Recovering Our Ancestors' Gardens

2020 Gourmand World Cookbook Award Winner of the Gourmand International World Cookbook Award, Recovering Our Ancestors’ Gardens is back! Featuring an expanded array of tempting recipes of indigenous ingredients and practical advice about health, fitness, and becoming involved in the burgeoning indigenous food sovereignty movement, the acclaimed Choctaw author and scholar Devon A. Mihesuah draws on the rich indigenous heritages of this continent to offer a helpful guide to a healthier life.Recovering Our Ancestors’ Gardens features pointed discussions about the causes of the generally poor state of indigenous health today. Diminished health, Mihesuah contends, is a pervasive consequence of colonialism, but by advocating for political, social, economic, and environmental changes, traditional food systems and activities can be reclaimed and made relevant for a healthier lifestyle today. New recipes feature pawpaw sorbet, dandelion salad, lima bean hummus, cranberry pie with cornmeal crust, grape dumplings, green chile and turkey posole, and blue corn pancakes, among other dishes. Savory, natural, and steeped in the Native traditions of this land, these recipes are sure to delight and satisfy. This new edition is revised, updated, and contains new information, new chapters, and an extensive curriculum guide that includes objectives, resources, study questions, assignments, and activities for teachers, librarians, food sovereignty activists, and anyone wanting to know more about indigenous foodways.

"The book brims with information. . . . This well-researched book will be most useful to launch discussions or perhaps to read chapter by chapter."—Publishers Weekly, "Educators, librarians, food sovereignty activists, culinary arts students, and those interested in Native American food history and sovereignty will find that this book is an excellent resource."—Elise Krohn, Tribal College Journal, “The political goal of empowerment through dietary change is certainly worthy and most likely to be translated into action when generated from within by such a prominent member of a tribal nation as Devon Mihesuah.”—Linda Murray Berzok, Gastronomica

Devon A. Mihesuah is the Cora Lee Beers Price Professor at the University of Kansas. She is the author of numerous award-winning books, including Ned Christie: The Creation of an Outlaw and Cherokee Hero, and is the coeditor of Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States: Restoring Cultural Knowledge, Protecting Environments, and Regaining Health.