(CANCELLED) More than Corn: Challenges and Adaptations to Contemporary American Indian Foodways

This event has been cancelled.

In this conversation about Indigenous foodways in the American South, Lumbee historian Malinda Maynor Lowery and Cherokee anthropologist Courtney Lewis will propose a new food framework, one that incorporates Native Peoples’ contemporary and creative foodways.

The event is free, but please register to attend by completing this form.

This is the fifth event in the Thomas Howerton “Diverse Roots at the Common Table: Culinary Conversations in the American South” series.

About the Speakers:

Courtney Lewis

Courtney Lewis is an associate professor of cultural anthropology and inaugural director of the first Native American studies initiative at Duke University.

She is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation and her work primarily focuses on economic development for Native Nations in the United States and, consequently, issues of sovereignty related to economic sustainability and stability.

Her first book, “Sovereign Entrepreneurs: Cherokee Small-Business Owners and the Making of Economic Sovereignty,” focused on the impact of small businesses located on the Qualla Boundary of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians of North Carolina during the time of the Great Recession.

Her current work includes research on Indigenous food and plant entrepreneurship, including American Indian cannabis businesses. 

Malinda Maynor Lowery

Malinda Maynor Lowery is a historian and film producer who is a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. She is currently the Cahoon Family Professor of American History at Emory University after spending 12 years at UNC-Chapel Hill and four years at Harvard University. 

She is author of several articles and essays about topics related to American Indian identity and two books, “The Lumbee Indians: An American Struggle” and “Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South: Race, Identity, and the Making of a Nation.”

Films she has produced include the Peabody Award-winning “A Chef’s Life” (PBS, 2013-2018), “Somewhere South” (PBS, 2020), “Road to Race Day” (Crackle, 2020), the Emmy-nominated “Private Violence” (HBO, 2014), “In the Light of Reverence” (PBS, 2001), and two short films, “Real Indian” (1996), and “Sounds of Faith” (1997), both of which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2022 she completed “What’s So Funny?”, a media experience for the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. In 2023, she completed “Lumbeeland,” her first narrative short film, which is currently showing in film festivals. 

She currently serves as President-Elect of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, and as founding Faculty Director of Emory’s Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies.