WHEN 8-YEAR-OLD SHERRY POCKNETT’S FATHER AND BROTHERS WOULD RETURN TO SHORE  When 8-year-old sherry pocknett’s father and brothers would return to shore in Mashpee, Massachusetts, with bushels of writhing eels, Sherry would collect their spears and hustle their catch home, where she’d help her mother peel off the skin and prepare the meat for dinner.

The day before, she would have cleaned and sorted 2 to 3 pounds of beans with her mother, removing all the dirt and grit, set them to soak overnight, and then baked them for five hours with molasses, sugar, and salt pork the next day. Baked beans were the first dish she learned to cook, and she recalls that this process of preparation was a normal part of growing up in the Wampanoag Tribe. They only ate what they grew or caught, she says, so she planted, tended, and harvested beans, squash, corn, tomatoes, herbs, and much more, while helping prepare meals for the family of six.

“Growing up here on the Cape in the ’60s, my father was a potato farmer, and with a big family, we foraged for everything,” she says. “And at the end of March, the herring came back from the north. So we caught herring, and that was the first fish I knew how to catch. We learned the difference between male and female, learned about the roe and how to take it out, and save the head and tail for garden fertilizer.”

These were important lessons for the young girl who went on to be co-owner and chef of the former Sly Fox Den Too in Charlestown, Rhode Island. She named it for her late father, Wampanoag leader Vernon “Chief Sly Fox” Pocknett, and co-owned it with her daughters Jade Pocknett-Galvin and Cheyenne Pocknett-Galvin. A year before they closed it last December to prepare to open another location in Cape Cod, Pocknett won the James Beard Award for Best Chef Northeast in 2023, which she views as a recognition of her hard work and a hope that the public will acknowledge In-digenous foods.

She continued to be surrounded by food for her entire adolescence, waiting tables at the former Wigwam restaurant in Mashpee, Massachusetts, and washing dishes at The Flume restaurant that her uncle owned for three decades, where “all of us in our family worked at one point in our lives,” she says.

Now Pocknett and her daughters cater public events around Southern New England and serve Indigenous dishes at the Mashpee Wampanoag Powwow, Narragansett Powwow, and the Mohegan Wigwam Festival each summer on the tribal reservations.

She also teaches Indigenous hunter-gatherer techniques and cooking to her daughters and grandchildren, as well as to the public, which is vital to preserve Indigenous culture and traditions, she insists. Illuminating the natural Indigenous culture that has subsisted in New England for centuries “is a dream. That’s all I want, is to keep teaching, keep our legacy going. Cooking with me is teaching the kids and keeping the traditions alive,” she says. “Going strawberry picking and blueberry picking and harvesting everything that’s in season is what we do. That’s the lifeways of a Wampanoag person.”

Seafood is such a staple that Pocknett-Galvin taught a “Cook A Fish, Give A Fish” cooking class with Eating with the Ecosystem two years ago. Accompanied by her mother, who was battling cancer, Pocknett-Galvin taught students to make a fish stew, just like her mother made when she was growing up, with quahog, cod, clams, lobster, potatoes, corn, and a delicious homemade broth.

Eating with the Ecosystem is a nonprofit organization that promotes sustaining New England’s wild seafood system. Executive director Kate Masury recalls that class was an important introduction to Indigenous food preparation and traditions. The mother-daughter team discussed the spring herring migration (specifically alewives), which is an important part of New England’s ecosystem, Masury says, and how that is a sign that animals are returning to the area and flora are coming back to life. With the alewives come other fish, like striped bass, that the tribes would then harvest.

“The stew used a number of different species that were important and local to the region … and is important culturally. Home cooks could very easily incorporate it into their own home kitchens, and people can come together around it and enjoy a warming meal,” Masury says. “The native people, whether it’s the Wampanoag tribe or the Narragansett tribe, have a lot of connections to these same species, just in different rivers. And I think that’s such a great example of eating with the ecosystem, really. That’s exactly what this is all about—respecting the resource and harvesting only what you need, while making sure that those habitats are healthy, eating seasonally and what’s available, and changing what you eat with the seasons. They can speak to that so eloquently and come from a history of actually living that way.”

Contemporizing Indigenous cuisine is not solely about ingredients, however. Sherry Pocknett’s nephew, Cheenulka Pocknett, a Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal citizen, offers curriculum development, speaking/lectures, arts and crafts, and cooking demonstrations to share the valuable traditions of his people. He’s also a chef and helps operate an oyster and quahog farm on Cape Cod, while actively hunting and fishing to feed his extended family. He often hunts with Jade’s husband, Pe’Co, and they’ll bring back as many as seven deer, which they’ll butcher and share with the rest of the Pocknett clan. 

“For us, hunting and fishing is a necessity. It’s not just a birthright. It’s actually a necessity for survival, whether we use it for trade, for money, or for food for the immediate time,” Cheenulka Pocknett says. “Ever since I can remember, I’ve been hunting, or in the water with my family, sometimes my uncles and aunties, sometimes my parents or older brothers. And we continue to bring out younger kids with us and teach different family members.”

Access to their hunting grounds and legal ramifications remain an issue that the Pocknett family continues to fight for. Cheenulka Pocknett says he has to travel as far as Virginia or New York to hunt for deer because local residents make noise in the woods to scare away animals, call the police, or “find sneaky ways to impede our rights,” he says.

“They shut us down, shut down economic sustainability, and it’s a horrible thing. It forces me to stay below the poverty line in the richest place in America, and the fight just continues. But we’re not going to quit fighting. We’re going to continue doing what we do.”

Pocknett-Galvin explains that it’s important to discuss these challenges, share their hunter-gatherer methods, and illuminate cultural traditions because people should know about their lifeways and that the Indigenous tribes remain active here.

“That is why we teach and do the cooking that we do,” she says. “It’s not ‘Native Americans used to live here,’ or ‘the Wampanoag Nation lived in another time.’ No, we still live in 2025, we are still here. We still hunt and still fish, and it’s not ‘used to.’ We’re still here, and this is still our land.”

As they remain connected to the land and their tribal ways, these devoted chefs, educators, and advocates have given back much more than they have taken to feed themselves and others. Pocknett, who is now cancer-free, says she would have it no other way than eating with the seasons and hopes her lessons sink in with home cooks and food lovers alike.

“Then they can get the feel of how we used to live, how we survived,” Pocknett explains. “Whatever you eat from around here, whatever is harvested from around here, when you eat local, those are foods that we’ve been eating for a very, very long time.”

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Sauté chopped onion in 2 tbsp. oil until translucent. Add minced garlic, thyme, and all seasonings.

2. Add 2 tbsp. oil and small piece of fish.

3. Cook 4-6 minutes, stirring occasionally.

4. Add water, and simmer.

5. Cut lobster in half down the middle. Remove claws and add a crack to each claw and knuckles. Remove tails. Add all lobster parts to the pot.

6. Add potatoes and littlenecks.
Bring to a boil and cook about 10 minutes, then add more water to just cover all ingredients.

7. Simmer for about 6 minutes.

8. Add mussels. Chunk the remaining pieces of fish and add on top. Cook covered for about 15 minutes, (your shellfish should have opened).

Adding the ingredients in layers allows the flavors to be released gradually, which increases the flavor profile.

Serve and enjoy!