Nico Albert Williams

Nico Albert Williams (ᏣᎳᎩᎯ ᎠᏰᎵ Cherokee Nation) is the Founder and Executive Director of Burning Cedar Sovereign Wellness (www.burningcedar.org), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and intertribal urban community center whose mission is to address socioeconomic disparities, health crises, and cultural disconnection affecting the Tulsa Native community by re-establishing ancestral foodways and wellness practices, educating future generations of Indigenous cooks, supporting Indigenous food producers, teaching sustainable and environmentally restorative practices, and providing resources for Native people to improve their spiritual, mental, emotional and physical health through ancestral ways of knowing. She spends her time growing, foraging, cooking, eating, studying, writing, and speaking about the traditional foodways of Turtle Island.

Nico is the recipient of the 2021 Greater Tulsa Indian Affairs Commission Dream Keeper's Award for Leadership in Business, the 2022 Cherokee Phoenix Seven Feathers Award for Culture, and she serves as a culinary diplomat for the US Department of State Arts Envoy program, representing North American Indigenous foodways in international spaces. Nico’s recipes have been featured in the Blue Zones American Kitchen cookbook, The Good Berry cookbook, and Smithsonian American Table. Her work has also been featured by Food Network, USA Today, Hulu, BBC, Cherokee Nation's OsiyoTV, Smithsonian Institute, King Arthur Baking Co, PBS, and PRX among others. She shares a fireplace and plays music in the Indigenous sludge metal band Medicine Horse with her husband, Kyle Williams Sr (Ponca, Otoe-Missouria, Ioway).

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