Lois Ellen Frank

Lois has spent over 20 years documenting the foods and life ways of Native American communities throughout the Southwest writing and photographing many articles and papers on the topic. She is presently working on completing her PhD on the discourse and practice of Native American cuisine, which she is planning to publish as her next book, tentatively entitled The Turquoise Plate. Lois is an adjunct professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), where she teaches about the anthropology of food, the ethnobotany of foods and plants of the Southwest and Traditional Arts & Ecology. She is a featured cooking instructor at the Santa Fe School of Cooking, and the chef/owner of Red Mesa Cuisine, a Santa Fe catering company where she cooks Native American, local and sustainably sourced foods and teaches about Native American foods of the Southwest Indian Nations with Diné Chef Walter Whitewater.