Food is often discussed in terms of nourishment, taste, or culture. But throughout the history of colonialism, food has also been a terrain of conquest, displacement, and survival. Colonialism did not simply overtake borders or seize land; it fundamentally reshaped how people cultivated, prepared, understood, and related to food. Entire systems of knowledge rooted in Indigenous relationships to land, seasonality, and reciprocity were displaced by economies of extraction and the belief that food exists primarily as a commodity rather than a living connection to people, place, and ancestry.

For Dr. Claudia Serrato, returning to Indigenous foodways is not an exercise in nostalgia but a practice of cultural continuity. A Xicana culinary anthropologist, chef, educator, and public scholar, her work explores how taste carries history across generations, preserving memory even when languages, traditions, and homelands have been fractured by colonial violence. Through her research, cooking, and teaching, she invites us to understand food not simply as what we eat, but as an archive of identity, ecology, and belonging.

In conversation with Decolonial Thoughts, Serrato reflects on ancestral taste, Indigenous food systems, and the ethical questions that emerge when we examine what has been lost—and what can still be reclaimed. Together, we explore food as medicine, memory, and resistance, asking what becomes possible when nourishment is understood not through consumption, but through relationship.

You described the body as the last frontier of colonization. For communities that have been systematically disconnected from their ancestral foodways, what does it feel like to begin that reclamation, and what do you want people to know about the heaviness and grief that can come with realizing how far removed we are? 

I often say that the body is the last frontier of colonization because colonization did not end with land theft or political conquest. It continues through what we eat, how we think about our bodies (sacred geographies), and what we’ve been taught to value or reject. 

Beginning that reclamation can be deeply emotional. Many people experience grief when they realize that recipes disappeared. That seeds were lost, languages were interrupted, and relationships with land were broken. That grief is real. But I also remind people that grief itself is evidence of relationship. You cannot mourn what never mattered. 

Reclamation isn’t about perfection or recreating a romanticized past. It’s about rebuilding relationships one meal, one ingredient, one conversation at a time. Every time we choose to remember rather than forget, we interrupt colonization. 

You distinguish between food justice and food sovereignty. Can you walk us through that difference and explain why the language we use to talk about food and power actually matters? 

Food justice asks whether people have equitable access to healthy, affordable, culturally meaningful food, which is incredibly important. 

Food sovereignty asks a different question: Who controls the food system? It asks, who owns the land, who decides what gets planted, whose knowledge is respected, whose seeds survive, and whether communities have the right to define their own food systems. 

Justice often works within existing systems (Western/Eurocentric) to improve access. Sovereignty asks whether those systems should exist in their current form at all. 

Language matters because words shape policy, funding, and imagination. If we only talk about access, we may never ask why communities lost control of their foodways in the first place. 

You grew up in East Los Angeles cooking with your elders, and that knowledge became the foundation of your academic and culinary life. In a society that often dismisses the kitchen as domestic labor, especially for women, how do you honor the intellectual and spiritual weight of what you learned growing up? 

Everything I know academically began long before I entered a university. It began watching my mother, grandmothers, tias, neighbors, and community members cook. 

The kitchen has always been a place of experimentation, ecological knowledge, mathematics,  chemistry, medicine, history, diplomacy, and ceremony. Western universities did not invent knowledge; they simply developed one way of organizing it.

I often tell people that my first classroom was the kitchen table. 

One of the goals of my work is to remind us that Indigenous women have always been scholars,  scientists, historians, and teachers, even when institutions refused to recognize them that way. 

Your concept of decolonizing food is rooted in place, season, and ancestral memory rather than social trends or mainstream wellness culture. How should we address seeing  Indigenous and traditional foodways being co-opted into wellness movements that strip them of their political and cultural context? 

When Indigenous foods become trends without Indigenous people, something important has been lost. Ingredients like chia, amaranth, nopales, mesquite, cacao, and blue corn are often marketed as “superfoods,” but they were never simply products. They were relationships (I stress this a lot). 

Removing an ingredient from its history also removes the people who protected it through centuries of colonization. The answer isn’t gatekeeping. It’s restoring context (here is where culinary anthropology comes in). 

If we’re going to celebrate Indigenous foods, we should also celebrate Indigenous communities,  support Indigenous growers, cite Indigenous knowledge holders, and acknowledge the histories that allowed these foods to survive. 

You spoke about asking food what it wants to become, about trusting ancestral and genetic memory to guide you. For people who have been so far removed from that connection, how do they begin to nurture that connection again? 

People sometimes think this means having some mystical experience. 

I think it’s much simpler. Slow down. Cook more often. Pay attention, noticing how food changes through the seasons. Learn where your food comes from. Ask elders questions. Visit farmers markets. Plant herbs on a windowsill. Taste intentionally. 

Relationship grows through repetition. Ancestral memory isn’t only something we inherit. It’s also something we cultivate through practice (sometimes creating new traditions). 

From your perspective as a culinary anthropologist, what happens to a community spiritually and culturally when the foods that sustained them are commodified and priced out of their reach? 

Food is never just nutrition. It carries ceremony, kinship, language, identity, ecology, and memory. When communities lose access to their own foods, they lose opportunities to practice culture in everyday life. 

Eventually, those foods become luxury items rather than living traditions. Communities begin consuming representations of themselves, instead of participating in their own cultural continuity (which too can lead to a loss of self/identity and belonging). Food becomes something purchased something that teaches. 

You have said that decolonizing your diet is not about going back but about reclaiming ingredients and relationships with the land. For everyday people who do not have access to native plants, local farms, or ancestral knowledge keepers, what are the most grounded and accessible first steps? 

Start where you are. You don’t need to recreate a pre-colonial Indigenous pantry overnight. 

Learn the history of one ingredient you already use. Cook one meal from scratch each week. Support local growers when possible. Reduce dependency on highly processed foods. Talk with  your family about the foods they remember. Read Indigenous authors. 

Food sovereignty begins with relationships, not perfection. Everyone can begin cultivating those  relationships, regardless of where they live. 

8. Your work sits at many intersections, especially in Indigenous feminism. Does gender  play a large factor into who carries this knowledge, who is expected to do this work, and  who gets credited for it? 

Absolutely. 

Across many Indigenous communities, women have long been central to seed keeping, food  preparation, medicine, and intergenerational teaching. 

Yet historically, their knowledge has often been dismissed as domestic labor rather than  intellectual labor. Even today, we sometimes celebrate celebrity chefs while overlooking the  grandmothers who preserved the very knowledge those chefs build upon. 

Indigenous feminism asks us to recognize whose labor sustains communities, whose knowledge  gets erased, and whose voices are centered when we talk about food. 

9. In a moment when so many communities are facing food apartheid, food weaponization,  and the erasure of their foodways simultaneously, how do you sustain that joy and pass it  on? 

Joy is not separate from resistance. Our ancestors laughed. They celebrated. They gathered  around food. Joy has always been one-way communities survived oppression. I don’t believe  food sovereignty is only about resisting systems. 

It’s also about creating spaces where children know their foods (I stress this even from the womb), where families cook together, where elders are honored, where meals become acts of  love rather than survival. Joy reminds us what we’re protecting.

10. You co-founded Across Our Kitchen Tables to support food-based work by women of  color. What does genuine community building around food sovereignty look like, and how  can a person not doing this work full-time contribute to this movement? 

Community isn’t built through one conference or one social media post. It’s built through  relationships that continue over time. 

Supporting Indigenous farmers. Buying directly from local producers. Learning the history of the  land where you live (I have my college students do this work). Volunteering at community  gardens. Supporting food justice organizations. Showing up consistently. 

Not everyone needs to become a scholar or chef. Everyone eats. That means everyone  participates in shaping food systems whether they realize it or not. 

11. As we wrap up this conversation, what does a world with true food sovereignty look like  to you? Not just policy, but in the everyday lives of people, in kitchens, in communities, on  the land. What are we working toward, and what gives you hope that we can get there? 

For me, food sovereignty looks like children recognizing the names of their ancestral foods  before they recognize corporate brands. 

It looks like communities having access to land, clean water, seeds, and culturally meaningful  foods. It looks like elders teaching without fear that their knowledge will disappear. It looks like  Indigenous people determining the future of Indigenous foodways. 

Most importantly, it looks ordinary. Families cooking dinner together. Neighbors sharing  harvests. Young people asking questions. Seeds being planted because someone believes there  will be another generation to harvest them. That ordinary future gives me hope. 

Because despite centuries of disruption, our foodways are still here. Every seed planted, every  recipe remembered, every elder listened to, every child taught reminds me that reclamation and  regeneration is already happening. 

Commentary: Morality, Eating, and Food as a Moral Act 

As we move into conversations about the morality of eating, I think it’s important to recognize  that every culture has moral frameworks surrounding food. Food has always been about more  than nutrition. It expresses our values, our obligations to one another, and our relationships with  the living world. 

At the same time, I think we have to be careful not to reduce morality to individual consumption  choices (a neoliberal framing that places responsibility on individuals while obscuring the  systems that shape food access, labor, and production). Contemporary food discourse often asks,  “Is this food good or bad?” or “Is this person eating ethically?” Those questions can overlook the  larger systems that shape what foods are available, affordable, and culturally accessible.

From an Indigenous perspective, morality is less about achieving dietary purity (puritan roots of  eating – taught this once in an ethnicity and religion course) and more about maintaining right  relationship. How was this food grown? Who benefited from its production? Was the land cared  for? Were the people who cultivated it treated with dignity? Does this meal strengthen  relationships with family, community, ancestors, and the more-than-human world or does it  reinforce extraction and exploitation? 

Food can create relationships when meals are shared, when knowledge is passed between  generations, when seeds are saved, and when communities care for one another through  nourishment. Food can also fracture relationships when it is used as a tool of domination (neocolonialism), exclusion, displacement, or profit at the expense of people and place. 

Ultimately, I don’t think the moral question is simply, “What should I eat?” A more meaningful  question is, “What kinds of relationships am I nourishing through the way I eat?” When we  begin there, food becomes not only a personal choice but an ethical practice rooted in  reciprocity, responsibility, and care.