As we approach Thanksgiving and the holiday season, many families are preparing to celebrate this holiday with gratitude, food, and quality time together. However, Thanksgiving also comes with painful colonial origins and a reminder of the atrocities indigenous peoples had to face, and still face to this day. Stories told about the first Thanksgiving erase that history and cover up difficult truths.
Indigenous People's Heritage Month provides an opportunity to dismantle that narrative and decolonize the American tradition, which can be done through food, standing in solidarity with indigenous communities, and learning about the history that goes against the American mythos.
In their cookbook Decolonize Your Diet: Plant-Based Mexican-American Recipes for Health and Healing, Bay Area professors Luz Calvo and Catriona Rueda Esquibel reclaim the pre-colonial roots of Mexican cuisine, exploring indigenous traditions that are still kept alive today. They promote a plant-based diet rich in plants native to the Americas while embracing food as medicine.