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source website conflict kitchenConflict Kitchen is a restaurant that serves cuisine from countries with which the United States is in conflict. Each Conflict Kitchen iteration is augmented by events, performances, publications, and discussions that seek to expand the engagement the public has with the culture, politics, and issues at stake within the focus region. The restaurant rotates identities in relation to current geopolitical events.
Our current Haudenosaunne version introduces our customers to the food, culture, and politics of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Also known as the Iroquois Confederacy, the Haudenosaunee is a league of six Indigenous nations located primarily in upstate New York with historic ties to Western Pennsylvania. Throughout this iteration we will share the food and culture of the Haudenosaunee people and offer their perspectives on Indigenous sovereignty, economic and environmental conflict, and cultural erasure. The experiences and opinions that are presented in our publications and programming are informed by the personal perspectives and history of the Haudenosaunne people. These diverse perspectives reflect a nuanced range of thought and serves to instigate questioning, conversation, and debate with our customers and the public at large.
Operating seven days a week in the middle of the city, Conflict Kitchen uses the social relations of food and economic exchange to engage the general public in discussions about countries, cultures, and people that they might know little about outside of the polarizing rhetoric of governmental politics and the narrow lens of media headlines. In addition, the restaurant creates a constantly changing site for ethnic diversity in the post-industrial city of Pittsburgh, as it has presented the only Iranian, Afghan, Venezuelan, North Korean, Haudenosaunne and Palestinian restaurants the city has ever seen.