Indian Time - A Voice from the Eastern Door

On Sunday, March 3, the St. Regis Recreation Center had a corn washing class taught by Sandra Fox. Families attended, and all adults were accompanied by a child, at the request of class organizer Johanne Jackson. Jackson would be sure to advertise for the class first before letting anyone put their name in to sign up, to ensure fairness. “A lot of adults called and I said sure, you can sign up, but you have to bring a youth,” Jackson said, adding, “It’s so nice too! The adults are teaching the youth, and the youth are learning.”

The instructor Sandra Fox said, “I had an excellent class.”

Lorna Smoke added, “Sandra is an excellent teacher.” Smoke took the class to brush up on her knowledge of the process, because she hadn’t done it in a while, saying, “I learned things I forgot.”

Participants in corn washing class taught by Sandra Fox.

If you are not familiar, corn washing is the process by which white corn is made able to cook, removing the hard eye from the kernel and softening it up so you can eat it in your corn soup or grind it up and make cornbread.

Fox briefly outlined the process as follows:

First you fill a pot ¾ of the way full of water, using a good-sized pot, which looked to be about 40 quarts. Then you add 5 to 6 quarts of wood ash, and it needs to be hardwood ash, and boil for half an hour to 45 minutes. You can tell if there is enough wood ash by sticking just the cob of corn in the water and it turns orange. After the first boil is done, you strain off water and rinse well as long as the eye of the kernel is removed easily. Once rinsed, you then put back in a pot of water and cook until the corn is nearly cooked, and you can then freeze or add your ingredients to make soup.