A few weeks ago, very randomly, my dad asked us if we knew where potatoes come from. Quickly my mom, my sisters and I replied “Ireland”. The answer was wrong, they came from South America, specifically Peru and Bolivia! This caused great discussion in our family since we all assumed potatoes were a western thing, especially with the connection to the potato famine in Ireland. 

Fast-forward to this week’s unit about the Quechua peoples and their ancient interaction with potatoes, it made me reflect even further about the extent of appropriation certain foods and cultures take. It almost erases all history with societal common knowledge (yet the common knowledge is false). For instance, “French fries”. This is such a misleading statement. First, it turns out that “French fries” were not created in France (they’re from Belgium), and secondly, the potato never came from there or Ireland in the first place. Though I know this is not necessarily a big deal, what does alarm me is how often this occurs. How many other foods we attribute to come from a certain country or culture yet comes from a completely separate place? Furthermore, is this exclusive to just food or does it happen to other practices or things too? In the podcast lecture, we learned the many techniques the Quechua people have developed to keep foods fresh, such as “ch’arki”. In English we refer to this as “Jerky” and yet, similarly to the fries example, are unaware of its Andean origins. Nobody ever thinks to relate beef jerky to the Quechua, it is appropriated and known to be American.

This week’s reading really helped me put into perspective my personal knowledge and to be aware of what it’s based on, that is, if I believe something to be true simply because it’s been repeated so many times I accepted it, or because I learned it from actual facts and research.