Ancestral Mesoamerican Food Businesses & Projects

Cru Chocolate

| WebsiteSacramento bean-to-bar craft chocolate makers.

Don Bugito

| Website | Don Bugito, the Prehispanic Snackería, is a San Francisco based company focused on planet-friendly protein snacks, featuring delicious edible insects in savory and sweet flavors. Don Bugito focuses on treats inspired by Pre-Columbian Mexican cuisine and is always working toward re-inventing ancestral food. 

Masienda

| Website | Purveyors of Mexican landrace corn. 

Rancho Gordo

| Website | Purveyors of heirloom beans and New World specialty ingredients.

Blue Corn Alianza

| Video | Facebook |To safeguard the blue heirloom corn (maíz criollo) from the region of Ozolco by paying a fair price to Amigos de Ozolco (Ozolcan families cooperative) for the cornmeal, and to let the people in Philly know about the product and culture of this corn.

Native Seeds/SEARCH

| Website | StorePromoting agricultural diversity in the arid southwestern U.S. and northwestern Mexico through crop conservation, seed access and education. (A great resource for finding rare heirloom corn seeds!)

Mujeres y Maíz Criollo (Women and Heirloom Corn)

| Facebook | Blog | A women's collective in Chiapas, offering tortillas and other foods made from local corn.  

Organización Tortilla de Maíz Mexicana (Mexican Corn Tortilla Organization)

| Facebook | An organization working to preserve the culture and integrity of the Mexican corn tortilla. 

Luz Calvo

| Decolonize Your Diet Cookbook | Interview | Decolonize Your Diet will walk with you as you reclaim your culture by sharing recipes, cooking techniques, and discussions of ingredients. We believe that food is medicine and we share information about the health benefits of ancestral foods, herbs, and teas. 

Decolonizing Diet Projects & Resources

 

Iroquois White Corn Project

| Website |  The Iroquois White Corn Project is an amazing collaboration that is revitalizing a 2,000 year old Haudenosaunee heirloom corn, strengthening indigenous food sovereignty and preserving the important cultural, nutritional, and spiritual benefits of this unique variety of corn -- all while providing community education and entrepreneurship opportunities. You can buy their delicious corn in their online shop! 

The Sioux Chef

| Website | Cookbook | We are committed to revitalizing Native American Cuisine and in the process we are re-identifying North American Cuisine and reclaiming an important culinary culture long buried and often inaccessible. 

The Chia Café Collective

| Facebook | Video: a Conversation With Native Food Educators |

We are the Chia Café Collective, a grassroots group of southern California tribal members and collaborators committed to the revitalization of Native foods, medicines, culture, and community. 

Maíz y Tortillas 

 

For This Man, Corn Is More Than a Grain—It's Living History

Itanoni restaurant in Mexico. Amado Ramírez Leyva buys maize from small farms for his restaurant in Oaxaca. 

Braiding the sacred / Trenzando lo sagrado

Reclaiming corn and sovereignty. 

Children of the Corn

The history and cultural significance of Tuscarora corn. 

Return of the Corn

Taos Pueblo corn / Tiwa Farms. What does the corn dance mean without corn?

Totomoxtle

Totomoxtle focuses on regenerating traditional agricultural practices in Mexico, and creating a new craft that generates income for impoverished farmers while conserving biodiversity for future food security.

Articles & Videos

 

La Cultura Cura: How Latinos Are Reclaiming Their Ancestral Diets

"Building on this legacy, U.S.-born Latino entrepreneurs of this millennial generation are making their presence known with a different hustle, focused on wellness but still with a rasquache ethos: to make abundance with few means. Using social media to advertise and skill share, vendors are recovering cultural foods through daily acts of cooking and digital storytelling, ultimately calling attention to the health crisis (high rates of diabetes, heart diseases, high blood pressure, and cancer) disproportionately affecting communities of color."

First Foods Redux: Native American Food Companies Promote Tradition and Innovation

Native American tribes have long shaped the food landscape in this country and many continue to be some of the most vocal advocates for sustainable food production and policies to promote better health for future generations. Featured are three tribal nations working to preserve the land while building strong food businesses.

Pueblo Food Experience

Documents experiences of people who embark on the decolonization diet project.

Regaining Food Sovereignty: Neyaab Nimamoomin Mewinzha Gaa-inajigeyang

1:00 hour. Regaining Food Sovereignty explores the state of food systems in some Northern Minnesota Native communities; examining the relationship between history, health, tradition, culture and food. By reclaiming and revitalizing knowledge and practices around tradition, local and healthy foods, many communities and Tribal Nations are working toward a new model of community health and well-being for this and future generations. 

Eating indigenously changes diets and lives of Native Americans

Decolonizing Diet Project — a year-long challenge to eat only foods that were in the Great Lakes region before 1602. See more: project blog.

American Indians are embracing the 'decolonized diet'

Bit by bit, the farm at Little Earth is growing. So, too, is a movement among American Indians in Minnesota and elsewhere to improve their health by rediscovering ancestral foods and connections to lands once lost.