During the kick-off of Taste of Downtown on Saturday, September 5 at 10:00 am in the Community Room of the Market Café located at 614 N. Bullard Street, author Bill Dunmire will present a program titled:NATIVE PEOPLE OF NORTH AMERICA: WHAT THEY GREW AND GATHERED. The program is free and open to the public. For additional information contact Silver City MainStreet at 575-534-1700.

This presentation relates the connections between plants and native peoples of New Mexico, especially Pueblo and Navajo Indians. It deals with the earliest farming in America but also emphasizes the importance of a host of common wild plants that were gathered to supplement diets, furnish medicine, make fabric dye and pottery paint, provide fiber for baskets, blankets and twine, and many other uses.

The program is illustrated with colorful slides of the plants in flower, scenes of Puebloans in their gardens, as well as baskets, Pre-Columbian pots, and other artifacts manufactured by Natives from wild plants. This talk, too, brings in how plants, foods, and agricultural techniques from Spain were adopted by the Americans.

With degrees in wildlife management and zoology from the University of California, Berkeley, Bill Dunmire enjoyed a 28-year career with the National Park Service, much of it as a Park Naturalist in many different national parks. He retired as Superintendent of Carlsbad Caverns, NM, and Guadalupe Mountains, TX, National Parks in 1985, then spent seven years as a field biologist in New Mexico for The Nature Conservancy. Today he is a writer/lecturer and photographer, traveling widely to research his material. He currently is an Associate in Biology at the University of New Mexico and a Research Associate at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.

All six of Bill's books will be available for purchase and author signing at these programs.