1The word “resilience,” from the Latin resiliens, from the verb resilere, meaning to rebound or to recoil, was first used in the field of physics to describe the property of materials to recover their size after the deformation caused by compressive stress and “spring into prior shape” (Bracke 54). The term migrated to the discipline of ecology to designate the capacity of ecosystems to recuperate from environmental disasters and bounce back to previous conditions. Gradually, it traveled to sociology and psychology to define “the abilities of human beings to absorb shocks,” endure hardships of multiple kinds and return to one’s usual activities (Reid 258). Recently, resilience has become popular in health sciences (Hiebel et al.), where it is conceptualized as “health despite adversity” (Robertson et al. e429) or the faculty “to sustain and advance [in] well-being in the face of challenges to it,” after an illness or an operation (Hall and Lamont 2). Even though “[p]eople with resilient traits are considered to have a better mental and physical health” (Van Schrojenstein Lantman et al. 107), not everybody appears to possess resilience or, for that matter, needs to possess it. This has been noted by several scholars in resilience studies who point out that in the current era of sustainable development goals, when worldwide concern is on environmental problems and threats, resilience is exclusively expected from those in disadvantaged positions, “the poor and the vulnerable” to natural hazards and climate change (Reid 255).
2“Given their excessive exposure to [environmental] events and shocks of a disastrous nature,” resilience has been identified with the global poor (Reid 258). Over the past decades “it has become a capacity especially attributed to [the] indigenous peoples” around the world (258), that is, the original inhabitants of regions whose culture is different from the dominant societies around them. Which makes sense upon considering that Native populations account for about 19% of the extreme poor, even though they comprise only around 6.2% of the global population (International Labour Organization 20). Moreover, “Indigenous people across the world are being disproportionately hit by the impact of climate change on their ancestral lands,” and are surviving (Ram and Shahzar). That resilience has taken over Indigeneity is evidenced “by a now large social scientific literature on indigenous resilience” (Reid 258). Julian Reid summarizes the consensus view that:
performing resilience is practically a condition of existence for being indigenous in today’s world of neoliberal identity. Knowledge around resilience, concerned as it might seem to be with promoting the rights and empowerment of indigenous peoples, is constitutive of processes for the production and disciplining of indigeneity, rather than being some ethnographic description. This disciplining of the indigenous, as well as the Global Poor, and every other target population of the resilience agenda, is integral to the containment strategy for dealing with surplus humanity, forcing peoples into adjusting their expectations and accepting the neoliberal imperative to be self-reliant. (262)
3Thus understood, resilience is performatively constituted, and its meaning depends on the cultural framework wherein it is performed. Within the matrix of neoliberalism, it emerges as a tool of oppression to keep minorities under control, which arguably can promote well-being. Deep down, what is at stake in performing resilience is the ideology of colonialism: “neoliberalism is colonialism by another name,” writes TJ Demos (155), and we can see the perpetuation of colonial processes in the environmental crisis. In this vein, Kyle Whyte confirms that “[s]ettler colonialism is ecological domination, committing environmental injustice against Indigenous peoples” (125). At the surface level, the script that Indigenous peoples are summoned to perform by neoliberal governance regimes focuses on their “abilities to cope with environmental disasters,” de-emphasizing “their own histories of colonial violence” (Reid 264). The implication is that environmental vulnerability is not produced by colonialism or that colonialism is over. Either way, by not addressing the root cause of a problem, the problem comes to be seen as inevitable (Young).
4As shown, integral to the disciplining strategy for dealing with Indigenous peoples are the imperatives of adjusting expectations to what is inevitable and of accepting self-reliance. The first imperative limits the ability to create possible alternatives to reality. When we anticipate that something is certain we stop imagining what would happen if only we changed something. This is precisely the argument Sarah Bracke puts forward upon claiming that resilience involves “a colonization of the imagination, given its profound investment in the motto at the heart of neo-liberalism: ‘There is no alternative’” (63). Consequently, people believe there are no means of effecting change. Relatedly, the second imperative impacts the capacity of transforming the world in the sense that it promotes individualism and personal autonomy, undercutting the “affective connections that might serve as the basis for radical action against the institutional sources of existing suffering and vulnerability” (Grove 153). In his seminal work on resilience in poverty alleviation programs, Mark Neocleous contends that resilience “wants acquiescence, not resistance” (7), meaning that it demands “that we use our actions to accommodate ourselves to capital and the state, and the secure future of both, rather than resist it” (7). Hence, his call to resist resilience.
5Rather than accommodating to the same resilience they are summoned to perform, the Indigenous themselves are performing a resilience of their own (Reid 262). That is, they are challenging the script imposed on them by the neoliberal political economy through alternative performative acts, using resilience as a decolonizing tool to subvert structures of oppression. Audre Lorde reminded us that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change” (102). Lewis R. Gordon and Jane Anna Gordon contested this by stating that “slaves have historically done something more provocative with such tools than attempt to dismantle the Big House” (ix). Indeed, the oppressed have used tools intended for their subjection to liberate themselves: “There are those who used those tools, developed additional ones, and built houses of their own on more or less generous soil” (ix). Their conclusion is that: “When enough houses are built, the hegemony of the master’s house—in fact, mastery itself—will cease to maintain its imperial status. Shelter needn’t be the rooms offered by such domination” (ix).
- 1 As Vizenor makes clear, “survivance” goes beyond survival or passively subsisting in the “ruin[s] o (...)
6The room that interests me here is the kitchen. I take a culinary approach to resilience and examine contemporary cookbooks by American Indian chefs and home cooks who return to the kitchen of their precolonial ancestors to dismantle the cuisine of the empire. In the understanding that to decolonize is “to recuperate pre-colonial languages and cultures” while banishing external and internalized colonial structures, as Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin postulate in The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Postcolonial Literatures (28), this research investigates Indigenous foodways as a decolonial act of resilience. My basic argument is that, in these texts, culinary resilience emerges from standing up to the foods of the colonizer, and eliminating unhealthy ingredients that were introduced by Europeans. From this perspective, it interacts with notions of “survivance” (Vizenor)1 and “resurgence” (Simpson), in the sense that Indigenous populations, by way of culinary resilience, actively refashion and revive their original tribal cultures. I focus on three factors promotive of culinary resilience: historical memory, imagination, and the “affective connections” that cooking and eating Native foods create, which displace the ontology of individualism underpinning the neoliberal agenda. I propose that while these authors pay heed to environmental disasters, they place primacy on the violence of food colonialism and the imposition of laws that killed and destroyed the health of Native populations. Because precolonial gastronomy cannot be recovered in a pure form, imagination is key in coming up with alternative dishes that help transform the practices of everyday eating. What follows reviews the destruction of Indigenous processes of food production as the result of the European invasion and introduces the corpus of analysis. After that, I examine the decolonization of ingredients, recipes, and menus.
7Native American foods are “inextricably linked to the well-being of the land, culture, identity, social structure and ceremonial practices” of the Indigenous people (Sowerwine et al. 580). Before the colonization of North America, Native Americans “were remarkably healthy and strong” (Sherman 49). Their diet was closely connected to Mother Earth. “It was place-based and included wild meats, approximately 8000 varieties of corn and other fruits and vegetables” (McKinley and Walters 92). Adapted over generations to local ecosystems and seasons, Indigenous foods “provided complete and balanced nutrition” (Albert). After Europeans arrived,
this balance was drastically, and often violently, interrupted. Europeans brought with them livestock and crops from their continents, with the intent to colonize the Americas through both the migration of European settlers and the imposition of European foods on Native populations. Indigenous American foods, comprised of staples drastically different from the European diet, were viewed as inferior and unfit for consumption by the colonizers. (Albert)
8Largely due to cultural biases and lack of understanding, Indigenous foodways were marginalized. Colonial farming erased American Indian agriculture, flora diversity decreased, and plains bison were hunted almost to extinction, leaving many Native groups without access to their means of subsistence. In addition to the invasion of foreign foods that came to break the balance of the Indigenous peoples’ diet (beef, pork, dairy, wheat, cooking oils and sugar), Native populations were evicted from their ancestral lands to make way for European settlement and were relocated on barren territories where they could not grow and forage traditional foods (Hurt 134). The Indian Removal Act (1830), the Indian Appropriations Act (1851) and the General Allotment Act (1887) severed Indian tribes from their sources of sustenance, forcing them to become dependent on the rations that the US government issued as per its treaty obligations (McKinley and Walters 92).
9Distributed monthly by the Office of Indian Affairs, ration foods were often insufficient and inadequate for the nutritional and cultural needs of American Indians. Typically, they prioritized the prevention of starvation over nutritional adequacy and consisted of inexpensive and long-lasting items that were unfamiliar to the eating habits of tribal communities. When meat was included, it was often rancid and not enough (de Cora 12). “Thus, from 1880 to 1910, in the middle of the richest country in the world, thousands of Indian people on reservations died of hunger” (De Cora 12). Despite the increase in federal food aid afterwards (Bell-Sheeter 7), the same staples continued to be provided to Indian people in the “commodities program” administered by the US Department of Agriculture, which took over the food rationing system in the 1950s (De Cora 12). Currently the system is administered by USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service through The Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations. Authorized under the Food Stamp Act of 1977, this assistance program distributes foods free of charge to low-income families who live on or near a reservation (Vantrease 55). The majority of these foods still “are shelf-stable and preservative-heavy to endure storage and delivery. Many have questionable nutrition value. Most are not native to North America” (57). Still, “[s]ome foods … that are considered ‘traditional,’ such as fry bread, represent relics of the introduction of white flour and other processed foods through governmental rations and commodities; these commodities both enabled survival but also impaired health and foodways” (McKinley and Walters 92).
10Whether served sweet or savory, frybread (also spelled “fry bread”), associated with American Indian cuisine, along with its relative, the Indian taco, is celebrated in feasts as the most recognizable food tradition of Indian people today. According to Sherman Alexie: “Frybread is the story of our survival,” a survival, not survivance, which “contributes to high levels diabetes and obesity that affect nearly one-half of the Native population living on reservations” (qtd. in Sherman 9). The case is that:
The average piece of this fried white-flour dough (the size of the eight-inch paper plate it’s served on) weighs in at 700 calories and contains 25 grams of fat. When you pile on the processed cheese and potted meats of an Indian taco, you’ve got a recipe for chronic illness and pain. ‘Frybread has killed more Indians than the federal government,’ sings the rock star Keith Secola. Here’s the thing: obesity and tooth decay did not exist among the indigenous people of North America before colonial ingredients were introduced. (Sherman 9)
11Today one in four Native Americans receive some kind of federal food assistance, compared to one in twelve white non-Hispanic individuals (Feeding America 2). Evidence suggests that those relying on federal food programs are at increased risk of obesity and diet-related chronic conditions due to long-term use of foods that are high in fat and calories and low in fiber (Chino, Haff, and Dodge Francis). Examination of data on American Indian/Alaska Native Health from the Office of Minority Health on its website indicates that American Indians are 50% more likely to be diagnosed with coronary heart disease, 10% more likely to have high blood pressure, and almost three times more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes than their white counterparts. Indeed, throughout Indian Country, diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension have reached epidemic proportions (Cantrell). Furthermore, on the authority of the Indian Health Service and The Federal Health Program for American Indians and Alaska Natives, Native Americans have an average life expectancy four years shorter than all other races and ethnicities in the US. In response to this dire situation cookbooks of Native American cuisine are recovering “the original indigenous diet” (Sherman 7).
12The corpus of my study consists of three cookbooks chosen on account of the number of recipes contained in them and their media popularity. In the order of publication, the first one, Original Local: Indigenous Foods, Stories and Recipes from the Upper Midwest (2013), was an instant bestseller on Amazon in the categories of Native American and Midwestern cuisine. Written by American poet Heid E. Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe), the book includes 135 recipes with local foods that honor the heritage they represent. The second, The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen (2017), earned the James Beard Award for Best American Cookbook in 2018. Written by Oglala Lakota chef Sean Sherman, with Beth Dooley, the book contains over 100 recipes with decolonized ingredients and precolonial techniques from the Dakota and Minnesota territories. Worth mentioning is that in 2023 Sherman was listed as one of Time’s 100 most influential people and won the Julia Child Award. The third book, New Native Kitchen: Celebrating Modern Recipes of the American Indian (2021), is authored by Navajo chef Freddie Bitsoie, former executive chef at Mitsitam Native Foods Café at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, in collaboration with James Beard Award-winning author James O. Fraioli. Accompanied by original artwork by Gabriella Trujillo, it gives modern updates of 100 recipes that “celebrate some of [the] shared culinary traditions” of Native American communities (Bitsoie 40).
13Drawing on “cookbooks, magazines, [and] research publications” (Sherman 3) that cover Native American cooking, the writers of the texts at hand give ample information of the names, nutritional properties, and histories of the basic ingredients they use in their dishes. From reading these cookbooks, we learn that pemmican, from the Cree word pimîhkân, “has been common in the Great Plains for centuries” (Bitsoie 30), and is a good source of omega-3 fatty acids. Just like walleye, or, in the Ojibwe language, Ogaa, fished for centuries by Chippewa tribes in northern Wisconsin from inland lakes (Erdrich 57). In addition, we learn that the meat of ptarmigan, “hunted by Eyak, Inuit, and Ontario First Nations,” and of grouse, hunted by the “Mistassini, Kutchin, and Waswanipi peoples” is an excellent source of protein (Bitsoie 210). On another level, we are taught that thíŋpsiŋla, prairie turnip or timpsula, a staple Lakota food, is more nourishing than most root crops. And that manoomin (pronounced Ma-nō-min), the “good berry” or “good seed” in the Ojibwe language, is “far richer in vitamins than wheat, barley, oats, or rye” (Sherman 79). For their part, corn, squash, and beans (the Three Sisters), which “are the backbone of Native cuisine,” have high levels of antioxidants (Erdrich 46), same as sunchokes or Jerusalem artichokes, the tuber root of sunflowers (Bitsoie 34).
14In truth, all the ingredients listed as indispensable cooking essentials are extremely nutritious: From amaranth, sometimes called “pigweed,” a grain “first cultivated by the Aztecs more than eight thousand years ago” that contains “beta carotene, iron, and calcium” (Sherman 60); through chaga mushrooms, beneficial for lowering cholesterol levels (161); to Huitlacoche or mapë’di. This sporous fungus, considered a blight by US farmers, is a delicacy “high in the amino acid lysine” (31). “Loaded with vitamins and minerals” are also purslane, plantain, thistle, and lamb’s quarters (11, 27), even though they are ripped off as weeds and destroyed with poison. So, “[i]nstead of trying to eradicate these plants in our lawns, we can just eat them up!” (24). Against popular belief, none of these wild greens is native to North America. Contrariwise, other ingredients generally considered non-native are originally indigenous. Honey, for instance, was known to the Maya in the Yucatan Peninsula before Europeans brought honeybees to the Americas in the 1700s (Erdrich 164). Likewise, strawberries, said to have been originally cultivated in northern Europe, had long been grown when the Spanish arrived in the traditional territory of the Haudensaunee and Anishnaabeg: “In fact, our Anishinaabe sacred stories mention the ‘heart berry’ or strawberry, and the berry is prominent in Haudenosaunee cosmology as well,” writes Erdrich (206).
15Clearly, “Indigenous foods mirror indigenous struggles” (Erdrich 13). Behind such extensive information about the ingredients that early Native ancestors ate is the desire to combat the colonial oppression of the American Indian people, which led to the suppression of their cultures and the consequent oblivion of a way of life in which foods were consumed in alignment with the cycles of Mother Earth, in permanent harmony, balance, and communication with her. Authors assume that readers do not know these ingredients well, have not tried or seen some of them. Even though these books are addressed to “home chefs in any city or town” (Bitsoie 210, Erdrich 13), the mix of Native and English languages and the constant interpellation to “rediscover the wisdom of our forefathers [sic]” (Sherman 49) indicate that the intended primary audience is of American Indian descent.
16The overall logic is that to regain the health of ancestors the foods native to the Americas must be remembered, not to mourn their passing but to advocate their return. This is not to say that non-native foods will not be consumed if they are sustainable. “We’re not purists,” Sherman claims. He continues: “we do try to source our ingredients with an eye to authenticity and sustainability,” yet “it’s hard to be precise. So many ingredients, introduced centuries ago, are now fully integrated into our landscapes” (7). Besides, “[m]any foods once indigenous … have been crossed with European varieties and the original food obscured” (Erdrich 127). Not to mention that “A hundred years ago, flavor preferences and food trends were tremendously different because food was different” (Bitsoie 16). Because the past can only be repeated in the present, the current biomedical concept of health as physical nutrition (note the nutrition vocabulary cited above) combines with Indigenous beliefs about health and spirituality premised on living in wholistic congruence with nature (Absolon). So that their health improves, readers are encouraged to start their own gardens in the backyard, plant heritage seeds, preserve food, compost, forage, hunt, and fish, “taking only what is needed so that the environment doesn’t suffer” (Bitsoie 187). They are advised to buy from Native American vendors, farmers’ markets, and health food stores. Since some items can only be found online, a list of web addresses is usually provided. Evidently, due to environmental degradation some ancestral ingredients are endangered or too expensive, which leads authors to “make substitutions based on what’s in season and is growing close to [one’s] kitchen” while exploring other alternatives to colonial meals that need to be avoided (Sherman 7).
17Thus, for the recipe of Northwoods Paella, instead of freshwater mussels, which is “one of the most rapidly declining animal groups in the US” because of continued water pollution (based on data from the National Park Service agency), smoked oysters are used. For Old-Fashioned Rabbit Stew, in place of rabbit, difficult to raise at factory-farm numbers and, consequently, pricey: turkey thighs (Sherman 111). For the same reason some recipes call for chicken rather than ptarmigan and grouse (Bitsoie 210). As an alternative to bison, “which is expensive and therefore culturally divisive”: beef, which “costs less” (63). To prevent the wasteful use of resources, writers suggest ways to stretch a recipe and “feed a crowd” (Sherman 122) adding cheap fillers (like stock, Erdrich 146), and saving leftovers that will, in turn, be used for another plat. Three Sisters Mash, for instance, “makes good use of leftovers” (Sherman 43). Hominy Cakes are made with “leftover cornmeal mush” (53), and the leftovers of Wild Rice Cakes “may be re-crisped in a low oven until warmed through” (63).
18Inspired by ancestral traditions, recipes recreate precolonial and colonial dishes. Thrift aside, Indigenous ingredients inevitably replace European foods in Duck Egg Aioli (Sherman 23), Wild Greens Pesto (24) and Duck and Bison Cassoulet (Erdrich 76-77). Some dishes are vegetarian, like Manoomin Moussaka wherein wild rice substitutes meat (42-43). Most contain no dairy and no gluten. A case in point is Mushroom Sage Gravy, which “tastes traditional and is brown and rib-sticking, but also vegetarian, gluten-free and dairy free” (102). So is Decolonized Green Bean Casserole. In this recipe the chicken or cream of mushroom soup is taken out entirely and replaced with 1½ cups of stock, and 10 ounces of fresh mushrooms, sliced (100). To be sure, nearly every recipe in these books is naturally or can easily be built to cater to current food sensitivities and intolerances, which makes pre-colonialism sound so extremely modern that one gets the impression that the latest dietary regimens are strongly indebted to ancient Native cuisines.
19To update Native “traditional” foods Erdrich develops a decolonized version of the “fry bread made from white flour and deep-fried” that her mother prepared when she was a girl, which brings the “sweetest memory of [her]childhood, straight from the Turtle Mountain reservation, circa 1975” (110). She incorporates pumpkin and substitutes sugar with ¼ cup of honey, daring readers to “resist” the taste of it (96). The irony is that the substitute is an ingredient that nourished the original people. Just the same, it is not clear how much her decolonized frybread differs in flavor, if it does, from the classic dish she grew up eating. Judging by the picture that accompanies the instructions, they are similar in texture and appearance, which will prevent the eye, more difficult to trick than the palate, from detecting any difference. What is clear is that the change of just one ingredient might disrupt the symbolic qualities of a dish. Erdrich, however, reattaches the fond memories evoked by her mother’s frybread to her own when it occurs to her that Pumpkin Bangs (the Turtle Mountain Chippewa version of frybread is called “bangs”) “be used for tribal gatherings, big doings, or other special occasions” (96). I return to how the food eaten in feasts reinforces memory and social identity, for now it is interesting to note that Sherman, who refuses to share a recipe of frybread, which he sees as a symbol of resilience under colonial oppression, refashions “the Indian taco with authentic ingredients—the Indigenous taco” (122). This “delicious and superhealthy alternative” is topped with local foods: walleye and squash (122). The base is a corn cake, “made of cornmeal, cooled, formed into a patty, cooked on a hot flat surface—flat rocks, a home griddle—just as Native communities have been doing for centuries” (51).
20In her book, Cooking in America, 1590-1842, Trudy Eden quotes some culinary methods that Native Americans have been using for thousands of years. Although they are “predetermined by geography, technology, and a certain amount of luck,” stone cooking, roasting in a pit, steaming, smoking, drying, and stewing were most popular (xxi). To a large extent, Bitsoie, Erdrich and Sherman forego labor-intensive ancient cooking methods. They grill, steam, poach, braise, bake, and caramelize. Oftentimes, they discard “grinding stones, mortar and pestle, and ancient mills” (Sherman 7), in favor of dehydrators, high-powered blenders or food processors and multi-cookers. That said, cooks “acknowledge that traditional techniques can meet modern tastes” (Bitsoie 266) and give options for readers to alternate between the new and the old, preserving “the ancient, sacred spirit of Native American cooking while allowing for its evolution” (40). Herb-Roasted Fish may serve as an illustration. The dish can be cooked outside:
To cook the fish in a traditional pit: Cover the bottom of a 1-foot-deep pit (2 feet diameter) with hot wood coals. Set the corn husk-wrapped fish on the coals. Fill the pit with sand to cover the fish. Steam/cook for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Dig away the sand. Remove the fish from the pit. Set on a platter. Serve the fish whole, family style. (Sherman 92)
21Alternatively, it can be cooked inside: “To cook the dish in a clay pot: Soak the pot in water for a good hour. Place the fish in the clay pot. Cover and place in a 250°F oven and cook the fish for about 1 hour or until it is tender. Remove the clay pot from the oven. Remove the fish and serve family style” (Sherman 92).
22The latter course of action is “not … as dramatic” but achieves “nearly similar results” (Sherman 92). In dishes, like this one, that recreate the precolonial culinary experience, ancestral ingredients may be replaced with more readily available alternatives. That being so, while the original Navajo recipe for Herb-Roasted Fish calls for the bluehead sucker fish that is specific to the Southwest, “any small or large firm fish works nicely” (92). By the same token, for the freshly shucked Cherrystone clams in the recipe for Wampanoag Cherry Clam, shared by Bitsoie, “you can substitute another type of fresh clam available where you live” (Bitsoie 22). Similarly, the fresh wild king salmon from Alaska featured in the recipe of Alaskan King Salmon with Crushed Pecans, created “to honor the [cuisine] of the Indigenous communities in the Pacific Northwest,” may be replaced by coho or sockeye if more at hand, “both are delicious substitutes” (344). If “in a pinch” you can use canned pinto beans in lieu of fresh Aztec beans in the recipe for Aztec Bean and Roasted Green Chile (48). Equally, for Swamp Cabbage Salad and Lemon Vinaigrette, inspired by a recipe from the Seminole Tribe of Florida, you can adjust all the greens “for what’s in season or use whichever baby lettuce you prefer: arugula, butter, dandelion, frisée, or spinach” (132). Bitsoie, who talks a lot about the creativity typical of Native American recipes, indicates that adaptability to geographical limitations involves finding ways to be creative with traditions and staying true to them. True to tradition, recipes are simple, easy to follow, with straightforward directions. To facilitate navigation through these texts, recipes are arranged in chapters by where ingredients are gathered, considering the typical progression of meals.
23The cookbooks under analysis reflect an organization of the landscape in accordance with the conventional order of consumption: Fields and Gardens (Soups, Salads, and Vegetables), Prairies and Lakes (Land and Sea or Fish and Game), and Nature’s Sweets, Teas, and Refreshing Drinks (which includes puddings, cakes, and tarts). Sherman introduces one more section on “Feasts of the Moon” with “special pop-up dinners” that honor the thirteen lunar moons throughout the year (196), but otherwise keeps the same menu structure. Dishes are selected from different Native nations and combined into a supranational cuisine that prioritizes foods indigenous to the whole American continent. About this cuisine, there is a kind of pan-Indian sentiment, not dissimilar in intensity to the sentiment that animated previous military, political and religious resistance movements, when altogether, as “children of the Great Spirit,” of “one mind, one heart” and “one family,” American Indian people fought for freedom (Frón 29, 30). It becomes manifest the moment Erdrich urges “Indigenous foods of the hemisphere [to] unite” (11) and relates foods to people at the family level. Upon claiming that corn is “our relative” (168), and that the Indigenous foods of the Americas are brothers and cousins to each other, she gives reasons for unity, entreating Native American readers to remember that they are connected by blood in one big nation.
24It may already be apparent that titles of dishes point to a national origin (via the identification of place, tribal adscription, star ingredient and primary culinary technique). Often, they point to a female source (Rita Erdrich’s Manoomin, Buffalo Bird Woman’s Four Sisters Dish, Grandma Gourneau’s Corn Pancakes). Only occasionally do they mention a masculine source (J.D. Kinlacheeny’s Chilchin Pudding). This is not surprising given that “nationalist discourse frequently casts women as a broker of cultural tradition” (Mannur 17). In many Native American communities, cooking has been a quintessentially female activity, and culinary memories are mostly transmitted through women. Traditionally, Native American men do not cook. They “do a play a role in growing food and raising livestock, [but] their dominant role in the past has not been in the traditional Native kitchen” (Frank, Discourse and Practice 125). It is solely recently that some have crossed gender lines and have assumed the heritage of their mothers, aunts, and grandmothers, creating “a pathway for Native boys and men to be able to cook in traditional settings” (125). As of now, they are “beginning to be accepted in the kitchen at ceremonial feasts and traditional ceremonies [where they] can be seen cooking alongside women and preparing food for these events” (125-126).
25“Feasting is a common practice among Native American tribes,” writes Native food historian and cookbook author Lois Ellen Frank (Discourse and Practice 189). Even though Bitsoie and Erdrich do not devote a specific section of their menu to ceremonial meals, they make ample reference to harvest festivals, bean dances, potlatches, and powwows that feature prayers, chants, drumming, songs, and stories. The foods included in these feasts are the means to commemorate something as well as the objects of commemoration. Frank suggests as much when she elaborates on how within festive contexts food is transformed “from staple to symbol” (206):
The complex of behaviors associated with selecting, preparing, serving, and consuming foods creates a symbolic vocabulary of the basic assumptions of the community, with meaning and significance. Such meaning may be possible because festivity seems to be inextricably linked with ritual at the point of community—that is, at the point where the individual participates in traditional structured ways in the social network. (206-207)
26Likewise, ritual is inextricably linked to social memory, the content of which it transfers from one generation to another, supporting group identity. Symbolic meaning, however, is not private to feasts dishes. It also charges quotidian dinners, especially in the context of culinary resilience where not giving in to colonial food and eating meals that express identity, culture and history is a daily practice.
27I have argued that the culinary resilience performed in the cookbooks by Erdrich, Bitsoie and Sherman involves knowledge of the history and contemporary experiences of colonization, a recognition of the importance to imagine the current world otherwise, and an awareness of the necessity for collective resistance to oppression. As a decolonizing tool, culinary resilience sustains the health of Native Americans, empowers them, and helps them with chronic diseases. Writers of these cookbooks teach readers about ancestral ingredients, their histories, and nutritional properties to fight the colonial exploitation of Native labor and natural resources that led to the erasure of Indigenous cultures and manners of life. To effect a dietary change, they share versatile recipes that allow switching around culinary techniques and substituting foods depending on the availability of products and the preferences of the modern cook, while honoring old-fashioned traditions. Last, they draw on the connections that sharing culturally meaningful food creates as the basis for radical action in support of the rights of tribes to control how they distribute what they grow and harvest.
28Besides the cookbooks examined, other cookbooks of Native American cuisine, such as Chími Nu’am: Native California Foodways for the Contemporary Kitchen by Karuk home cook Sara Calvosa Olson (2023), Tawâw: Progressive Indigenous Cuisine by chef Shane M. Chartrand, of the Enoch Cree Nation (2019), and Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky: Modern Plant-Based Recipes Using Native American Ingredients by Frank (2023) are showing how not to give in to food oppression and return to the diet of ancestors. Since many Hispanics have ancestors from Indigenous groups in Latin America, and some consider themselves part Native American, many Latinx cookbooks are urging their readers to eat more precolonial foods, resist food inequalities and industrialized animal agriculture. Mention may be made of Decolonize your Diet: Plant-Based Mexican American Recipes for Health and Healing (2015), by Luz Calvo and Catrióna Rueda Esquibel; La vida verde: Plant-Based Mexican Cooking with Authentic Flavor (2020) by Jocelyn Ramirez, and Provecho: 100 Vegan Mexican Recipes to Celebrate Culture and Community (2021) by Edgar Castrejón. As a matter of fact, chefs from other ethnic and national backgrounds are decolonizing the histories of African foods (Vegan Africa: Plant-Based Recipes from Ethiopia to Senegal by Marie Kacouchia), Korean cuisine (The Korean Vegan Cookbook: Reflections and Recipes from Omma’s Kitchen by Joanne Lee Molinaro), and Asian Indian recipes (Plant-Based India: Nourishing Recipes Rooted in Tradition by Sheil Shukla). To appraise the ways that resilience is enacted through gastronomy it would be necessary to look at a more extensive corpus of cookbooks. That notwithstanding, my study may provide a useful theoretical framework for future research on resistance cuisine and on how modern Native American cookbooks are reconstituting precolonial identity through foodways.
29The research carried out for the writing of this article has taken place within the framework of the research projects “The Premise of Happiness: The Function of Feelings in North American Narratives” (PID2020-113190GB-C21), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation; and “Comida, identidad y comunidad en la literatura infantil hispánica del siglo XXI” (CIAICO/2022/208), funded by the Conselleria de Innovación, Universidades, Ciencia y Sociedad Digital (Comunitat Valenciana, Spain).