NAIS 13 Feast and Forest
This class explores the interrelated social, cultural and political dimensions of Indigenous food systems, notions of kinship, and associated land-based practices. Work in this class will link the politics of Indigenous land and resource rights with the sociality of farming, hunting, gathering, feasting and other food traditions. We will contemplate and engage various elements of Indigenous food systems and health from subsistence food traditions to government commodity foods to urban Native American food movements. Food provides a space where many concepts from Native American Studies converge including food sovereignty, interspecies thinking, land-language linkages, health disparities, Indigenous environmental ethics and Indigenous community resurgence. In this class, we will focus on experiential forms of learning and our time will be organized as weekly field excursions where we learn directly from Indigenous communities, directly from the land, and learn by doing. Nine weeks of hands-on activities will culminate by hosting a fall feast on campus.