The Morning Star

If young Emma Robbins ever got thirsty while visiting her grandparents, she drank soda from a can — the syrupy sweet kind that was off-limits back home at her parents' house, where water flowed freely from the faucet.

"Some of the first Navajo words that I learned was how to say, 'Can I have a pop?'" she said, remembering how "exciting" it felt to ask her grandma for a drink in that way. "It was something that my grandparents always had. I think it was because it's like, 'if you want a beverage, that's what you're going to drink, because you're conserving water.'"

How this cook uses Native cooking and culture to challenge long-standing beliefs about food.

By Kai Oliver-Kurtin