Native Foodways

Explores the interplay of religion and food in Native American cultures.

Native Foodways is the first scholarly collection of essays devoted exclusively to the interplay of Indigenous religious traditions and foodways in North America. Drawing on diverse methodologies, the essays discuss significant confluences in selected examples of these religious traditions and foodways, providing rich individual case studies informed by relevant historical, ethnographic, and comparative data. Many of the essays demonstrate how narrative and active elements of selected Indigenous North American religious traditions have provided templates for interactive relationships with particular animals and plants, rooted in detailed information about their local environments. In return, these animals and plants have provided these Native American communities with sustenance. Other essays provide analyses of additional contemporary and historical North American Indigenous foodways while also addressing issues of tradition and cultural change. Scholars and other readers interested in ecology, climate change, world hunger, colonization, religious studies, and cultural studies will find this book to be a valuable resource.

Michelene E. Pesantubbee is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the University of Iowa and author of Choctaw Women in a Chaotic World: The Clash of Cultures in the Colonial Southeast. Michael J. Zogry is Associate Professor and Department Chair of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas and author of Anetso, the Cherokee Ball Game: At the Center of Ceremony and Identity.