By Raphael Kadushin
7 April 2021
One big bubbling stew of flavours, American cuisine has never stopped shifting shape and adding accents, with successive waves of immigrants happily swapping and blending their culinary traditions for centuries. There is, though, one crucial legacy missing from the raucous mix, and that's ironically America's own Indigenous cuisine. Native American food, if it's recognised today at all, usually only materialises on the Thanksgiving table, where it is represented by a token squash or a pumpkin centrepiece.
America's colonisers simply erased Native culture from the story of the Americas
How did such a rich heritage go missing? Blame it, said Dr Lois Ellen Frank, a Santa Fe-based chef, author and food historian, on a simple and increasingly familiar story. "History of course is always told from a specific perspective," she said. "And America's colonisers simply erased Native culture from the story of the Americas. If we told the tale from a Native American perspective, it would be entirely different. And now it's time to tell that story, when there is a new consciousness and people want to know where their food really comes from."