Amber aka Smoke. 23, Born Feb. 19th 1994. Plus Sized. Nerdy. Single. I enjoy long hours of binge watching netflix and romantic slices of pizza with pineapple . Smokahontasbakery.com
What is your favorite edible treat you make?
Medicated Cheez its or Medicated BBQ Chicken
How did you get into the edible business?
I have always been great at cooking and baking and eventually I started smoking. Every edible I found tasted like trash, so I started making a few things for myself that I would enjoy. Eventually my friends would partake, then their friends and their friends friends, and now we are here.
What’s your background in the food industry?
I have an eclectic background. I have worked in a bit of everything from fast food, upscale restaurants, hipster bars, mexican/spanish/italian/middle eastern styled places, and a few different bakeries.
What’s the craziest thing you’ve witnessed being apart of the food industry?
I previously worked for Walt Disney World Florida. It’s not too crazy, but it’s just CRAZY to me that I saw more characters than I expected (Pocahontas, Jasmine, Mulan, Cinderella) as actual people just in costume twerking around backstage areas, or getting drunk in costume. Princesses are WILD.
How did you come up with the name Smokahontas?
I wanted a name that matched me and my quirky personality. I love Pocahontas and it has always one of my favorite movies to watch while partaking and a word flip eventually inspired me.
So you quit your day job to work for yourself full time, was that scary at first?
Crazy scary. You’re taught to get a job, and live off that job but no one teaches you how to start a business, be your own boss and earn for yourself. It has a lot of ups and downs but at the end of the day as much work as you put in is generally equivalent to how much money your going to make.
What are your goals with your company?
I have a lot of ideas that I am excited to start working on and create a full brand. This year I plan on distributing to dispensaries in the Detroit, Ann Arbor, Lansing and Flint areas, but that’s one of the easiest things I can do. I want to create new products that are medicated but not necessarily food. Work on a unconventional smoking clothing line. Get my medicated cooking show off the ground. Create weed based events that challenge the “stoner” image, as well as start creating full course medicated meals to show off the different aspects of marijuana not just the “high” that it is known for.
When you graduated with a degree in business administration, what did you foresee yourself doing?
I always saw myself owning a business, but I always assumed it would be a restaurant or a clothing line of some sort.
What knowledge / wisdom do you have for us on the benefits of edibles?
Know your dosing and active ingredients. Marijuana effects everyone differently. A 50mg brownie can have one person on the floor sleep, but to another person they won’t feel anything.
Why are you passionate about the marijuana industry?
It’s the new gold rush, except it’s green. There are opportunities all around but you just have to make them for yourself and I love that. Marijuana is something that I personally get behind as an industry because there are so many complex qualities to the plant that can be beneficial.
Is there anyone you admire in the marijuana industry, and why?
At the moment, Food with a Twist or Dirty Mitten Medible Co. I like their style, they are both Detroit-based and their food is great. But I haven’t found anyone that’s trying to build something similar to what I want to accomplish.
Follow Smokahontas on Twitter.
The name of your bakery is very offensive to Native people.
Pocahontas was a heroine, not just to members of her own tribe, which still exists, but to the rest of us as well.
And after centuries of genocide, racism, forced removal from our homelands, boarding schools and intergenerational grief and trauma, we have to add to it cultural appropriation, things like offensive mascots and names like “Smokahontas”, which just make a mockery of our culture and our heroes.
She was a real person deserving of respect and I am quite sure she would not approve of this use of her name.
Shame on you. Racism is alive and well in 2017, which we all know, and we can see in the name of your business as well.
I wish you would consider changing it. Until you do, your business has been added to the Native American Wall of Shame as well as several Native watchdog groups which list racist businesses.
Perhaps a few protests outside your shop, and some newspaper and television news coverage will get the point across as well in your community that this is not okay.
This is racism.
And if you think it’s not, it’s because you’re looking through a very naive lens, and that’s being kind.
Perhaps you are too stoned to care. But if your wallet is affected sufficiently, perhaps you will do the right thing out of selfish reasons if you can’t do the right thing for altruistic reasons.
And if you respond that you named your bakery this to “honor”a Pocahontas, I am going to vomit.
As a fellow Native friend just said, how would it be received if I started a smoke shop bakery and called it the “Black Mammy Bakery”?
The fact that it is a woman, and a woman of color at that, doing this is just even more disappointing to me.
I have always said that people of color cannot be racist because racism is about power over people of color, but obviously people of color can be clueless and thoughtless.