Loretta Barrett Oden's spirited journey on PBS.

Byline: Sharon Dowell

Aug. 8--This is a remarkable year for Loretta Barrett Oden, an Oklahoman of American Indian descent who is a chef and a food historian. She is ecstatic, even giddy, that she has earned a Boston/New England Chapter Emmy for "Seasoned With Spirit: A Native Cook's Journey," the five-part PBS series she wrote and hosted.

The series, co-produced by Connecticut Public Television and Native American Public Telecommunications in association with Resolution Pictures, will air locally beginning Monday.

For Oden, 65, who lives in Oklahoma City but travels the world for her work, the series is a dream come true. She said recently that it began with a dream she had to share the cultures and customs of native people through the foods they've relied on for generations. That dream evolved into 26 shows Oden has written.

The Shawnee native and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation hopes funding for the remaining 21 scripts will come her way now that she's garnered an Emmy.

Getting funding to proceed with the first five shows was a difficult feat for someone new to the world of television production and scripts, but Oden is rarely deterred by big challenges. In fact, she said, shooting the series on location in the Gulf region of Louisiana, the Pacific Northwest, in northern Minnesota, the desert of Arizona and across South Dakota happened soon after the unexpected death of her eldest son, Clay Oden, 38, who was a renowned chef on the local food …