ASU students explore Indigenous foodways through community engagement

By Maureen Kobierowski and Sofia Greco

As the fall 2025 semester drew to a close on a late Saturday morning in early December, ASU students from a Humanities Lab course kneaded tortilla dough made with White Sonora flour under the direction of Chef Shannon Reina, member of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community (SRPMIC), and Chef Amber Sampson, a cultural anthropologist.

Reina is the food services manager for Salt River Schools, a role that puts her culinary training and cultural knowledge to work for the community.

“As I grew older,” Reina told the audience, “the more I learned about me, my culture, my language, the foods — it gave me strength. … It helped me to reclaim my identity. Through that, I realized I had a unique opportunity to do what I do, and also share that same knowledge that I am learning about myself and my heritage ... with the kids. It’s why I have made this my life’s work.

“Growing your own foods, cooking your own foods, learning about the foods you eat and the sacredness of it all ... strengthens all people. No matter where you come from, no matter how you grew up — food is life; food is love,” says Reina.

To share this knowledge, students in the Growing Biodiverse Cultures course — Audrey Bunnell and Jasmine Cataño Matain — organized an opportunity for the broader ASU community to learn how SRPMIC is using food to share cultural traditions as well as nutritious meals.

“Our goal (for this collaboration) was to promote active and engaged learning of local agricultural biodiversity and the cultural heritage of an Indigenous chef,” said Cataño Mata.

Together, the chefs guided the participants through preparations for several dishes using traditional Indigenous foods such as tepary beans and white Sonora wheat berries.

“Don’t be worried about making perfect cuts or doing it all perfectly,” instructed Sampson. “Remember,” she reminded everyone, ”people have been cooking for thousands of years. For as long as people have been hungry, people have been making food, so there’s no wrong way to feed yourself as long as you’re doing it with respect and kindness for what you’re doing and the food that you’re working with and the land that you’re on.”  

For Reina, tepary beans are "a representation of us as native people … in how we deal with so much and overcome so much.”

Cataño Mata and Bunnell also created a tri-fold pamphlet  featuring each chef’s background and recipes so other students and community members could prepare the dishes themselves.

“I really wanted to create an impact outcome that broadened the public’s awareness of the rich Indigenous foodways here in this region — and the value of protecting, preserving and restoring these culinary traditions. We realized that preparing dishes with an Indigenous chef would be an incredible opportunity for people to engage with this topic in a fun, hands-on way,” said Bunnell.

“Throughout the semester, we learned from traditional and Indigenous foodway knowledge holders about the importance of collaboration and environmental humility to foster healthier and more sustainable communities. Cooking and sharing a meal of local Indigenous foods with Chef Shannon and Chef Amber embodied these lessons, while students also developed new skills by organizing the event and creating the learning materials,” said Juliann Vitullo, co-director of the Humanities Lab and a faculty member engaged in the Growing Biodiverse Cultures course with Professor Maria Cruz-Torres.

The overarching focus of the course was agricultural stewardship, providing students opportunities to work with researchers, farmers and community organizers from Mexico, Puerto Rico and Italy to learn transborder strategies for protecting and fostering biocultural heritage across different geographical and social contexts. The course was a partnership with ASU Farm, the Cultivating Civic Virtues through Action initiative and a Create the Change grant.

“I am incredibly grateful to have been able to help Chef Shannon Reina in offering her a space to share her cultural heritage and stories of resilience to many,” says Cataño Mata. “I have truthfully left this project with such a new appreciation and perspective on environmental stewardship that I hope to carry on to future projects within my sustainability career.”