This week we returned to the desert and learned about the Indigenous peoples of the Colorado River Basin, including the Mohave and the Southern Pauite. Students watched two films, the first featuring Mohave elders discussing their long history with the mesquite tree and the second featuring rangers from the Desert National Wildlife Refuge discussing the mesquite’s cultural and ecological importance to the area.
We tasted organic mesquite meal (also called mesquite flour or mesquite flour) by itself and remarked on its surprising sweetness. Students compared the flavor to cinnamon, coconut, and chocolate! We then each made our own mesquite butter by mixing 1/2 ounce of unsalted grass-fed butter with 1/2 teaspoon of mesquite meal. We slathered the mesquite butter on a slice of mesquite cornbread. The mesquite gave the butter and the bread a beautiful dark golden hue and added an unexpected richness and slight smokiness to the food.
In our breakout rooms, students discussed the complexities involved when one food culture comes into conflict with another and offered their ideas as future leaders and ancestors-in-training for how to better share natural resources between different groups of peoples in the future.
