Learning from the land: Developing a course on Indigenous foodways

Abstract

In this paper, we describe a new course that we developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison: ‘Horticulture 380: Indigenous Foodways’. In consultation with Indigenous partners in the region, we sought to create a course focused on the foodways of Indigenous peoples of the Upper Great Lakes and to center Indigenous knowledge systems as they relate to food and farming—perspectives that have generally been absent from horticultural and agricultural curricula. To offer this course, we partnered with Indigenous people from across the region as well as the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum, providing students with experiential learning opportunities in Indigenous foodways of the region that included tapping maple trees for syrup, butchering deer, cooking with the three sisters (corn, beans, and squash), and spearfishing. Students learned to connect foodways to place and to land in a fundamentally different way than that of the industrialized food system. Incorporating courses like these into agricultural curricula begins to expand agricultural education and learning opportunities for all students.