Camas, Our Grandmother: A Story of Return and Resilience this Fourth of July

Article by Cass Gardiner | Photography Cass Gardiner | Published July 3, 2025

A Meadow Awakens

Our ancestors used to tell us that the plants reveal themselves to us when we need them. On a cool morning in mid-May, I walked towards a gleaming lake of periwinkle blue. As I get closer, the lake fades into a symphony of delicate purple-blue petals dancing in the breeze. A meadow comes into focus as a dozen people begin to file in holding cedar baskets in their hands. We form a circle, and as an opening prayer begins, I can feel that the camas is calling us back.

The Grandmother Beneath the Earth

The story goes that a long time ago, there was a great hunger where no food could be found. As children cried out with hunger pains, a grandmother couldn’t bear it anymore and feeling so sad, she went up on a hill and cried until she disappeared into the earth. Her granddaughter heard her and dug until she found camas. Her sacrifice meant that her people could live again. This is an abbreviated version of the story shared by Roger Fernandes of the Lower Elwha S’Klallam people. This Grandmother is known not only as Camas but also as wild hyacinth, Quamash, Camassia quamash, and many other names. A perennial that is a member of the lily family, her real value is her edible bulb which was the backbone of a female-led economy for Indigenous nations throughout the Pacific Northwest for centuries. 

I have been invited to participate and film a camas dig over the course of a weekend in Washington by Tahoma Peak Solutions Native Plants and Food Institute, who organized an intertribal dig in collaboration with the Ecostudies Institute, the Center for Natural Lands Management, Squaxin Island Tribe, the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation, Willamette Cultural Resource Associates, and Thurston County. I picked a camas flower and using a curved digging stick with a t-bar handle, I plunged it into the earth, using my body weight to push down and up until a clod of dirt emerged. Gently breaking the soil apart with my hands, I see a tiny cream-colored bulb. Using my fingernail, I carefully take a piece of the papery outer layer from the top and pull it down, unzipping it. The camas bulb looks like a tiny pearl onion, and as I bite down, my brain is confused between expectation and reality. The best food I can compare it to is cream of wheat. It sticks in your teeth and tastes neutral if not slightly creamy. Eating a little raw is okay, but camas is rich in inulin, which requires extensive cooking to convert the inulin into fructose, making it more easily digested. 

Camas as Culture and Economy

The history of Native peoples and their love for camas dates back centuries in these lands. In 2023, a camas oven was rediscovered near Newport, Washington, dating back 5,000 years ago using radiocarbon dating. Women were in charge of the camas, inheriting plots from their family and managing the harvest. When spring arrived, large groups would travel to their fields and spend weeks harvesting enough camas to sustain them through the year. A plot could yield up to 50 pounds harvested each day! While they harvested, the women would catch up, filling each other in on family news, plans, and gossip from the winter. Any surplus would be traded, and camas proved to be a valuable item, sought after for its sweetness and health properties as a carbohydrate that doesn’t spike blood sugar levels. Camas was the second most traded item, second only to salmon in the Pacific Northwest!

Reviving a Food System

In the present day, I watched as everyone sat together under the shade of a tree, methodically peeling and laughing, trading techniques and recipes. A shallow pit was readied and a coordinated assembly line was formed as more experienced women taught newcomers how to fill skunk cabbage leaves with handfuls of camas, folding them into little green parcels that were promptly placed in the pit atop hot rocks and ferns, and buried to roast for 48 hours. 

Only 2% of camas remains in the USA. The forced removal of Indigenous nations onto reservations and the sale of Indigenous land to settlers who practiced western farming meant that the camas was often developed over or overeaten by livestock. Without the buffalo and humans to cultivate it, its seeds were not as widely dispersed. Today, many of the remaining camas fields are private property, like the farm where we harvested camas on the first day of the dig. 

Rare Flavors, Served Today

After 48 hours, we returned to the pit and dug up the camas where the verdant green parcels had turned to muted greens and golds, and the cooked camas had retained its form, but its texture and taste had changed. It now felt gummy, and it instantly melted when it hit my tongue, leaving a burnt caramel flavor on the palate. Later, under a big tent in the Squaxin Island Reservation, the traditional pit-roasted camas was served alongside the modern cooking method of camas cooked in crock pots, and a spring soup made of nettles, camas, and smoked salmon. It was touching to hear the Elders exclaim with joy as the first ladle of soup filled their bowls. One Elder exclaimed that this was the first time he had eaten camas since he was a child, and his friend said it tasted like home.

A Return in Ceremony

Today, camas is eaten more as a ceremonial food for special occasions or tucked away in the freezer for a treat throughout the year. Hopefully, this is just the beginning for camas’ return as there are programs for working with private landowners and parks where camas still grow, and transplanting efforts. While you won't see camas on a restaurant menu, it’s starting to return to the native communities where it’s treated like seeing an old friend. An Elder came up to me at one point and said, “It’s good that you’re telling the story of the camas, more people should know about her so they can love her.” Perhaps that is why she is appearing to us again now. Amid a climate and cultural crisis where we are actively challenging who belongs, perhaps it’s time we turn to our Grandmother to see what old teachings can resonate with us anew.