Indigenous Noms: Cakes, Fry Bread, and Treats from Turtle Island (Eat Native)

Dr. Faith's favorite Indigenous comfort foods and stories about why they're important to her and her community, with an especial focus on Oklahoma and Texas regional specialties. Get a history lesson with your frybread, wow your friends with Choctaw Persimmon Cake or Chickasaw Molasses Bread, have your kids help you fill a batch of Empanadas de Camote, and revel in the awesomeness that are grape dumplings. Roasted pumpkin provides a healthier, grain-free sweet treat, and masa harina cookies are what you'll be bringing to all the parties from now on. Includes dairy-free and gluten-free options for just about everything!

In 2020, publisher Joe Biel and author Faith Harper hosted in an in-conversation event at Powells about [this] decision to abandon the original cover—while Indigenous people thought it was awesome, nahullo unanimously hated it and told us that Indigenous people would be offended. Literally 100% of Indigenous people that we polled got the joke immediately and thought it was amazing. However, Dr. Faith pointed out that she would deal with the brunt of soothing white lady feelings, not us. So we agreed to change the cover but four years later, we revisited this and changed it back. We decided that it was just better not to make this project about soothing white lady feelings and letting them feel uncomfortable with this choice. 

If you aren't familiar, Edward Curtis was a bad anthropologist tasked with photographing Indigenous people in 1900 and thought that none of them looked "Indian enough" so he would give them props to hold in the portraits. This codifies how nahullo thought "Indians" look, over 120 years later. So the joke is that the cake, hat, and blower are just more props. 

Part of the Eat Native cookbook series.