Morning Star Leaders / Twila Cassadore

Project:

Morning Star Leaders / Twila Cassadore

Region: Arizona, Southwest USA
Grant Awarded: 2022

Twila Cassadore (San Carlos Apache citizen) is a traditional foodways knowledge keeper and elder, forager, harvester, and collector of traditional Western Apache food diet data for the San Carlos food information database in conjunction with the San Carlos Forestry agency. Twila’s work is based 100% outdoors on and off the San Carlos Apache reservation in Arizona. She regularly conducts cooking demonstrations for her San Carlos community, especially for young parents in their 20-30s who want to reconnect with traditional food knowledge and place. These are young parents whose own parents did not/could not pass on traditional Apache knowledge and practices. Twila has spent the last ten years curating the Western Apache Diet program and conducts 8-12 cooking demonstrations a month. Her focus is on cooking with traditionally harvested ingredients using contemporary cooking methods and creating traditional recipes and modern recipes. Community members Twila works regularly with include members of San Carlos, White Mountain Apache, and urban Natives in the Salt River Valley, including those in active recovery programs.