Wild Food Foraging in Oklahoma: A Pathway to Creating Imagined Foodways and Foodscapes

Abstract

Foraging, the gathering of wild edibles for food and medicinal use, opens opportunities to connect with local environments and pursue sustainability and food sovereignty. We engage with insights from semi-structured qualitative interviews, participant observation, and site visits with individuals identifying as foragers and wildcrafters across Oklahoma to better understand foragers’ interactions with local wild food and foodscapes. We ask: Why do individuals in Oklahoma forage and/or wildcraft? How do foraging practices provide a pathway to support the creation of imagined foodways and foodscapes? We review the literature on foraging and foodways to situate foraging within alternative food systems and consider dimensions of sustainability and sovereignty within foodscapes. Foragers and wildcrafters reveal that their practices foster both tangible and non-tangible benefits, including deep connections with place and nature in the process of procuring wild edibles. While participants come to foraging in various ways, their strategies include engagement with sustainable practices and greater control and agency in food access. Building on the concept of ‘imagined foodways,’ we introduce ‘imagined foodscapes’ to illustrate foragers’ ability to create food practices and spaces based on their ideal methods of procuring and connecting with food.