Four books about food and culture centering Native experiences
Plus two books for the younger readers in your life
November is Native American Heritage Month in the USA! It’s also starting to get cool in most of the country, perfect for cozying up with a food-inspired book. Here are some you should check out.
Robin Wall Kimmerer’s new book is on my reading list this week—excited to dig in! The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World.
Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science by Jessica Hernandez. The author is a scientist and transnational Indigenous woman. Her book—while deeply grounded in rigorous science—is not written for scientists, but for anyone interested in food, agriculture, environmental issues, and justice.
An Indian among Los Indígenas: A Native Travel Memoir by Ursula Pike. This is a memoir by an American Indian traveling through South America. Is she “American” or “indigenous”—and how is indigeneity different across the Americas? I love this premise because it reminds me of my own struggles with identity during international travels as a teenager.
Eating the Landscape: American Indian Stories of Food, Identity, and Resilience by Enrique Salmón. This book offers a tour of Indigenous cultures and foods—and their clashes with and resistance to modern and destructive agricultural practices—across the North American continent. I love the lens of food as a source of identity and agriculture as resistance.
Two great books for teens
For the budding academic in your life, there’s the excellent Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults. If you have not read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s classic, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, consider this your call to action. And the pair would make a great parent-child read-along.
Sky Wolf’s Call: The Gift of Indigenous Knowledge by Eldon Yellowhorn and Kathy Lowinger is a great introduction to traditional ecological and other forms of knowledge and knowledge-making systems of American Indigenous peoples. This would be a great read for teens interested in environmental activism. This writing team also wrote a book my kids loved in early elementary, Turtle Island: The Story of North America’s First People.
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