Nephi Craig & Chris Rodriguez - Pull Up a Chair: Culinary Culture and Mental Health

*Chef Nephi Craig* has 24 years culinary experience in America and around the world in London, Germany, Brazil and Japan. Nephi Craig is an enrolled member of the White Mountain Apache Tribe and is half Navajo. Chef Craig is also the founder of the Native American Culinary Association or NACA, an organization/network that is dedicated to the research, refinement, and development of Native American Cuisine. Chef Nephi Craig provides training, workshops and lecture sessions on Native American Cuisine for health to schools, restaurants, universities, treatment centers, behavioral health agencies, and tribal entities from across America and abroad. Chef Craig served as Executive Chef of the Sunrise Park Resort Hotel. During Chef Craig’s nine-year tenure at Sunrise Park resort, Craig and his White Mountain Apache culinary team achieved many national and international benchmarks in establishing a culture of Indigenous Foods across North America. *Chris Rodriguez* grew up between Los Angeles and Baja California with ancestral roots in the Iberian Peninsula (Spain, France, and Basque Country) and across Northern-Central Mexico. He is the descendant of classically trained chefs, crystalized by the culinary legacy of his great-grandfather's bacalao a la vizcaina, still prepared by his family to this day. As a father and mutual aid chef organizing community-based access to the ecological stewardship of the land, Rodriguez is actively engaged in the development of local institutions such as a land trust, community gardens, mutual aid kitchens, a homeschool, and grassroots community health projects. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Gender, Ethnic and Multicultural Studies; as well as a Bachelor of Science in Hospitality Management from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.