The University of Arkansas Press is pleased to announce the forthcoming publication of Native Foods: Agriculture, Indigeneity, and Settler Colonialism in American History by Michael D. Wise.
In Native Food, 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.
Michael D. Wise is an environmental historian specializing in the history of food and agriculture and an associate professor of history at the University of North Texas. He is the author of Producing Predators: Wolves, Work, and Conquest in the Northern Rockies.
Native Foods is part of the Food and Foodways Series from the University of Arkansas Press. The series explores historical and contemporary topics in global food studies. The editors are committed to representing a diverse set of voices that tell lesser known food stories and to provoking new avenues of interdisciplinary research. The strengths of the series are works in the humanities and social sciences that use food as a critical lens to examine broader cultural, environmental, and ethical issues. In addition to scholarly books, we publish creative nonfiction that explores these topics with a focus on food’s sensory dimensions.
Native Foods will be published in October 2023.