'Cooking for reconciliation': Indigenous chefs aim to raise awareness of traditional foods

Canadian cuisine might include a mix of culinarytraditions, but the food of one of the country's founding groups is largely missing. An emerging group of Indigenous chefs andrestaurateurs is hoping to change that.

Rich Francis, chef-owner of Seventh Fire Hospitality Group inSaskatoon, says he's "cooking for reconciliation" as he
specializes in his interpretation of modern Indigenous cuisine.

"Everything that's been taught in school is through a coloniallens. It's not our story. It's colonial books, so now I'm steppinginto a time where we are telling our own stories through our ownlens and our own vision."

Francis, a member of the Tetlit Gwich'in and Tuscarora Nation andoriginally from Fort McPherson, N.W.T., was a finalist on Season 4of Top Chef Canadaand is looking forward to opening arestaurant this summer.

Meanwhile, he's catering and conducting events like a recentCooking for Reconciliation dinner series in Vancouver, where hefocused on local Indigenous foods such as halibut, razor clams,stone fruits and sage for flavouring. He took buffalo meat with himto do a play on surf 'n' turf.

"I've been travelling raising awareness just to go beyond whatpeople know us for, like the Indian taco and bannock and all that. That's not truly us, who we are," says Francis.

"It was given to us in our cultural genocide and the residentialschool system and all that happened to us. We're starting to findour culinary identity now in the industry beyond bannock and all thecolonial stuff that was designed to destroy us."

'We have a lot of reckoning to do'

Lenore Newman, a B.C. professor with a Canada Research Chair in food security and environment, says the country is seeing a resurgence in Indigenous food "and a very timely one that needs to happen."

"I think there is still serious reparation to be made though," she adds.

During field work for her recent book, "Speaking in Cod Tongues: A Canadian Culinary Journey," Newman found Indigenous groups played a huge role in helping early settlers learn to survive.

"Then you enter this horrible period where Indigenous cuisine was actively destroyed and used as a weapon. The biggest example is the clearing of the bison and how that was basically a genocide," says Newman, who teaches at the University of the Fraser Valley inAbbotsford, B.C.

"Out here on the West Coast the potlatch was banned. Inresidential schools, people were taken away from their Indigenousfoods. They were prevented from using them or talking about them.

"We have a lot of reckoning to do and some of that is culinary. And so what that meant was for a very long time you didn't hearabout Indigenous cuisine except very peripherally as kind ofexotic."

Newman has eaten in Indigenous restaurants in Vancouver, HaidaGwaii, B.C., at a Songhees First Nations food truck in Victoria and at Tea-N-Bannock in Toronto.

Tina Ottereyes, who manages Tea-N-Bannock, agrees First Nations food is "very underrepresented" in Canada's restaurant sphere and is happy more eateries are opening.

"We're starting to share more of our culture and more of ourfood," says Ottereyes, from Wemindji Cree First Nation on James Bay in Quebec.

"When I grew up we hunted and we trapped and we fished. That wasmy culture, that was the food that I ate... Each tribe has a different diet according to their area."

'You won't find any of this stuff in history books'

The menu at Tea-N-Bannock reflects traditional dishes fromdifferent tribes. Hominy corn grown by a local farmer is the basefor their Ojibwa corn soup, made through a labour-intensive process.

The corn is dried after picking and the kernels removed. They'reboiled for several hours in wood ash to remove the hard outer shell, allowing the inner kernel to get "nice and cooked and plumped up," says Ottereyes.

Wild rice comes from First Nations people in northwesternOntario. Teas include a fruity herbal blend made by the grandmotherof a staff member in Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory near Belleville, Ont.

Though meat like elk and bison are prepared in a traditional way,they are farmed, not wild, because the product has to be certifiedand inspected.

Francis believes there should be some leniency when it comes towild food.

"The regulations that are put in place by the government don'tallow us to fully express ourselves."

Elsewhere in Toronto, NishDish, a caf focused on Anishinaaberecipes, was slated to open this month in Toronto. Pow Wow Cafe, which launched last fall, features Objibwa tacos using fried bannock instead of tortillas.

A smattering of colleges also offer Indigenous culinary courses. Francis, who received his chef training at Stratford ChefsSchool, originally learned traditional recipes in Moose Factory onJames Bay and Iqaluit in Nunavut from people who still live off theland.

"You won't find any of this stuff in history books, or cookbooksfor that matter."