Perfect, thanks for coming back with the solution!
I was under the impression that DPDK has moved away from RTE_* environment variables since 19.11 and everything is configured through meson.
Btw: where are you compiling DPDK? Is it directly on the Bluefield chip? Then I would assume that “native” would work but I guess not… 
FYI: DPDK has a stable git repository where you could just clone the repository and checkout to the version you need - dpdk-stable - Data Plane Development Kit - stable branches
It is different from the Github one because it also contains patches after the first .11 subversion was released (e.g. 22.11.1/2/3). Sticking to the tar download is I believe a good practice this is just in case you want to change a lot of DPDK versions.