Navajo Foodways

A concerted effort is underway to preserve vanishing Navajo (Diné) foodways in the light of fast and commodity food, food deserts and obesity. This food sovereignty movement seeks to decolonize Native American diets, grow traditional food sources and preserve vanishing knowledge around food preparation. The following sources aid in those efforts.

For a scholarly historical approach to Navajo food culture and preparation, you won’t go wrong with Food Sovereignty the Navajo Way: Cooking with Tall Woman by Charlotte J. Frisbie, with recipes by Tall Woman and assistance from Augusta Sandoval (University of New Mexico Press, 2018).

An anthropologist, Frisbie lived on and off in Chinle, Arizona, with Tall Woman (aka Rose Mitchell) and her family from 1963 until Tall Woman’s death in 1977. That work resulted in biographies of both Tall Woman and her husband, Frank Mitchell, a Navajo Blessingway singer. At the request of the Navajo Nation Historic Preservation Department, Tall Woman’s recipes and cooking knowledge have been gathered into this separate volume completed with the assistance of Tall Woman’s daughter, Augusta Sandoval.

Tall Woman was born in 1874, just a few years after the return of the Navajo to their tribal lands, so her story parallels the changes in Navajo agriculture, food preparation and diet over almost a century of modern Navajo history. (Frisbie also includes an overview of recent food sovereignty efforts in chapter one.) Chapter two provides information on Navajo subsistence practices and chapter three is organized around Tall Woman’s recipes, ingredients and techniques.