Navajo food traditions tap into the past, and future, of farming the arid Southwest

Editor's Note: This article is published through the Colorado River Collaborative, a solutions journalism initiative supported by the Janet Quinney Lawson Institute for Land, Water, and Air at Utah State University. See all of our stories about how Utahns are impacted by the Colorado River at greatsaltlakenews.org/coloradoriver.

BLANDING, Utah — When you imagine a ripe, juicy peach, you might not picture it growing in a red rock canyon. Centuries ago, however, tribes in the Four Corners cultivated vast orchards of an heirloom variety called the Southwest peach.

Today, a young tree next to Reagan Wytsalucy's home in Blanding is one of few examples left in this part of southeast Utah.

"I have three kids. They don't realize how privileged they are that they have actually had this fruit," she said. "There's so many kids that don't even know that this tree exists or that their ancestors grew these abundantly."

Wytsalucy, a plant scientist with the Utah State University extension in San Juan County and a member of the Navajo Nation, said this peach was a vital part of the Indigenous diet and trade economy for hundreds of years. Accounts from Spanish missions describe sprawling orchards grown by Pueblo Indians as early as the 1630s.

The Southwest peach is smaller and less sweet than what you find at the supermarket. Its flavor also varies based on which part of the region it's from, she said. Some taste like melon. Others have a hint of cinnamon. Traditionally, Navajo people would dry peaches to preserve them for the following year, and one tree could feed a whole family.

Now, however, less than 2% of the peach's historic orchards remain. For nearly a decade Wytsalucy has knocked on doors across the Southwest to find where the trees still exist and study how to bring more of them back.

"I want to be able to taste this fruit that my father remembers tasting," she said. "And I want my father to be able to taste this fruit again, too."

Wytsalucy crouched next to her sapling and pointed out the spots where she expects to see peach blossoms next year. This tree propagated from a seed she collected in the Navajo Mountain area near Lake Powell, and she's growing more like it on research plots in northern Utah and New Mexico.

Her goal is to eventually have enough peach seeds so tribes can establish new orchards and Native families can plant trees for themselves. For tribal communities, it represents more than just fresh fruit.

"There are ceremonial connections — prayers, songs, processes that completely involve the peach tree," she said. "That is a huge indicator for me and for our people that this is something that has been historically tied to our people … possibly even as long as corn, beans and squash."

So why did the Southwest peach nearly vanish? A lot of it was intentional.

In 1863, the federal government drove the Navajo people out of their homelands, forcing them to walk some 300 miles to the Bosque Redondo reservation at an Army fort in New Mexico. The U.S. military then burned and cut down Navajo orchards, decimated their crops and slaughtered their livestock.

"Our food systems were destroyed, and in 2024 we've yet to recover," said Chef Bleu Adams, who comes from the tribal communities of Diné (Navajo), Mandan and Hidatsa.

Adams co-founded Black Sheep Cafe in Provo and directs Indigehub, an organization based in Window Rock, Arizona, that supports Native farming.

Before the 1860s, she said Native people kept the land in balance. The livestock, the soil health and the crops interacted in harmony so farming could be successful in the arid landscape. Even though an 1868 treaty allowed Navajo people to leave Bosque Redondo and return home, it wasn't easy to bounce back from that type of destruction.

Recent forms of oppression, such as Native American boarding schools, also disrupted the tribe's ability to pass down food traditions to the next generation. Removing Navajo children from their families for most of the year meant they weren't home at key times in the seasonal agricultural cycle to learn from their parents, Wytsalucy said.

President Joe Biden offered a formal apology in October for the country's 150-year-long boarding school policy that ended in 1969.

Today, most of the Navajo Nation is classified as a food desert by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It's home to more than 170,000 people spread across a region larger than the states of Maryland, New Jersey and Connecticut combined — with only 14 grocery stores as of 2022. The lack of access to fresh, unprocessed foods has fueled health problems like rising obesity rates, which are roughly three times higher in the Navajo Nation than the U.S. average.

Restoring tribal food traditions could make diets healthier, Adams said, and also help farmers across the Southwest adapt to a changing climate.

"This work isn't just for the benefit of Indigenous people and Indigenous communities. This work benefits all," she said. "There is so much knowledge in traditional practice and traditional foodways that could be an answer."

The Southwest peach tree is a prime example. Over time, it has adapted to the extreme climate conditions of the Colorado Plateau — hot summers, harsh winters and little rain. Once established, Wytsalucy said it can produce fruit for decades without irrigation.

That means it might someday be lent to the commercial fruit industry as a drought-tolerant rootstock. But for now, that's not her priority.

"[Our] first and foremost goal is: protect it in its natural, original form … and [be] able to give that back to the community, so the people have that free agency to be able to take food security into their own hands."

But that will take more than just peaches.

At a community garden she helped start near Bluff, Wytsalucy ran her hand across heirloom green beans in a raised bed.

A couple of rows over, Native tea plants bloomed with bright yellow flowers. In another box, peas climbed up a corn stalk towering over her head.

"It's orderly, but not orderly. And I love it," she said with a laugh.

The garden bears the Navajo name Dá'ak'eh Hózhǫ́ǫnii. The collaboration began in 2022 between local leaders and the St. Christopher's Episcopal Mission, which provides the land on the northern edge of the Navajo Nation and the spring water that irrigates it.

There are 31 garden beds in all. People living in this area can plant whatever they want, free of charge.

Nearby, gardener Eirene Hamilton lifted a shade cloth to check on her harvest. She reached down to pluck a yellow squash and then tossed it into a colorful basket on her arm.

"My husband likes the squashes — the summer squash — so I grow that to keep him happy," she laughed.

Hamilton lives in Bluff and comes from a family of Indigenous herbalists, she said. When the opportunity came to volunteer with the garden to help more of her community take part, she dug right in.

"I'm kind of like the cheerleader. I'm not a very good cheerleader, but I do what I can."

Interest in gardening has ebbed and flowed over the past three years here, she said. But now, around 15 families are growing something, and that's a start.

In an area where water access is limited, the garden offers Navajo people a chance to get their hands in the dirt — a place where they can begin building the confidence to make growing food a bigger part of their lives again.

"Everybody used to have a garden," Wytsalucy said. "That's what they harvested. That's what they canned. They hardly went to the grocery store for anything."

For her, the gardens and the peach tree both represent small steps toward restoring an essential part of Navajo culture that was nearly lost.

"I know that in the future, I will see these trees become an abundance again, and there will be a time when a lot of people in our community are going back to producing food in the local area," Wytsalucy said.

"Do I know how soon that will be? No. But until then, I'm just going to keep doing what I do."

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