Choctaw Author’s American Indian Health and Fitness Book Wins Gourmand World Cookbook Award

American Indian author Devon Mihesuah’s newest book, Recovering Our Ancestors’ Gardens: Indigenous Recipes and Guide to Diet and Fitness, has won the Special Award of the Jury from the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. The award will be presented in May, 2006 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Baldwin City, KS (PRWEB) February 6, 2006 -- American Indian author Devon Mihesuah’s newest book, Recovering Our Ancestors’ Gardens: Indigenous Recipes and Guide to Diet and Fitness has won the Special Award of the Jury from the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards and is finalist for “Best in the World” along with fellow Americans Maya Angelou and Martha Stewart.

The award will be presented in May, 2006 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This is the 10th year of the Gourmand Awards, based out of Barcelona Spain. There were 6000 entries this year from 65 countries all vying for “Best in the World” among 34 cookbook categories.

Devon Mihesuah is Oklahoma Choctaw and the Cora Lee Beers Price Teaching Professor in International Cultural Understanding in the Center for Indigenous Nations Studies at the University of Kansas. She is author of a dozen award-winning scholarly works and fiction novels that deal with American Indian empowerment and decolonization. She also serves as Editor of the international journal of indigenous studies, the American Indian Quarterly.

Recovering Our Ancestors’ Gardens contains an exercise advice section, strategies for healthy eating, gardening tips and a collection of indigenous recipes from her U.S. and Canadian colleagues, including Summer Salsa, Dakota Waskuya Soup, Osage Pounded Meat, Chickasaw Pashofa, Elk Steak, Choctaw Banaha, Comanche Ata-Kwasa, and Luiseno Weewish.

The book also consists of clear and pointed discussions about the generally poor state of indigenous health today and how and why many Natives have become separated from their traditional diets, sports, gardening, and other activities that kept them physically and mentally healthy.

“High incidences of diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity and related physical problems among Indigenous peoples are pervasive consequences of colonialism,” Mihesuah says. “Natives once gathered, hunted and cultivated foods that kept them physically strong. Now, many Natives across the Americas are sedentary and have lost touch with their traditional tribal knowledge, including methods of cultivating, preparing and preserving foods. Taking charge of our health by boycotting the greasy, fatty, sugary and salty foods that are killing us in favor of the nutrient-rich and unprocessed indigenous foods of this hemisphere is greatly empowering.”

“We can only do so much to combat racism and prejudice,” Mihesuah notes, “but we can control what we eat, what we feed our families and how much we move around. We must take responsibility for our health and for the well-being of our children. In so doing, we pass on a legacy of self-respect and tribal strength to future generations.”

Among the objectives of the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards are to help readers find the best out of the 24,000 food and wine books produced every year from across the world.
   
Recovering Our Ancestors’ Gardens can be purchased through University of Nebraska Press at 402-472-2759 or http://unp.unl.edu/bookinfo/4926.html

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