American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Introduction It is a commonly held notion in the U.S. that transforming an "underdeveloped" society into a more technologically advanced society with a higher economic standard of living results in an improved diet and better nutritional status. This notion, which persists to this day, colored the perceptions of early colonial administrators in America who believed that American Indians starved before the colonists arrived and would have continued to starve were it not for their aid. The colonists chose to believe that their arrival resulted in an improved life for those who preceded them. Yet, historical analysis of the diet of one Indian tribe, the Navajos, suggests that although contact with a more economically developed culture does lead to changes in diet, improvement does not necessarily ensue. In fact, the encounter with European cultures and subsequent economic and social changes was an initial nutritional disaster for the Navajo Indians, and there is evidence that even current Navajo adaptations to white American dietary practices are not consistently an improvement over the Navajos' early pre-Western contact diet.