phones for 16 hours a day, and then we all just kind of bonded. I love every single one of the other contestants, and I know they would help me out in any way I needed, so I’m definitely helping them out, in the show and in life too.
What impact do you hope your appearance on The Great American Recipe will have for you personally and for the causes you work for?
Maria Givens: I hope the impact of me being on The Great American Recipe is that folks think about Native food a little bit differently and think about Native people a little differently. One of the biggest problems that we face is invisibility; most people don’t even think that we’re still here. Hopefully seeing someone like me on a TV show based in 2023 can help fight that a little bit. And I hope that it inspires some Native kids too, to think about food as a career path or to see that these foods need advocates and that that is something they can grow up to do.
Beside The Great American Recipe (of course), do you have a favorite PBS show, or did you have one growing up as a kid?
Maria Givens: Growing up, I think my favorite PBS show was Arthur. I loved that show; it was so fun. And I loved Arthur’s little sister, DW; she was always really sassy and I thought she was just great. My mom would always play Julia Child and Jacques Pépin, so we had them on a lot in the background as well. When I heard this show was going to be on PBS, I really thought, Oh, this is a chance to actually tell stories instead of it being like a cutthroat competition, because I know that’s just not PBS’s style. So I was excited when I heard that, for sure.