Story by McKenna Christy, photos by Jacob Durbin

To many, and especially those in the southeastern Ohio region, a tropical fruit once confused with the papaya is cherished and adored. To Indigenous tribes, the fruit is a reminder of lost food practices.

Pawpaw Festival artwork from previous festivals available for purchase from Kevin Jones's booth.

In 25 states East of the Mississippi, a yellowish-green oblong tropical fruit grows in the understories of forest areas near riverbeds. The custardy texture of this unique fruit resembles a taste and flavor described as a combination of mango and banana — a pleasant surprise to many after an initial taste test. The pawpaw, the largest fruit native to North America, is the only tree fruit apart of the Annonaceae family that blossoms in Northern Florida and all the way up in a few regions of Canada.

The pawpaw’s uniqueness may be credited to its addictive tropical flavor and where the fruit calls home, but the history of the pawpaw is rich, ancient and valuable. Ohio History Central records state that the fruit has been around for 30,000 years, and Indigenous tribes were its first cultivators.

According to the American Indian Health and Diet Project, the pawpaw was an important aspect of the Native American diet for the Shawnee Tribe, which inhabited the Ohio River Valley in the 1600s. The Tribe had a “pawpaw month” detailed in their calendar.

In West Virginia Public Broadcasting reporter Brian Koscho’s article, “Searching for the Pawpaw’s Indigenous Roots,” present day guardian of the Shawnee Tribe, Joel Barnes, explains the Tribe used moon phases to tell time. The “ha’siminikiisfwa” is the word for pawpaw, according to Barnes, and was used to represent the phase indicating the arrival of September.

The pawpaw’s connection to the Shawnee tribe and others has been majorly lost due to the removal of Indigenous peoples from their homelands in 1830, Barnes says to Koscho, who writes that “Barnes’ ancestors were forcibly removed from their Ohio Valley home in Appalachia.”

The Indian Removal Act is responsible for pushing much of the Shawnee tribe out to the West of the Mississippi, and more specifically to Oklahoma, according to the Oklahoma Historical Society.

Indigenous culture and history are commonly erased from culinary practices and discussions of food; however, there are movements working to decolonize food and create food sovereignty for Indigenous peoples.

Dr. Charlotte Coté, associate professor in the department of American Indian Studies at the University of Washington, focuses on Indigenous food traditions. Dr. Coté discusses the purpose of the food sovereignty movement, organized in 1996 by an organization of international farmers called La Via Campesina, in the academic article “Indigenizing Food Sovereignty. Revitalizing Indigenous Food Practices and Ecological Knowledges in Canada and the United States.”

The food sovereignty movement doesn’t have one definition and is always expanding. The Indigenous Food Systems Network says the movement is “a specific policy approach” in which directs attention to the issues surrounding Indigenous people’s “ability to respond to [their] needs for healthy, culturally adapted Indigenous foods.”

“Many of the health issues and inequalities Indigenous peoples face today can be directly linked to colonization, the brutal dispossession of homelands, globalization, migration, and culture and language loss,” writes Dr. Coté. Yet, “Indigenous peoples globally are actively shaping, nurturing and fostering healthy and sustainable communities through their self-determination efforts and decolonization strategies.”

To recognize the history of the pawpaw is to acknowledge the food sovereignty movement Native American organizations, Indigenous Tribes and their people started. The pawpaw’s connection to Indigenous culture tells the common story of the effects of colonization: one of the results being the health disparities relating to nutrition. Now, the discussion surrounding food sovereignty becomes deeper.

“‘Indigenizing’” food sovereignty moves beyond a rights-based discourse,” says Dr. Coté. This is done, “…by emphasizing the cultural responsibilities and relationships Indigenous peoples have with their environment and the efforts being made by Indigenous communities to restore these relationships through the revitalization of Indigenous foods and ecological knowledge systems as they assert control over their own foods and practices.”

Celebrations of foods are a means for people to relate to one another and form traditions.

The sign marking the entrance to the food court of the Pawpaw festival.

The Ohio Pawpaw Festival, located at Lake Snowden, occurs annually on Sept. 17-19, since the pawpaw fruit ripens during mid-August through September. For Chris Chmiel, founder of the festival and co-owner of Integration Acres —the largest pawpaw processor in the world —pawpaws are an everyday attention-grabber.

Chmiel tries to make the festival bigger every year. The Ohio Pawpaw Festival has been a tradition for people for 23 years. Awareness of the fruit’s origins in relation to Native American culture is a factor Chmiel considers and addresses.

The East of the River Shawnee Tribe of southeastern Ohio partnered with the festival and were welcomed to be a part of the celebration, says Chmiel.

Back in 2017, the East of the River Shawnee held presentations at the festival; lessons were taught about the Shawnee tribe’s history, traditional music from drums and flutes were played and other cultural exchanges were shared.

The Tribe did not attend the festival in 2019 for unknown reasons.

The sun sets on the first day of the 2021 Pawpaw Festival.

Among the various educational aspects the festival offers, there is an abundance of other mini events and activities attendees can embrace and take part in.

“We have artists, [and] we have live music. It’s a real pawpaw festival. It's like every food vendor has to have a pawpaw dish. We have pawpaw trees [and] we encourage the artists to include pawpaw art in their products. So, we really try to make it an authentic event,” Chmiel says.

There are some people who made this pawpaw festival an annual tradition after their first visit. One of those people is Tony Green. Green grew up in the southeastern Ohio area and is an Ohio University alum who only heard of the festival after graduating college.

Green first attended the festival in 2018. Green didn’t know what to expect before he stepped foot onto festival grounds, and nothing could’ve prepared him for the pawpaw filled day.

“I was like, ‘Eh it’s kind of a funny festival’ and thinking it was gonna be really small, kind of like your typical Ohio festival. Like okay it’s a strawberry fest, there’s really nothing related to strawberries. And when we got there, [I was] like ‘holy smokes,’ they are not kidding, everything is pawpaw,” says Green, reminiscing on his first unforgettable time.

As the pawpaw tree and fruit bring joy and excitement to people, the native fruit persists through environmental challenges. Forest areas are under pressure given the overall conditions of climate change and other special situations, Chmiel says.

“Over the last, say five or six years, there’s been a disease that’s been killing some of the trees and these were like trees that were in forests, like they’ve been alive for decades,” Chmiel says.

The passion for pawpawsruns deep within the community of southeastern Ohio and stretches globally. Despite threatening environmental issues, it’s common for people everywhere to plant their own pawpaw trees. Despite the environmental challenges, pawpaws remain abundant in nature.

“There’s still a lot of pawpaws around and there’s still good healthy ones. I’m an optimistic person so I try to see like ‘hey, not all the trees are dying.’ So, these ones that aren’t dying, how do we propagate those. Because when you’re hopeless, it sucks,” Chmiel says on overcoming these challenges.

The coronavirus proposed its own challenges for the festival last year. The Ohio Pawpaw Festival was cancelled, and all the work put into the festivities had to be pushed aside for a year.

This year, the coordinators want to ensure the event is safe and protects attendees against the virus along with the variants. On the Ohio Pawpaw Festival website, there’s a recommendation that event-goers wear masks regardless of their vaccination status.

The pawpaw represents a specialty that connects history to the present-day. Without the cultivation, use and protection of the pawpaw by Indigenous tribes, there would be no celebrations today. This strangely shaped and tropical-tasting fruit, which grows in a non-tropical zone, is a reminder of why people celebrate its uniqueness, and the act of doing so brings communities and people together.

“There’s people that are in there 70s and 80s having a lot of fun, but there’s also kids running around so it’s kind of the whole community type feeling. To me it very much embraces the things I liked about Athens and the Southeast Ohio area kind of into one festival,” Green says.