Description
By Charlotte J. Frisbie
With Recipes by Tall Woman and Assistance from Augusta Sandoval
Around the world, indigenous peoples are returning to traditional foods produced by traditional methods of subsistence. The goal of controlling their own food systems, known as food sovereignty, is to reestablish healthy lifeways to combat contemporary diseases such as diabetes and obesity. This is the first book to focus on the dietary practices of the Navajos, from the earliest known times into the present, and relate them to the Navajo Nation’s participation in the global food sovereignty movement. It document the time-honored foods and recipes of a Navajo woman over almost a century, from the days when Navajos gathered or hunted almost everything they ate to a time when their diet was dominated by highly processed foods.
Charlotte J. Frisbie is a professor emerita of anthropology at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville. Her earlier works include Tall Woman: The Life Story of Rose Mitchell, a Navajo Woman, c. 1874-1977 and Navajo Blessingway Singer: The Autobiography of Frank Mitchell, 1881-1967, both available from UNM Press.
“Valuable as a source of information about changing Navajo foodways as well as traditional ways of gathering and preparing locally available foods. Embeds the material within the larger context of a growing international political movement for food sovereignty. Among Navajos, as among many other indigenous peoples, some of the major causes of morbidity and mortality are related to the consumption of highly processed foods. Thus improving diets by using locally grown produce is at once an important political as well as public health measure. Frisbie’s book is an important contribution to both of those developments.”
—Stephen J. Kunitz, author of Regional Culture and Mortality in America
“Beautiful teachings of wellness from long-lost subsistence practices that are now finally being recognized as the keys to social health and global responsibility.”
—Steven Begay, Navajo Natin Council, practitioner of Navajo medicine
University of New Mexico Press, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8263-5887-5
