Though Nishnabe Delights is a collection of recipes from the Ojibwe and Odawa People of Manitoulin Island and Reserve on the North Shore of Lake Huron, the collecting, compling, and editing of the cookbook, is creditied to Mary Lou Fox. As a member of M'Chigeeng (West Bay) First Nation, she was passsionate about preserving and celebrating Ojibwe and Odawa culture and language. Fox is said to have played a key role in the establishment of the Ojibwe Cultural Fundation (OCF), which is an organization founded in 1974 to support the preservation of Ojibwe way of life. Creating books was a way in which Fox sought to preserve her culture. She edited and published traditional Ojibwe tales such as “Why the Beaver has a Broad Tail,” “The Way it Was: an Ojibwe-Odawa Legend,” and “How the Bees Got Their Stingers: An Ojibwe-Odawa Legend”. Not only this, but she has put together instructional books on Ojibwe beadwork-quill work and pictorial writing.The majority of her work was published in the 1970s which was a time of unrest in the identities for First Nations due to many political shifts.  In her works she covers, cuisine, legends and manuals on traditional methods which all give significant insight on the Ojibwe way of life during the 1970s which help in preserving the culture. With these books, Mary Lou Fox offers a snapshot of Indigenous lifestyle that lives on paper regardless of todays reality.

The cultural preservation theme of the Nishnabe Delights makes it also worth noting the illustrator, Martin Panamicks, artistic contribution. Unlike many other cookbooks, Nishnabe Delights contains traditional artwork rather than images of the food or advertisements for selected products. Certain illustrations, do not even apply to the designated recipe but are used only to reflect Ojibwe tradition and the traditonal tone. This further implies that the purpose of the cookbook is not commercial but very much concerned with cultural preservation. There is a significant amount of information on Martin Panamick as he was a well respected Indigenous artist in the 1970s. Panamick was known for his work in the Woodland style of Anishnaabe painting, which is what is seen throughout Nishnabe Delights. He was born, in 1956 at the M’Chigeeng on First Nation Manitoulin Island. Manitoulin Island is home to the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation, the organization dedicated to preserving Anishnaabeg (Nishnabe) heritage. Martin Panamick was killed in a car crash, in 1977 but fortunatley his legacy lives on through his artwork and collaboration with Mary Lou Fox in many of her works.

Anishnaabe is the name given to those belonging to close knit communities of the Ojibwe (Faith Keepers) and Odawa (Warriors and Traders). These groups had and have a strong presence in Northern Ontario particularily between Lake Superior and Georgian Bay, which also happens to have been a hotspot for the broken land treaties following colonization. Due to their geographical location, the Anishnaabe tribes, specifically the Ojibwe, were integral agents in the early years of the the fur trade and are therefore an integral part of Canadian history. The establishment of the Hudson Bay Fur Trade even drew many members north displacing communities. Just like the lives of all Indigenous peoples, the Ojibwe and Odawa are familiar with the effects of European settlement and all that followed. Before contact, they were primarily a hunter/gatherer society with spear fishing playing a large role in food sourcing as well as producing maple sugar and wild rice.

Despite their significance in the lives of the settlers, over time inequality became increasingly present and eventually, like the rest of the First Nation tribes, the Anishnaabe people became dependant on wage labour and government assistance because of the systematic inequality created by the Canadian government. Throughout the twentieth century, particulariy in during th 1970s, the Ojibwe and Odawa people were focused on cultural preservation due to the increasing political threat on their rights and way of life. Foundations such as the OCF and the creation of books such as Mary Lou Foxs' work are just examples of ways in which the Ojibwe and Odawa people have been fighting for equality and rights.