Lois Ellen Frank

Lois Ellen Frank is a Santa Fe, New Mexico based award winning chef, author, food historian, culinary anthropologist, photographer, and organic gardener. Lois was raised on Long Island, New York with her father’s side of the family and her first career experiences were as a professional cook on Eastern, Long Island. She worked at a small organic farm, gardening and helping to grow produce for local restaurants in the beginning stages of the farm to table movement. She is the chef/owner of Red Mesa Cuisine, LLC a catering company specializing in Indigenous Cuisine and Cultural education with a modern twist where she cooks with her culinary partner at Red Mesa, Native American chef Walter Whitewater (Diné/Navajo). Their mission is to feed the body and nurture the soul.

Lois has spent over 25 years documenting foods and lifeways of Native American tribes from the Southwest and regions throughout the Americas. This lengthy immersion in Native American communities culminated in her book, Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations, featuring traditional and contemporary recipes, which won her the James Beard Award in the Americana category. She has worked with world-renowned chefs, scientists and academicians and collaborated with them to publish more than 15 culinary posters, over 18 cookbooks, and a DVD and recipe booklet on the Power to Heal Diabetes with the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM).  She has worked with National and International companies as well as many diverse clients over the many years she has been photographing food.

Dr. Frank received her Master of Arts in Cultural Anthropology from University of New Mexico in May of 2000 where she focused on the importance of corn as a common thread to all Indigenous tribes throughout the Americas and then went on to receive her Ph.D. at the University of New Mexico, in July 2011. Her dissertation is entitled, The Discourse and Practice of Native American Cuisine: Native and Non-Native Chefs in contemporary Southwest kitchens. She is presently working on a new cookbook with Chef Walter Whitewater as the Native American culinary advisor, entitled Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky: Modern Plant-Based Recipes using Native American Ingredients to be released by Hachette Books in the Fall of 2023.

In May of 2013, Chefs Frank and Whitewater were Culinary Ambassador Diplomats with the U.S. State Department and Office of Cultural Affairs where the two chefs traveled to the Ukraine and worked with the indigenous Hutsul peoples in Western Ukraine on commonalities between the two cuisines. They prepared a multi-course dinner for Ambassador’s from all over the world at the private residence of the U.S. Ambassador in Kiev, Ukraine and were featured on almost every National Ukrainian television station, the topic of many articles, radio shows, newspapers, and magazines. Frank’s photographs opened an exhibition at the Honchar Museum in Kyiv where the two chefs provided a tasting for several hundred people. In 2015 they were Culinary Diplomats in the United Kingdom with events in Plymouth, Bath, and many locations all over London including cooking with kids at the Cavendish School, a talk at the U.S. Embassy in London, a lunch and panel at the Origins Festival at the Rich Mix Cultural Foundation, and dinner for the homeless at a church shelter. They were also Culinary Diplomats in St. Petersburg, Russia in 2016 where they taught master culinary classes at SWISSAM, a Hospitality Business and Culinary Arts School as well as prepared food for one hundred invited guests at a reception at the Consul General’s residence for Russians from prominent cultural, educational, and business institutions, diplomats from international Consulates, and press highlighting Native American foods indigenous to the Americas.

Dr. Frank was an adjunct professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts, (IAIA) until the Spring of 2020 when the pandemic began. where she taught Native Students from tribal communities all over the Americas about Indigenous Concepts of Native American Foods and how to prepare healthy Native American dishes for health and wellness and uses the metaphor that “food is our medicine” as the key to future health and wellness in Native communities. IAIA is a four-year accredited college in Santa Fe, New Mexico where she has taught about the Ethnobotany of Foods and Plants of the Southwest, a course entitled, Traditional Arts & Ecology and another class entitled Indigenous Concepts of Traditional Native American Foods Class to fulfill the science requirement. She taught a series of classes at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, IPCC and the Institute of American Indian Arts, IAIA sponsored by the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine, (PCRM) on diabetes and is teaching another series of classes with Chef Walter Whitewater and PCRM to the eight northern Pueblos in New Mexico. Frank has also worked with PCRM on a video and a recipe booklet called “The Power to Heal Diabetes: Food for Life in Indian Country,” which is distributed free of charge to Native American communities all over the United States.

Dr. Frank became certified with the Diabetes Training and Technical Assistance Center (DTTAC) at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health as a Lifestyle Coach for the National Diabetes Preventions Program (DPP) in December of 2015 to further her knowledge of how best to implement the lifestyle changes for her program work with PCRM for Native Americans in New Mexico.

In 2007, Dr. Frank started a Native American Cuisine catering company along with Chef Walter Whitewater, named Red Mesa. Red Mesa Cuisine cooks for private events, parties, corporate meetings, and gallery openings as well as Native events and organizations from all over the United States. The two chefs began cooking in the later 1990’s and have been cooking together for many years now. Red Mesa Cuisine is very unique in that it combines Native American Cuisine and Culture by providing patrons with an educational lecture on the history of the foods from the Southwest Indian Nations before they eat from a two to twelve course meal that the two chefs, Frank & Whitewater, serve and prepare. This gives patrons a unique fine-dining experience of Native American ancestral foods with a modern twist that is unlike anything anywhere in the United States.

Dr. Frank has worked with the Trust for Public Land, the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), the Tohono O’odham Community Action group (TOCA), the Center for Sustainable Environments at the University of Northern Arizona University (CSE), The Cultural Conservancy in San Francisco (TCC), and the California Indian Basket weavers Association (CIBA), Museum of Natural History in New York, the Gilcrease Museum, the St. Petersburg Fine Arts Museum, the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, the Wheelwright Museum, and opened the exhibit Totems to Turquoise at the Autry Center and Southwest Museum in Los Angeles.

Corporate Clients have included the Sysco Board of Directors, Seed Savors Board of Directors, the Associated Press, and Women in Business, as well as The Garden Club of Portland, Kiva Fine Art Gallery, the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) as well as some private high-end clients that cannot be disclosed.

The two chefs have also cooked for many Native Communities and presented information on how to use Ancestral Native American foods for health and wellness. Some of these Nations include the Muscogee Creek Nation and the Mvskoke Food Sovereignty Initiative of Oklahoma, the Tohono O’odham Nation of Arizona, the Navajo Nation, the Quechan Tribe in Arizona, the Kalispel Tribe of Indians in Washington, the Tulalip Tribe of Washington, the Salt River Tribe in Arizona, Ysleta Del Sur Pueblo in Texas, Jemez Pueblo, Santa Ana Pueblo, the Eight Northern Pueblos of New Mexico including Tesuque Pueblo, Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, Nambe Pueblo, Santa Clara Pueblo, San Ildefonso Pueblo, Pojoaque Pueblo, Picuris Pueblo, Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, as well as Indian Urban Areas including The Cultural Conservancy and the Intertribal Friendship House in the San Francisco Bay Area of California.

She is a featured cooking instructor at the Santa Fe School of Cooking where she teaches about Native American foods of the Southwest. Guest Chef appearances have taken her to many famous restaurants around the country where she, with Native American Chef Walter Whitewater, (Diné/Navajo) have prepared delicious menus from the foods she has studied. She continues to teach about foods as a guest chef, keynote speaker, lecturer, and instructor nationally.

Her cookbook, The Taco Table, 2010 published by the Western National Parks Association won the Arizona Glyph Book Award in 2010 for best new cookbook. Dr. Frank has written food articles for many publications, including Native Foodways, July 2013 published by the Tohono O’odham tribe as well as New Mexico Magazine, April 2011, Stuffed Trout Baked in Clay, December 2010, A Southwest Christmas, Baked Stuffed Quail with Lemon Sumac Sauce, August 2010, Earth and Fire, Cooking with Micaceous Clay, April 2010, Recipes from an Edible Landscape, January 2010, Warming Trend with a Southwest Spicy Soup and Hot Sandwich. She has also written articles for New Mexico Magazine in October 2009, August 2009, March 2009, May 2008, August 2007, September 2006, November 2005, to name a few as well as in Guest Life New Mexico, 2005. For Edible Santa Fe, she wrote an article on Tepary Beans for Fall 2011, Squash Blossom Sister for Spring 2011, The Soul and Spirit of Native American Cuisine for Winter 2010, Walter Whitewater: Native American Chef in Summer 2008 to name a few as well as articles in Fall 2007 & 2006. In 2011, Frank was featured with an article on Feasting the Healthy Way, in the Health & Wellness directory for the Santa Fe New Mexican. She has written for Aboriginal Voices, 2001-2003, Vegetarian Times Magazine, 2004, 2005 The Slow Food Snail, Issue Two, 5/2004, 12/2007, Repast, the Quarterly Publication of the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor, Spring, 2008, to name a few, on foods of the Southwest and Native American foods of the region. In each published piece she has also been the photographer as well as the writer.

In October of 2011, Frank was awarded the Krider Prize for Creativity by the UCDA Foundation, University and College Designers Association, which honors creativity in an individual or organization at their annual conference that was held in Phoenix, Arizona. She was the keynote speaker on creativity for the UCDA symposium in 2016, which was held in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Dr. Frank and Chef Whitewater were also part of an important event called “Eat Your Heritage” which was sponsored by the Guam Humanities Council which focused the revitalization of traditional foods in Guam through teaching students about their traditional foods, working with local farmers to grow traditional foods in Guam, and both were guest chefs for a dinner at the Hyatt for over 300 people featuring local and traditional foods from Guam with a contemporary twist.

Chefs Frank and Whitewater were guest chefs with the Tulalip tribe at the Tulalip Resort Casino for an event entitled, the Taste of Tulalip, in 2013 and they were the guest chefs for the Cultural Conservancy’s 30th Anniversary Gala in Sausalito, CA in March of 2016 and continue to cook with Native American owned Casinos and Food venues all over the United States.

Dr. Frank has been the subject of many articles on foods, chefs, and authors of the Southwest and continues to be active in all aspects of her career. She was the project coordinator on Native Foods where she worked with IPCC, the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center on the event entitled, Connecting Communities: Native Foods and Wellness. Frank taught Healthy Native American Cooking Classes to the members of Jemez Pueblo as well as eight weeks Healthy Native American cooking classes for Urban Indian community members at IPCC and IAIA, the Institute of American Indian Arts as part of their community outreach program through the CLE, Center for Lifelong Education. She presented at the Aii (American Indian Institute) Native Women and Men’s Wellness Conference in conjunction with the University of Oklahoma in Albuquerque, New Mexico and at the AADE (American Association of Diabetes Educators) in Las Vegas, Nevada entitled “Ancestral Diets for Modern-Day Native Americans: Reclaiming Health and Healing Diabetes.” Ms. Frank was one of the featured speakers with Chef Whitewater at the Quechan Tribe’s first Health and Wellness Conference in Yuma, Arizona.

Dr. Frank has exhibited her work at the Western States Museum in Santa Barbara, California with a show entitled “Under the Spell of the Pinon Smoke”, Contemporary images of Native Americans, Native Foods, and the American Southwest, Spring 1987 and another exhibition at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology in Albuquerque, New Mexico with a show entitled, “A Common Thread, Corn and Culture in Mexico”, 4×5 Polaroid Transfers featuring images of Culture and Ritual, May 1997.

Dr. Frank continues to be involved in research on Native American foods and foodways. Her Ph.D. thesis examined contemporary Southwestern Chefs using indigenous ingredients in their cooking and how this is representational not only of their own identities but also as part of a larger Native American food movement including food sovereignty issues. She worked with Native American & Non-Native chefs that combined traditional ingredients with contemporary techniques. A big part of her dissertation work included the senses, the ethno-aesthetics of food and food presentation, and food as being representational of local identities.

Dr. Frank works with the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) on a program entitled The Power to Heal Diabetes: Food for Life in Indian Country www.nativepowerplate.org that uses the Ancestral Native American diet for health and wellness in Native Communities throughout the United States. She created a series of short videos during the COVID-19 pandemic on simple, nutritious, delicious, and healthy cooking with simple ingredients for Native communities that have been distributed for free through the Physicians committee for health and wellness in Native communities.

Dr. Frank partnered with the New Mexico Department of Health’s Obesity, Nutrition and Physical Activity Program (ONAPA), along with the Aging and Long-Term Service Department and the Office of Indian Elder Affairs. Together they held two hands-on trainings in different regions of the state for nearby food service staff from elder centers in tribal communities in 2019. In 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions and social distancing guidelines in effect for the foreseeable future, she transitioned to the development of virtual sessions that will be available to service staff in early 2021 for cooks, kitchen managers, and other food service staff at tribal elder centers and senior centers throughout the state. In-person trainings have begun to resume as health restrictions allow.

Dr. Frank worked with the San Felipe Pueblo, the New Mexico Heart Association on a virtual series on how to cook healthy nutritious meals during COVID. And she along with Chef Whitewater worked with and are working with the Flower Hill Institute, a native-owned, community directed nonprofit at Jemez Pueblo that works to preserve and enhance cultural resources and preparing youth to inherit leadership.

She has been featured cooking instructor at the Santa Fe School of Cooking where she teaches classes on Native American cuisine with Chef Whitewater, but all classes stopped during the pandemic of 2020. The two chefs worked with the cooking school to do some virtual classes.

She has been working with The Cultural Conservancy, a Native-led non-profit as an advisor, food educator, and chef since 2005 and is working with this organization to do a series of virtual cooking classes for Urban Native Americans and how to cook inexpensive healthy foods. She now serves on the board of directors, as well.

In 2020, she was the recipient of the Local Hero Olla Award, which recognizes an exceptional individual for the work they do to create healthy, innovative, vibrant, and resilient local sustainable food systems in New Mexico.

Her research and documentation in written, photographic, and food form includes the agricultural, culinary, mythological, and socioeconomic uses of foods & plants amongst various indigenous peoples all over the Americas. She continues to be actively involved in her photographic career working with a diverse group of clients as well as pursuing her academic knowledge and teaching about foods of the Americas.