ABOUT THIS PODCAST: Our guest this week on the Native Hope Podcast is photographer and chef Lois Ellen Frank of the Kiowa Nation. She is the owner of a Native American catering company called Red Mesa Cuisine, an educator of Indigenous foods classes and an award-winning author for the cookbook Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations. Carrying the wisdom of her mother, Lois applied the lessons from her childhood into her passion for food, health and heritage. Resigning from commercial food photography, she took on the challenge of incorporating Indigenous values into the Eurocentric food industry. Although Native cuisine was non-existent in the Western world, Lois used her graduate education to research Indigenous food ways. She applied her research in the kitchen by buying local, in season and supporting Native farmers. She has also made it her mission to have zero waste. Most importantly, Lois stresses the power of having a relationship with food in every step of the process, from the garden to the kitchen table. Lois encourages Native people to reclaim their health through understanding the ancestral foods that historically sustained us.
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