Akitusut is a Mohegan anthropologist, one-handed chef, teacher, and lightworker. She has spent 20 years in libraries, classrooms, gardens, community gathering spaces, and stages telling the stories of Indigenous foodways and advocating for Indigenous food sovereignty. Additionally she is a Master Reiki practitioner offering individual and communal healing. She is on the Board of Directors of the National Indian Education Association.

Akitusu worked for the Mohegan Nation for 8 years in both the tribal library and museum. While there, she ran events with Indigenous authors, hosted story times for tribal youth, and assisted researchers. Here she deepened her work on Indigenous foodways and began partnering with the Mohegan Tribal Health Department, running events such as “The Garden Committee” which brought in Native chefs for community demonstrations.

She began hosting her own cooking classes with the Be Well Committee; a partnership between Mohegan Sun and the Mohegan Tribe dedicated to providing the approximately 5,000 Mohegan Sun employees with resources around health and nutrition.

In partnership with the Mohegan Tribal Health Department Akitusut launched a Native food discussion group bringing together a group of experts including linguists and master gardeners, many of whom were elders from her tribe, to sit with and discuss indigenous foods. 

Akitusu has shared her work on Indigenous foodways with a broader audience speaking at conferences across the country such as the Conference on Native American Nutrition in Shakopee, the Native American & Indigenous Studies Association Conference (NAISA) in Saskatchewan, The World Indigenous Peoples’ Conference on Education (WIPCE) in Honolulu, and Foodways II, Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife in Historic Deerfield. 

Akitusut carries the legacy of her mentor Dale Carson who passed in 2021. Dale was an author, chef, and expert in Indigenous foodways who wrote two cookbooks: New Native American Cooking and Native (American) New England Cooking. Akitusut honors her legacy by weaving history storytelling and food education together for the next generation. 

Akitusu graduated from Cornell University with a degree in Restaurant Management and earned her Masters in Anthropology and Museum Studies from Harvard University. While at Harvard, Rachel worked at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology for 3 years where she curated the exhibit “Digging Veritas: the archaeology and history of the Harvard Indian college and 17th century life”. Her thesis entitled: “Moshups Continuance: sovereignty and the literature of the land of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Nation” won the award for best thesis in the behavioral sciences at the Harvard University Extension School.