Mescal Agave Use in Arizona: Food, Fiber, and Vessel

The agave plant was used by Native peoples for numerous utilitarian items. Mescal served as a valuable food source still being harvested and prepared to this day by many Indigenous groups. For millennia people have pit roasted the heart of the plant yielding a nutritious food staple rich in calcium and zinc. This talk includes the life history of mescal, and the multitude of Tribal uses of this intriguing plant and their long relationship with this plant from centuries ago to the modern era.

Carrie Cannon is a member of the Kiowa tribe of Oklahoma and is also of Oglala Lakota descent. She has a B.S. in Wildlife Biology, and an M.S. in Resource Management. She began working for the Hualapai Tribe of Peach Springs, Arizona in 2005 where she began the creation of an intergenerational ethnobotany program for the Hualapai community. She is currently employed as an Ethnobotanist for the Hualapai Department of Cultural Resources. She administers a number of projects promoting the intergenerational teaching of Hualapai ethnobotanical knowledge working towards preservation and revitalization to ensure tribal ethnobotanical knowledge persists as a living practice and tradition.