Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations is a 2002 cookbook by
Lois Ellen Frank, food historian, cookbook author, photographer, and culinary anthropologist.[1][2]: 188 [3] The book won a 2003 James Beard award, the first
Native American cuisine cookbook so honored.[2]: 188 [4][5]CNN called it "the first Native American cookbook to turn the heads of James Beard Foundation award judges".[6][7]
Frank was working in advertising as a commercial photographer for mass-market food and beverage products when a mentor questioned the meaningfulness of her work, and she had a "moment of reckoning."[8][7] She proposed a book on Native American cuisine to publishers in New York, who told her "that Native people didn't have a cuisine, and that I didn't have the credentials to write any such book."[7] She returned to school to earn a Master's and then a PhD in Cultural Anthropology, and recalls that "at the time, they were teaching that American cuisine was made up of immigrant populations. The traditions of Native kitchens were largely overlooked."[7]