Arctic Indigenous Food is Cool! Have Indigenous Youth Made the Best Cookbook in the World?

Press release from the International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry

Indigenous reindeer herding youth initiative nominated  for 22^nd Gourmand International Cookbook Awards 2018

The 22^nd Gourmand International Cookbook Awards (the “Oscars of the cookbook world”) is being held May 26-27 in Yantai, China where authors from all over the globe will compete for the prestigious awarding of the World´s best cookbooks.

An international group young indigenous people and others are among the top nominees, with their food book entitled: “EALLU –Food, Knowledge and How We Have Thrived on the Margins”.  The term ´eallu´ means a herd (of reindeer) in the indigenous Sámi language, closely connected to the word ´eallin´, which means life.

In this unique and acclaimed food book, a team of 50 young indigenous authors present 14 different Arctic indigenous peoples´ food cultures in one volume, the first of its kind. The book has been nominated in as many as 4 categories at the Gourmand Awards: Food Heritage, Sustainable Food, Arctic Food, and the main prize itself – Best Food Book of the World, across all categories. The book is 1 of 16 nominees for the main prize, selected from contributions from 116 countries.

“This is much more than just a book of recipes”, says Chair Mikhail Pogodaev of Association of World Reindeer Herders (WRH): “This is about Arctic indigenous peoples´ deep knowledge about food, raw materials, processing and conservation, food security, health and wellbeing – Its about our food traditions, our traditional nomadic lifestyles, our local economies, our philosophy and our worldviews.”

“Arctic indigenous peoples have an absolutely unique understanding of the Arctic environment, their ecosystems, and their living food resources,” says Anders Oskal, the EALLU project leader and Secretary General of WRH. He maintains that on the one hand this knowledge is essential for reindeer peoples to survive and thrive in the harshest natural environments on the planet. But it can also be a universal knowledge, and something the world can learn from: “For instance, the traditions of all reindeer herding peoples to utilize everything from the reindeer remains strong, and is something today´s world could learn from as the needs to restructure the global food system has become increasingly apparent”.

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International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry
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