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In New Mexico, we’re more attuned than most to the influence of Indigenous foods—not just on the menu at the local diner, but across cuisines around the world. We know chocolate doesn’t come from Switzerland, potatoes didn’t originate in Ireland, and beans are worth their weight in gold. But it’s still easy to forget that as incredible as spaghetti puttanesca or amatriciana may be, tomatoes are not native to Italy—and Mesoamerican salsas came first.
As Lois Ellen Frank writes in the introduction to her cookbook Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky:
“Many people are unaware of the contribution Native people of the Americas have made to the foods they eat every day. In preparing these foods, we can revitalize everything associated with them.”
Frank and Chef Walter Whitewater will be exploring those ideas at the upcoming Indigenous Foodways Festival on June 20.
With the festival approaching, we’re highlighting three books from chefs and leaders participating in the event. Whether you pick up one title or all three, these books offer a deeper understanding of Indigenous food traditions, history, and the connection between food, place, and identity.
Bookworks will also host an onsite bookstore during the festival, including a book signing from noon to 1 PM.
The Pueblo Food Experience Cookbook: Whole Food of Our Ancestors
Coedited by Roxanne Swentzell and Patricia M. Perea
“If our economy dried up tomorrow, if the stores closed, what could you make to eat with the resources you have now?” Roxanne Swentzell asks in the opening pages of The Pueblo Food Experience Cookbook.
Her answer isn’t stockpiles of packaged food or survivalist preparation. Instead, she points back to the knowledge of those who lived sustainably long before modern systems existed.
“This thought has always led me back to my ancestors, who were the true permaculturists of this arid Southwest.”
The book works as both a cookbook and a collection of stories.
At its center is a three-month experiment where Indigenous participants in New Mexico returned to eating only traditional foods. Recipes range from trail mix and atole to rabbit stew, but the deeper story is one of reconnecting with process, land, and gratitude.
Moments of harvesting salt, honoring animals before providing food, and rediscovering traditional practices turn this into something bigger than a recipe collection.
Reading it may leave you feeling a little wiser—and perhaps inspire your own questions about where food comes from and how culture shapes the way we eat.
At the festival, Swentzell will speak about seed stewardship and seed rematriation.
A Feather and a Fork: 125 Intertribal Dishes from an Indigenous Food Warrior
By Crystal Wahpepah
“The food in these recipes is by and large good for you, and also delicious,” writes Tommy Orange in the foreword to Chef Crystal Wahpepah’s first cookbook.
Wahpepah grew up in Oakland and brings a modern Indigenous perspective to cooking.
A Feather and a Fork introduces creative uses of ingredients such as blue corn, amaranth flour, squash, venison, maple syrup, blueberries, and more. Alongside traditional dishes are recipes influenced by regional experiences and evolving food traditions.
There are pozoles, stews, blue corn dishes, and recipes tied to Wahpepah’s Oklahoma roots, as well as meals reflecting the meeting point of Indigenous and European culinary influences.
Although stories are woven throughout the cookbook—including reflections on historical events like the Indian Relocation Act—the focus remains forward-looking.
For Wahpepah, reconnecting with Indigenous ingredients and relationships to land is about health, community, and preserving foods that thrive through biodiversity rather than industrial farming.
Ingredients like chokecherries, rabbit, and traditional companion crops become reminders that local and ancestral food systems still have something to teach us.
At the Indigenous Foodways Festival, Wahpepah will present a cooking demonstration and join a panel discussion about building kitchens rooted in regional and ancestral traditions.
Rooted in Fire: A Celebration of Native American and Mexican Cooking
By Pyet DeSpain
For some, fusion cooking has become controversial. For Pyet DeSpain, it’s central to understanding identity and family history.
Raised partly on the Osage reservation and partly in Kansas City, with Mexican heritage on both sides of her family, DeSpain embraces culinary overlap rather than strict categories.
She describes the recipes in Rooted in Fire as:
“A fusion of Native American and Mexican flavors that aims to bridge the gap between ancient wisdom and modern kitchens.”
The cookbook moves naturally between recipes such as bison jerky, bison colorado, verdolagas and apple salad, grilled corn, berry compote, strawberry salsa, and seasonal beverages.
These recipes reflect both tradition and experimentation—connecting Indigenous ingredients with contemporary kitchens.
But the heart of the book is DeSpain’s storytelling.
Her reflections remain approachable and personal while showing how food can preserve history and create new traditions at the same time.
At the festival, DeSpain will lead a workshop on traditional corn nixtamalization and metate grinding, followed by a sample of sweet corn cake.
