*POSTPONED* Recovering Our Ancestral Foodways: Indigenous Traditions as a Recipe for Living Well

Could the future of food be found in the ancestral knowledge, methods, and practices that have long sustained people, communities, and the living world? Drawing on more than a decade of ethnographic research in Peru and Aotearoa New Zealand, Mariaelena Huambachano’s Recovering Our Ancestral Foodways is the first relational ethnography to bring Quechua and Māori philosophies of well-being, traditional ecological knowledge, and sustainable food systems into conversation. Through foodways, the book reveals how Indigenous peoples enact knowledge to nourish bodies, communities, cultures, and ecosystems, while sustaining profound spiritual relationships with land, ancestors, and the more-than-human world. At its heart, the book advances two original contributions: the Chakana/Māhutonga, an Indigenous philosophy of food sovereignty that provides a foundation for reshaping global food systems to nourish people and regenerate the Earth; and the Khipu Model, an innovative Indigenous research methodology that rethinks how knowledge is generated, shared, and honored across knowledge systems. Together, these contributions offer pathways to remember, reconnect, and regenerate.

Speaker:

Dr. Mariaelena Huambachano is a native Peruvian Indigenous scholar with strong cultural and professional connections to Aotearoa New Zealand, as well as North America.