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ORAL HISTORY
Dawn Orsak
According to the US 2020 Census, roughly 200,000 Czech descendants call Texas home, making its ethnic population the largest of any American state. Among these citizens, few in recent memory have devoted more time, energy, and resources to the study and preservation of Czech-Texan culinary history than Dawn Orsak. A fifth-generation Texan, she traces her ancestry to Moravia, and her Great Grandparents first set foot on Lone Star soil in the 1870s. She first began documenting the state’s Eastern European foodways in 1994 when she was sent “into the field” to conduct a series of interviews on surviving Czech dishes in preparation for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Since then, Dawn has guided Czech focused food tours of Central Texas, directed culinary festivals, curated exhibits on Texas Czech traditions, launched a kolache delivery service from her kitchen, and has shepherded her food centered Svacina Project blog since 2010. “Baking kolaches and promoting their traditional way of being made is about identity,” she told Saveur Magazine in 2017. “It connects me with my ancestors and a community that my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents grew up with.”
