PPAK: Traditional Pueblo Bread Making
w/ Sage Romero

About PUEBLO BREAD

Tuah-Tahi is the Tahi (Taos) word for Red Willow People. Made from white flour, enriched with a little butter or lard, and flavored with a pinch of salt, this moist, puffy bread starts out as a large domed loaf that’s often split into a variety of small sections before baking. It’s traditionally, but not exclusively, cooked in an outdoor beehive-shaped clay oven known as an Ah-cutoo or oven also known as an horno.

While a quintessential and beloved food item for many Native peoples across the Southwest, pueblo bread’s history reflects the Euro-American settler colonialism in this region. Prior to European colonization, Pueblo bakers did not use wheat flour, instead using coarse meals of corn, nuts, or beans. The Spanish introduced both wheat and the squat adobe Ah-cutoo (oven) to the area. Similar to other colonially-influenced Native foods such as fry bread, this legacy can render some Native people’s relationships to pueblo bread affectionate yet complex. Yet the Ah-cutoo themselves reveal an even more layered colonial history: The Moors actually originally brought them to Spain during their several-century rule of the Iberian peninsula, forging a distant culinary link between North Africa and New Mexico.

While some lament the decline in traditional oven use, for many Pueblo bakers, firing up the Ah-cutoo to make massive batches of bread for family, feasts, or the market remains a living tradition. Bakers bank their Ah-cutoo fires with cedar. The wood burns slow and fragrant, and bakers adjust the cedar ashes to regulate the temperature to give their loaves the perfect crisp. To test if the oven is ready, they scatter oats into the hot Ah-cutoo. If these oats burn, bakers can remove ashes to cool the oven; if they brown, the oven is ready. Experienced bakers don’t need a timer, but know by feel and smell when the bread is done. Fresh from the oven, the loaves’ warm, spongy insides make a perfect accompaniment to a bowl of savory chile pozole or a thick bean stew.* Source: https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/pueblo-bread *

About PPAK: Practicing Principals of Ancestral Knowledge

PPAK is a sustainability and life ways series that follows traditional Indigenous teachings and practices. These workshops are aimed to connect people back to living in balance with the Earth through traditional living practices of Native people. As all Indigenous cultures historically lived in balance with the cycles of nature, PPAK instructional series will incorporate these ways into contemporary teachings, demonstrations and Indigenous philosophy taught by Native community members and practitioners who have learned skills from Native elders.

About DANCING EARTH

Dancing Earth Indigenous Contemporary Dance Creations dynamically activates our mission to support Indigenous dance and related arts, to encourage and revitalize awareness of bio-cultural diversity through artistic expression, for the education and wellness of all peoples.

Dancing Earth has been named by Dance Magazine as “One of the Top 25 to Watch,” and are recipients of the National Museum of American Indian’s 2010 Expressive Arts Award. Dancing Earth recruits, cultivates, and creates opportunities for emerging global Indigenous talents in all aspects of artistic collaboration - including dance, choreography, music, costume, lighting, video, stage managing, and arts administration.

Dancing Earth gathers Indigenous collaborators, including: Nations of Blackfoot, Metis, Coushatta, Ixil and Tzeltil Maya, Papanga, Cambiva, Yaqui, Purepecha, Shoshone, Dine, Tsalagi, Hopi, Tewa, Tiwa, Towa, and Keresan of North Central and South America. They balance a commitment to share dances with regional, national and international communities at venues as varied as festivals, Universities, elementary-high schools, Native wellness gatherings, youth leadership symposiums, art museums, desert canyons, dried river beds, and symposiums for social-environmental justice.

Dancing Earth inspires creativity and cultural consciousness through community art practice, energetic dance training workshops, site specific rituals and full length eco-productions.

Fire Making w/ a Hand Drill

With Mother Nature Center & Ibrahim Loeks

About PPAKPracticing Principals of Ancestral Knowledge

PPAK is a sustainability and life ways series that follows traditional Indigenous teachings and practices. These workshops are aimed to connect people back to living in balance with the Earth through traditional living practices of Native people. As all Indigenous cultures historically lived in balance with the cycles of nature, PPAK instructional series will incorporate these ways into contemporary teachings, demonstrations and Indigenous philosophy taught by Native community members and practitioners who have learned skills from Native elders.

ABOUT DANCING EARTH

Dancing Earth Indigenous Contemporary Dance Creations dynamically activates our mission to support Indigenous dance and related arts, to encourage and revitalize awareness of bio-cultural diversity through artistic expression, for the education and wellness of all peoples.

Dancing Earth has been named by Dance Magazine as “One of the Top 25 to Watch,” and are recipients of the National Museum of American Indian’s 2010 Expressive Arts Award. Dancing Earth recruits, cultivates, and creates opportunities for emerging global Indigenous talents in all aspects of artistic collaboration - including dance, choreography, music, costume, lighting, video, stage managing, and arts administration.

Dancing Earth gathers Indigenous collaborators, including: Nations of Blackfoot, Metis, Coushatta, Ixil and Tzeltil Maya, Papanga, Cambiva, Yaqui, Purepecha, Shoshone, Dine, Tsalagi, Hopi, Tewa, Tiwa, Towa, and Keresan of North Central and South America. They balance a commitment to share dances with regional, national and international communities at venues as varied as festivals, Universities, elementary-high schools, Native wellness gatherings, youth leadership symposiums, art museums, desert canyons, dried river beds, and symposiums for social-environmental justice.

Dancing Earth inspires creativity and cultural consciousness through community art practice, energetic dance training workshops, site specific rituals and full length eco-productions.

ABOUT DANCING EARTH

Dancing Earth Indigenous Contemporary Dance Creations dynamically activates our mission to support Indigenous dance and related arts, to encourage and revitalize awareness of bio-cultural diversity through artistic expression, for the education and wellness of all peoples.

Dancing Earth has been named by Dance Magazine as “One of the Top 25 to Watch,” and are recipients of the National Museum of American Indian’s 2010 Expressive Arts Award. Dancing Earth recruits, cultivates, and creates opportunities for emerging global Indigenous talents in all aspects of artistic collaboration - including dance, choreography, music, costume, lighting, video, stage managing, and arts administration.

Dancing Earth gathers Indigenous collaborators, including: Nations of Blackfoot, Metis, Coushatta, Ixil and Tzeltil Maya, Papanga, Cambiva, Yaqui, Purepecha, Shoshone, Dine, Tsalagi, Hopi, Tewa, Tiwa, Towa, and Keresan of North Central and South America. They balance a commitment to share dances with regional, national and international communities at venues as varied as festivals, Universities, elementary-high schools, Native wellness gatherings, youth leadership symposiums, art museums, desert canyons, dried river beds, and symposiums for social-environmental justice.

Dancing Earth inspires creativity and cultural consciousness through community art practice, energetic dance training workshops, site specific rituals and full length eco-productions.