Author: Gautham Krishnaraj / Source: Atlas Obscura
The author would like to thank Sila Rogan and Angela Bellegarde from the Indigenous Innovation Initiative at Grand Challenges Canada for their support and insight during the researching and reporting process.
In Canada, true Indigenous cuisine is relatively unknown. Ask almost any Canadian to name an Indigenous dish, and their answer will almost certainly be “bannock,” a kind of dry skillet bread. Chef Rich Francis, based in Six Nations of the Grand River, Ontario, refuses to serve it. “Bannock isn’t even Indigenous, in the truest sense,” he says. “It was what we made when our land was taken, our movement limited, and our provisions reduced to a sack of flour. It was taught to us—it’s Scottish traditionally—it’s colonization food.”
Chef Francis, who is Gwich’in and Haudenosaunee, has been in the spotlight over the last few years, often for challenging beliefs such as those about bannock. In 2014, he was the first-ever Indigenous contestant on Top Chef Canada, where he took third place despite being a favorite to win. His incorporation of Indigenous medicine flavors (sweetgrass, tobacco, sage, and cedar) throughout the season won him praise, but the judges were unforgiving about his offering featuring muskox. Some undercooked quail in the dish didn’t help, either.
Francis is working to help change the narrative around Indigenous cuisine not exactly by recreating it, but by bringing some of its ingredients and techniques to modern tables and palates. Over the past few years, Francis has hosted dinners around the theme of reconciliation, to explore what modern Indigenous cuisine is, and could be. To do so, he’s looking within himself, to nature, and to elders across the country—but there are few who can fully recall the flavors of a pre-colonial palate.
“It isn’t something you can just pick up a cookbook and learn,” he says. “It’s been erased, and so many of the elders can hardly remember the tastes of these foods. They were taught not to taste it.” Here, he’s particularly referring to the residential school system, which took Indigenous youth away from their homes, and sought to “kill the Indian in the child.” It’s said that South Africa’s apartheid policies were modeled after Canada’s policies.
Many of the challenges that Francis has faced are part of a continuing legacy of marginalizing Indigenous people, culture, and cuisine in Canada. His reconciliation dinners have often been underground affairs, because as of right now, restaurants cannot legally serve many of the traditional things he wishes to bring back to the Indigenous pantry. “If I was to serve all the things I wanted to, I would be shut down in a minute,” he laments. “You can’t serve whale, or seal, or other hunted game, and that makes some important aspects of Indigenous cuisine impossible. I can’t in my right mind call a dish with factory-farmed beef ‘Indigenous.’”
Francis wasn’t always set on making Indigenous cuisine, though. He recalls going to public school about 100 kilometers from Toronto, outside Reserve No. 40, where kids would tease him for bringing cured meats and a handful of Indigenous foods that were still being eaten. Experiences such as those distanced Francis from his roots. Decades later, he has come to terms…
The post How an Indigenous Chef Is Decolonizing Canadian Cuisine appeared first on FeedBox.