Native Foods: Agriculture, Indigeneity, and Settler Colonialism in American History (Food and Foodways) Contributor(s): Wise, Michael D (Author)

"Native foods are ubiquitous in America, but they often go unrecognized and unidentified. So too do the countless farms, gardens, and other places created by Native American people to feed and nourish their families and communities over generations. Over the last five centuries of settler colonialism, this inconspicuousness of Native American food and agriculture has helped configure Americans' imaginations of food and agriculture in ways that require critical identification. Drawing attention to this issue, Native Foods brings to bear approaches from the fields of food studies and Indigenous studies to explore how biophysical patterns of settler-colonial land use have worked as narrative frames for structuring historical views of Native agriculture. Following the lead of Indigenous food sovereignty advocates and activists, the book emphasizes the presence and persistence of Native American cuisine and documents how Native foods and agricultural techniques were never "lost" but only obscured by the peregrinations of colonialism, capitalism, and various other historical transformations"--

In Native Foods: Agriculture, Indigeneity, and Settler Colonialism in American History, Michael D. Wise confronts four common myths about Indigenous food history: that most Native communities did not practice agriculture; that Native people were primarily hunters; that Native people were usually hungry; and that Native people never developed taste or cuisine. Wise argues that colonial expectations of food and agriculture have long structured ways of seeing (and of not seeing) Native land and labor.

Combining original historical research with interdisciplinary perspectives and informed by the work of Indigenous food sovereignty advocates and activists, this study sheds new light on the historical roles of Native American cuisine in American history and the significance of ongoing colonial processes in present-day discussions about the place of Native foods and Native history in our evolving worlds of taste, justice, and politics.