Native American Foods, Local Foods NOFA-NH w. s.
Here’s an activity page that highlights a few of the ‘wild’ and domesticated plants that have fueled the lives of human beings in North America for millennia. Many are well-loved and important foods to this very day.
Please point out to your students that these local foods crops are actually the gifts of Native American ingenuity and patience. Native American harvesters (often women) collaborated with plants that were part of genetic lineages which had which had initially evolved on this continent (or others) for hundreds of thousands of years without human attention. By selectively encouraging and propagating plants that were especially nourishing for people, they were able to create the plant and human collaborations / partnerships that today we refer to using English words such as “agriculture,” “horticulture” or “gardening.”
Corn, for example, was domesticated in Mexico approximately 9,000 years ago. Together with beans and squash, it became one of the wonderful “Three Sisters,” a trio of plants who became very important to Indigenous nutritional health in certain regions. These three plants were typically raised together on the same mound of earth because in various ways, they complemented each other’s growth. (This discovery by Native American farmers (also discovered with respect to other plant combinations by observant Indigenous growers in other parts of the world) – of the benefits of interplanting – has inspired cultivation methods in contemporary permaculture and agroforestry.) When complemented with wild harvested foods of various kinds including fish and game, these three plants (corn, beans, and squash) contributed mightily to the healthy food cultures of Native peoples in the Americas.
This particular page can be used on its own for a variety of lessons. The various foods depicted can also be colored and cut out. Then they can be stored and carried home in the 3-D paper replica of a Birchbark Container whose pattern and assembly instructions can also be found on this website.
Here’s another way to access the PDF of this page: Native American Foods, Local Foods NOFA-NH w. s.