“Eating is not only a political act, but it is also a cultural act that reaffirms one’s identity and worldview” (Salmón, 2012, p. 8). It is the statement from the book Eating the Landscape: American Indian Stories of Food, Identity, and Resilience that reflects the author’s main idea. This book is a cultural and geographical travel through the southwest part of the United States of America and northern Mexico. In his book, the author is focused on demonstrating the world of indigenous food and accentuates some direct connections between this food, the culture of people and understanding of the environment that surrounds them.
About the author
Enrique Salmón is a Rarámuri (Native American people of northwestern Mexico). He has Bachelor of Science and Master of Arts in Teaching degrees. Also, he holds a doctoral degree in anthropology (California State University East Bay, n.d., para. 3); he dedicated his life to ethnobiology and traditional ecological knowledge to better understand culture, environment, and nature. Salmón is interested in the connections between climate change and indigenous traditional food ways. His previous studies inspired him to write a book about native farmers of the southwest part of the United States and their role in managing biocultural diversity.
Supporting the thesis
In the thesis, Salmón (2012) underlines that the book explores how dedicated indigenous farmers continue to keep the beauty of the places where they live and “how what they continue to do may, in fact, hold the key to humanity’s food and environmental future” (p. 11). Salmón supports his thesis gathering stories of American Indian farmers who use traditional agricultural methods and avoid modern practices such as genetically modified crops. He concentrates on the case studies of different American Indian groups. In his book, Salmón discusses the Rarámuri people and their concept of gendered plants, Puebloan people and how they cope with drought, the Hopi and the Yaqui people and their attitudes to their lands, Seri (Comcaac) people of Sonora and the importance of songs and language in their culture. Salmón emphasizes the significance of these stories because they demonstrate metaphors and cultural models that can be used to investigate the connections between different elements of the community. Salmón (2012) explains “metaphors are important to the understanding of how land-based cultures are able to enhance diversity” (p. 73). These metaphors help human to understand abstract concepts in concrete terms.
In the first chapter called “In My Grandmother’s Kitchen,” the author concentrates on a family as a social structure where metaphors and cultural models come from. This chapter is the basis of the whole book because family traditions, culture, and values affect the future life of every individual. A family is the basic unit of society. Many indigenous people have taken their cultural knowledge from their grandparents. Salmón (2012) describes his family as an example “the knowledge I learned from my family was one aspect of a trove of culturally accumulated ecological knowledge” (p. 2). The first chapter helps the reader to see where the story begins.
Convincing arguments
Salmón argues that old land management practices are valuable lessons for the future of land and agricultural management, and it is necessary to return to more traditional food practices. Continuing through his narrative, the author writes that humanity will face such problems as mutating pests, too much rain, loss of topsoil, loss of farmlands, terminal seed created, and others because the giant agricultural industry negatively affects the environment. In his book, the author underlines and grabs the reader’s attention to the advantages of old land management practices and resource use that are harmonized with ecological ethics and positively affect the local environment. Salmón (2012) emphasizes that the future depends on the knowledge and the experience of American Indian farmers because “indigenous farmers maintain solutions for these issues” (p. 11). There are traditional methods, which have been used by farmers for many years. Salmón reveals how indigenous people used to and continue to implement these practices.
In the final chapter called “The Whole Enchilada” Salmón makes an argument that experience plays a vital role in the life of American Indian people. There is a key difference between knowledge and experience. Knowledge is not useful until there is no experience. It is easy to obtain knowledge without having experience, but it is impossible to gain experience without having knowledge. Experiences become high-quality knowledge in the end. The author makes a convincing argument comparing the experience with enchilada, a Mexican dish. Salmón (2012) determines “the future of our foods, our lands, our economies, and everything that we come into contact with depends on our ability to reconfigure this notion of a whole enchilada” (p. 162). It means that foods, languages, and understanding are tightly linked to the places where people live, and the experiences which people gain in those places.
Another point to be considered
It goes without saying that some social structures such as economics, politics, and the modern food system affect the environment and the way of life of different ethnic groups. Although the author does not pay a lot of attention to the idea of this impact and stresses the connection between the landscape, food, and social identity, it is worth mentioning that there are some ecological threats to the environment nowadays.
It cannot be denied that the author achieves the goal that he determines in the beginning. Although Salmón describes the world of indigenous food and some land management methods of different people, he does not elucidate the topic of the influence of modern technologies and industrialization on indigenous groups and their lifestyle. Nevertheless, it is important to understand why agriculture has become a form of industry and what impact this form has on both small farmers and the environment in general. Salmón should have considered some environmental threats in the book to attract more attention to his ideas.
To sum up, in the book Eating the Landscape, the author illustrates the idea of the connection between indigenous food and the culture of people. He accentuates the idea of respect that indigenous people have for their environment. Salmón is interested in this topic because it is related to him; he is a Rarámuri. In his book, he gathers stories of American Indian farmers, including the Rarámuri people, and describes their land management practices. What is more, the author outlines the advantages of such methods and claims that it is necessary to use traditional food practices to avoid future agricultural and environmental problems. Although Salmón exemplifies some future issues in the agricultural industry, he does not dive deeper into this topic. The author does not pay a lot of attention to the impact of industrialization and modern agricultural technologies on indigenous farmers and the environment in general. Nevertheless, the book is an excellent collection of American Indian stories. Salmón fulfills the following task and reveals how culture remains relevant to food production.
References
California State University East Bay. (n.d.). Faculty profiles. Web.
Salmón, E. (2012). Eating the landscape: American Indian stories of food, identity, and resilience. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.