Land of Plenty (PDF)

20 land of plenty the walrus 21 food Land of Plenty Meet the people who are trying to restore Indigenous food practices...

20 the walrus Land of Plenty Meet the people who Indigenous photography by 22 M ark bell stops his truck at the edge of town, where the bush road begins. Leaving the engine running, he grabs a cigarette from a pack of Putter’s on the dashboard and walks into the trees. After sprinkling out a bit of tobacco from the cigarette, an offering of thanks to the Creator, he lights the smoke. “That’s as traditional as I get,” says Bell. Determined to fill his freezer with food, he gets back in the truck and keeps d riving into the predawn darkness. A band coun cillor at Aroland First Nation, part of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, Bell lives in Nakina, Ontario, 341 kilometres north east of Thunder Bay. Since last March, when the North West Company closed the Northern store in Nakina, the only groceries available in town are the selec tion of chocolate bars, chips, and shrink- wrapped sandwiches at the gas station. The closest supermarket is the No Frills in Geraldton, about forty-five minutes south — 131 kilometres round trip. Bell hunts, fishes, and traps for much of his food. Moose is his primary source of meat, but it has been over a year since he killed one—a butcher processed it i nto 486 pounds of steaks, roasts, sausages, pepperettes, and ground meat, and it has lasted until now. If he sees a moose today and gets a clear shot, it will feed him, his wife, Siru Kantola, and d aughter, Taiga, as well as his father, brother, and sister-in-law, for another year. It’s just past 6 a.m. on a Saturday near the end of October—already the m of the moose-hunting season. Bell has heard from friends that moose have been spotted around here recently. Right away, he sees big hoofprints; some, he estimates, are o nly twenty minutes old. There are bare trees with broken branches from where moose rubbed their antlers to remove the “velvet”—the soft fuzz that nourishes the fast-growing bones while they regenerate every year. As the truck jostles along the bumpy road, Bell begins to see more tracks, then wolf markings mingled with the moose prints. Reaching a point in the trail impass able even in his heavy-duty pickup, Bell corey mintz Indigenous peoples of the region nearly eliminated.” Catharine Parr Traill, who documented her experiences as an early nineteenth- century settler in Ontario in a series of books, describes Europeans thriving by adapting Indigenous food-preparation techniques, harvesting wild rice in the fall and maple syrup in the spring. Traill writes of a consistent exchange with the Hiawatha First Nation (then called the Mississauga Anishinaabe people); its baskets, mats, ducks, and venison were traded for settlers’ pork, flour, potatoes, 24 people were forced to rely and expensive provisions. Over a century later, food inadequate access to affordable, nutritious food, r esulting in negative physical-, mental-, and social-health outcomes — is far more common Indigenous people throughout Canada than in the population of the country over all. Forced to transition over generations to a Western diet, which many Indigenous communities c annot necessarily access or afford, First N ations people, Métis people suffer higher rates betes and cardiovascular-health a result. The social and spiritual losses are far more difficult to measure. In northern Canada, supermarket s taples, which generally need flown in, often cost double what they Grand R do in southern urban areas. government began subsidizing of shipping food to northern commun ities in the late 1960s through ada Post’s Northern Air Stage Program, ostensibly to increase residents’ to healthy food. In 2011, the program was replaced by one called Nutrition which select vendors receive subsidies shipping food to the area; the intentions were to increase consumer choice, prices, and make healthy produce accessible. I nstead, northern ities have r eceived grapes for $28 a kilo and $9 boxes of Corn Flakes. The non-profit alliance Canada says that while food i in the North is well documented, is no comprehensive analysis of how prevalent it is. A study conducted by the University of Waterloo found that 70 percent of the population Albany First Nation in northern was food insecure; in a separate Food Secure Canada estimated that residents of that community would to spend 56 percent of their income to purchase a basic nutritious diet. “Nutrition North was doomed to fail from the beginning because it’s a non-Indigenous solution to a very complex issue,” says Joseph LeBlanc, who is Odawa from Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory on Manitoulin in Lake Huron and the former executive corey mintz r esource extraction. In other places—often described as “protected”—such parks, these activities are frequently pro hibited by law. The formation of Canada’s parks, seen by many non-Indigenous people as wildlife refuges where nature is safe from human threat, has long dis rupted Indigenous food s overeignty. Canada’s first national park, Banff, “was predicated on the displacement of d iverse Indigenous communities,” says Courtney Mason, author of Spirits of the Rockies: Reasserting an Indigenous Presence in Banff National Park. “This was facilitated by park management and supported by the police, missionaries, and tourism entre preneurs. In part, they were attempting to curb Indigenous subsistence practi ces of hunting, fishing and gathering, in order to protect emerging sport and fi shing tourism economies inside the park.” Further development of Canadian parks was largely modelled after Banff, incurring similar displace ment and cultural damage. It remains illegal for I ndigenous people about half of the country’s national parks. Even where it is possible to hunt, with a few exceptions, wild meat cannot be sold in restaurants, butcher shops, or grocery stores in Canada. This means hunters cannot earn a living from their efforts, and many Indigenous foods cannot be shared in retail or commer cial settings beyond r eserves or special, limited-licence events. Many coastal communities face a similar challenge as, even while living off of seal meat, the European Union’s ban on seal imports has made it impossible for families to earn revenue from the sale of skins. There are also small signs of hope. About twenty-five years ago in north western Ontario, Rainy River First Nations (an amalgamation of seven his torical Saulteaux bands), began a success ful project to rehabilitate their sturgeon stocks: the population of the fish, which can grow up to 400 pounds, had dwin dled due to overharvesting and p ollution. In the last two years, Rainy River First Nations d onated nearly thirty juvenile sturgeon to Ochiichagwe’Babigo’Ining Ojibway N ation, which has partnered with the Ontario Ministry of Natural 26 In Canada, most parks, lakes, and f orests are Crown land, governed by federal and provincial ministries (like the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry in Ontario), which are supposed to oversee management for both private and public use. In LeBlanc’s view, private companies in the business of resource extraction have more say over the use of forests than do people who have had a relationship with the land for centuries and continue to live on, near, upstream of, downwind of, or otherwise adjacent to them. “From contact until now,” he says, “land management in Ontario has been about the extraction of resources.” LeBlanc says there is a legal basis for implementing more food-oriented poli cies. This means, for instance, reforming training for forest-management author ities to include Indigenous world views and rights. In forested areas like the Fraser R iver canyon there is an alterna tive, which he and many others advocate for: community-based forestry, in which land is managed by and for the people who live on it. “Community forestry is corey mintz too dense due to post-logging replant ing and government fire-suppression techniques. Moose and deer have begun returning to the area. M ore than 4,000 kilometres east of Xaxli’p territory, Charlotte Wolfrey spends her weekends fishing and hunting out side of Rigolet, on the coast of Labra dor. Over a spring weekend, the retired environmental researcher and current AngajukKâk (mayor) of Rigolet caught eight Arctic char, each one weighing about five pounds, and spent a few hours smoking the fish in a homemade appar atus constructed with wood and chicken wire. She also picks fruit — bakeapples, crowberries, partridgeberries—eating it fresh for a couple weeks before freezing the remainder for the winter. In the fall, she hunts geese and duck, then beaver, lynx, and fox as it gets colder. She esti mates that as much as 70 percent of her diet comes from fishing, hunting, and foraging wild foods; the most import ant source of all is seal. “Inuit would not have survived without seal,” Wolfrey says. During the 1960s, when Wolfrey was a child, seal was essen tial for food and clothing: boots, mitts, and pants were all made from its hide and fur. The blubber was rendered to make candles, the skin used to make durable lines for dog teams and boats or cleaned and sold for income. Sled dogs — still a major source of transpor tation — lived on seal meat too. “When I grew up, we went around on dog teams. We didn’t have anything like a Ski-Doo. It kept our dogs alive.” At the beginning of the Second World War, the Royal Canadian Air Force identi fied nearby Goose Bay as a strategic loca tion for a base. Beginning with a massive construction phase and continuing after the war, the base meant that Goose Bay absorbed people from the surrounding areas, including Rigolet, f urther disrupting traditional ways of life. “A lot of people moved there for work, to get into the white economy,” Wolfrey says, “instead of fish ing and hunting and trapping.” People in Rigolet don’t depend on seal as much as they used to, but it is still 28 Shawana is Odawa and (like LeBlanc) grew up in Wiikwemkoong Unceded ritory on Manitoulin Island. There no seals around Lake Huron. “I ate seal until a year and a half ago,” he says. When he was ten, Shawana started to learn hunting, butchery, and fishing from his uncles. He foraged in the ness with friends, pulling the bark on cedar and eating the membrane chewing on a liquorice-tasting purple root they called “Indian candy” several foods given that name, which also often refers to candied salmon). At sixteen, Shawana started cooking at an off-reserve restaurant on lin—burgers and fries for up to 200 d a day during the tourist s eason moved to Toronto and worked at a number of restaurants. In 2016, as the executive chef of board-game p arlour Lattes, he composed a one-night Indigen ous menu of elk, fry bread, and quin corn (meaty and sweeter than the kind you see in grocery stores), Shawana dehydrated and ground into meal for grits, serving it with cheese and seared scallops. It sold out in advance. “That’s when I knew on to something—that I can connect culture with my training.” The enthusiastic reception led him to partner with his employer, Ben C to open Kū-Kŭm. From the beginning, Shawana didn’t want to cook exclusively his own dishes —he wanted to introduce diners to a spectrum of Indigenous foods: he mixes and m atches elements from his culture (Odawa), his wife’s and other Indigenous communities’ and combines it all with French techniques. He’s less concerned reproducing any one traditional or preparation so much as presenting ingredients to the restaurant’s serving as an ambassador, and learning more himself as he goes. “I’m restaurant as a platform to s howcase Indigenous cuisine in C anada Shawana says. “I wanted seal on the menu as a way to pay respects to the people up north. I wanted to get but... I couldn’t.” A few months after the restaurant opened, Shawana learned that a petition corey authormintz name Spring Unplugged Spring entered tops of beeches skies smattered afternoon bird-cry Weeks of small standing in for downpour, all that would come later forward, discarding of early blossom, for what it was, before the five those few weeks, a curtain rising One day to another, had not hidden everywhere you of leaflets, pink on plum trees, purple along the going to seed. to the same thing, eventually, the wages of “I know individuals who do live a trad itional lifestyle, in remote commun ities. They’re not waving a flag around or flying down to Toronto for meetings or answering phone calls from reporters or academics. They’re busy completely entrenched in a traditional lifestyle. And they’re some of the happiest, most food-secure people out there.” On a policy level, says LeBlanc, deci sions about the use of land still e xclude Indigenous world views. “There’s a credits Copyright of Walrus is the property multiple sites or posted to a listserv However, users may print, download, land of plenty 21 food are trying to restore food practices by corey mintz david jackson The Walrus april 2019 pulls a quad, an all-terrain vehicle, off the trailer. Slinging a bolt-action rifle over his shoulder, he pushes farther into the bush. The quad bounces up and down as it tra verses hills and valleys, charging over ice and through slush and mashing down vegetation. All the while, Bell swivels his head left and right, scanning the horizon for any sign of movement. But nothing moves. The birds have all flown south for the winter. There is little breeze, and the remaining trees have no leaves to sway. The landscape is silent, motionless, and to Bell, a vast, empty fridge. B ell is one of many Indigenous people who are privately and pub licly engaged with the restora tion of their food cultures, returning to a more traditional diet through activ ities like sustenance hunting— practices long under threat of eradication but not gone forever. Indigenous food sovereignty was deci mated by design: the separation of people from their historic food systems and land is not a side effect of colonialism but a function of it. Canada’s formation is a history of legislating First Nations, Inuit, and Métis out of existence, includ ing by erasing Indigenous food cultures: the Gradual Civilization Act, the banning of potlatch ceremonies, the signing of treaties that exchanged life-sustaining hunting grounds for farmland, livestock, and pitiful amounts of cash. All of it was designed with the purpose of elimina tion through assimilation. From the beginning, the benefits of the iddle exchange between the diets of early set tlers and Indigenous peoples were largely one-sided. Take pemmican, for instance: over the fur trade in 1821, its market con a traditional, Indigenous, protein-rich trol enabled the company to drive the mixture of powdered meat, grease, and price of pemmican down — which, in occasionally dried berries — and a good turn, forced an increase in production representation of the inequitable food to make up for the lost revenue. “This bargain Indigenous people were forced was a contributing factor in [the] elimin to strike when settlers a rrived on this ation of the plains bison,” writes Lenore continent. Early nineteenth-century fur Newman in her book Speaking in Cod traders, unable to fill their boats with Tongues: A Canadian Culinary J ourney. enough corn and wild rice to survive their “Collapse of the bison herds placed the long t ravels, depended on e xchanging surviving people of the plains in a situa with Cree, Assiniboine, and Métis for the tion of d ependence on the government shelf-stable provision. When the Hudson’s for famine relief....The grim aftermath of Bay Company established a monopoly the pemmican trade on the plains saw the land of plenty 23 or clothing—an exchange that would be in history, Canada’s previous ruinous over time. government engaged Mark Bell is on While Indigenous food systems were in a concentrated the lookout for being dismantled, elsewhere in the world effort to eradicate moose. above Chris food itself began to change. From the Indigenous peoples Ruth prepares early eighteenth to the mid-twentieth and their cultures, a deer carcass century, industrial production, preser including by squelch at a community vation science, manufacturing, mar ing language, self- hitching post. keting, and the hospitality industries government, land transformed the way people ate. This use, and hunting rights. Indigenous is the period that gave us the refriger food practices were excluded as most ator and the gas stove, food-safety regu of the world’s food practices modern lations, canning, and frozen dinners. ized and commercialized (not always At this same transformative moment for the b etter), and most Indigenous The Walrus april 2019 on processed director of the Social Planning C ouncil of not have a chance to learn hunting as Sudbury. “Nutrition North was e xplicitly teenagers, as he did. Others don’t have i nsecurity— a market-based approach. What they the means. Bell’s truck, which he needs safe, did, however, was further entrench an to make it over the unpaved roads, cost exploitative market relationship that cor more than his house, and it can be $150 porations have in Northern communities. in gas just to get up to the hunting a rea. among It reinforced the existing food system as He spent at least $2,700 on the moose if it were the only food system.” hunt last season. LeBlanc says non-Indigenous Can Not being able to hunt is just one adians are looking at the problem of of the ways that being colonized sep food insecurity through the wrong arated I ndigenous people from their lens. “How do we make food cheaper food cultures. In the fall of 2016, at the Inuit, and at the store? Where do you get food in Natoaganeg Community Food Centre of dia an urban c ontext?” he asks, rhetorically. in Eel Ground First Nation—a Mi’kmaq issues as “That’s very much a Western economic First Nation community of about 1,000, approach.” Even the presumption that a few kilometres down the road from there is a standard diet for all Canadians Miramichi, New Brunswick — the organ is fundamentally colonialist, says Teri izers of a drop-in meal and food-basket to be Morrow, a dietitian at Six Nations of the program tried to incorporate moose iver in southwestern O ntario. after community hunters offered to con The federal “Canadians ate the way we ate when tribute the meat. Administrators were the price they got here,” says M orrow. “Hunters surprised at how few were fans, even up north don’t need lettuce. There’s roots elders. “People would say, “It’s too gamy,” Can and tubers, there’s lichen—a ton of things.” says program coordinator Erica Ward. For example, the Oneida Nation of “We’re located near town, and growing up, access the Thames grows flint corn. The corn you went to the grocery store. You didn’t is dried and cooked with lye and hard go to the forest and take down a moose.” North, in wood ash, which breaks down the outer The kitchen experimented with an for shell and increases the calcium and iron apple-juice braise, to sweeten the meat. content in the cornmeal. The cornbread People liked it. The centre started using lower made from this often also contains beans, more moose and gradually removed more nuts, seeds, and berries. “So the nutri low-quality protein, like hot dogs, from commun tional content, compared to a bread from its food-distribution system. Soon, it the grocery store made with wheat, it’s began using additional varieties of game higher,” Morrow says. “Because now and wild seafood — partridge, eel, shad, Food Secure you’ve got protein, vitamin A, vitamin C, bass — until the ingredients became nsecurity calcium, fibre—all these aspects that are entrenched. “We’ve become this test there within the corn itself. And that means kitchen for traditional food,” says Ward. e xactly that our people don’t have to necessarily “Now I have friends the same age [as consume milk or dairy products.” I am] who are hunting more and more.” In addition to helping to provide ac Even where Indigenous communities of Fort cess to a Western diet, LeBlanc says, the have managed to retain some of their Ontario Canadian government should consid food practices, legal obstructions and report, er getting out of the way of Indigenous environmental threats make them diffi people’s ability to sustain their food prac cult to sustain. In theory, the Canadian need tices. The issue isn’t figuring out how to government is constitutionally required lower the cost of a box of Corn Flakes — to consult with Indigenous communities it’s thinking that Corn Flakes ever repre when contemplating decisions that may sented a good solution in the first place. adversely impact treaty rights. In actual ity, this is a contentious and frequently B ell had a father, grandfather, litigated issue. and uncles who taught him to In many parts of Canada, Indigenous hunt, and he’s one of very few in people’s ability to hunt, fish, forage, and Island his community who are able to source farm is compromised by the degradation food in this way. Some of his friends did of land and water through i ndustrial-scale land of plenty 25 esources and Forestry and Ontario R to elders.) Likewise for beaver, which he as national Power Generation to reintroduce the does not like eating (though he’ll use it fish into the Winnipeg River. There are as bait for trapping pine martens), and other examples, but they are scattered; lynx, which his wife doesn’t want him larger-scale change will require a more cooking in the house. Kantola is mostly basic reexamination of how land is man vegetarian; she likes wild meat but isn’t aged across Canada. thrilled at how much time her husband One of the problems, says LeBlanc, is spends up here while she is alone with that Canada knows many people depend their two-year-old. on the land for their food, yet govern The sweet spot for hunting moose is ments manage our natural resources the mating season, which begins at first as if they didn’t exist: “The [Ministry of frost, September 10 last fall. (Hunters Natural Resources] doesn’t have the cap don’t go after moose in summer because acity to manage the forest properly, and the meat spoils in the heat, and by winter I don’t believe the Crown has the will to the females are pregnant.) With the moose bulls geared for procreation, Bell mim ics the female’s call (he can do this with a horn or with his own mouth), listen Indigenous food ing for a response. Nothing but silence hunting operating sovereignty was greets him. “I always start to feel pres sure about this time,” he says. “I’m going decimated by into my trapping season now. I should already be setting traps.” Still, it’s been design — it was a beautiful, tranquil day. “When I come to hunt in not a side effect out here, I’m pretty thankful for what I’m able to do and where I’m able to be. It’s of colonialism but beautiful land.” Back in Nakina that night, he eats a function of it. a bowl of moose chili with macaroni, watches a little hockey, and goes to bed on the sofa so he won’t wake Kantola make that happen. B ecause the i nterest is and Taiga when he gets up early again in getting money from s tumpage.” Genu the next morning. The chest freezer ine transformation, L eBlanc b elieves, will downstairs still has a few meals’ worth only come from challenging the s eemingly of moose left, in addition to other coun unassailable prioritization of resource try foods — wild blueberries, walleye, extraction. “There’s an opportunity to speckled trout. But they are nearing the manage food sources. This would mean end of their supply. a shift in the paradigm from extraction I of timber and minerals to the inclusion of n the interior of BC, nestled in the food sources.” Fraser Canyon region, sits X axli’p territory — green hills covered in fir I t has been twelve hours out in the and pine trees, sitting in the shadow bush, and the sun is setting; Mark of snow-capped mountains and one of Bell has eaten a ham-and-cheese eleven communities that make up the sandwich and used a tank of gas, and St’át’imc First Nation. Over the course of nothing has crossed his field of vision decades, the clear-cutting taking place in except a rabbit and a fox. A hunter is the surrounding areas has destabilized never guaranteed anything. Last year, the ecosystem, substantially disrupting Bell spent seven days out here without traditional food supplies. In the 1970s, even seeing a moose. hunters started spotting moose less If he takes one now, that will be it for and less frequently. Soon, the people the year—he doesn’t need any more. (Bell found other forest foods essential to will shoot any additional moose he sees their lives — deer, wild sunflowers, cow on the road, though, and give the meat parsnip — disappearing as well. The Walrus april 2019 a movement that started in Nepal in the province had given above Bell spent seventies,” says Susan Mulkey, communi a n umber of com at least $2,700 on cations manager for the BC Community panies the right the recent moose- Forest Association, “where the govern to harvest timber hunting season. By February, he ment recognized that degraded land, the on Xaxli’p land.) had to give up on best stewards of that, the best people to Restoring the land finding one. bring it back to productivity, are the com and creating a sus munities themselves.” The idea, LeBlanc tainable economy says, isn’t to reject industry outright but are goals that are built into XCFC’s cor to take an approach that incorporates porate mission. The plan is to eventually economic and employment interests harvest timber in sustainable quantities without excluding the use of land as and using sustainable methods. a food source. “Our long-term goal is that our com In the late 1990s, BC began a pilot munity forest will be self-sufficient,” p roject for community-based f orest says Nora Billy, a member of the XCFC management; it now includes over sixty board of directors. The XCFC plans to community forests that produce just balance the conservation mandate with under 3 percent of the provincial timber value-added timber harvesting, manu harvest. In 2011, following decades of facturing products for sale in addition to protracted conflict with the government selling raw logs. The first step has been and logging companies, the Xaxli’p ecocultural restoration. This includes reached an interim compromise: the promoting moose habitat by removing Xaxli’p Community Forest Corporation planted pine trees (to encourage the they had e stablished a few years e arlier growth of willow and other wetland was given a twenty-five-year tenure over shrubs), leaving old fallen trees intact the trees in most, but not all, of their for animal habitat, purifying water, and territory. (Prior to that a greement, the thinning forest areas that have grown land of plenty 27 idely used. Some people still operate w will destabilize geologic formations and dog sleds, though mostly for recreation allow unsafe levels of methylmercury or tourism rather than basic transpor (which is created when inorganic mer tation. And they still use seal to feed cury is released and dissolves into fresh their animals. Last fall, Wolfrey and her water or seawater), to leach into the local husband caught a ranger (or harbour) food supply. Two hundred researchers seal and shared the meat with other fam and scholars have signed a letter to Prime ilies in the community. “We even eat Minister Justin Trudeau to protest the the flippers. They’re a delicacy. You boil dam, writing that Muskrat Falls “poses them up and take the skin off and eat the tremendous risks to Indigenous peoples inside parts, and it’s a real rich kind of and sovereignty, to Canada’s commit fat. Maybe some potatoes with it some ment to reconciliation, to fish, wildlife times, but mostly on its own.” and the broader integrity of the Churchill In a large city, food choices are hori River ecology.” zontal, like a buffet, each option avail “If the seals are contaminated by able independently of the others. In methylm ercury, then people will be many I ndigenous food systems, the afraid to eat them,” says Wolfrey. “Once menu is much more vertical, like a Jenga people stop eating seal, they won’t be tower, in which many pieces support teaching their children to eat seal. Their the entire structure; removing one ele grandchildren won’t grow up eating seal. ment can topple everything. Within this That’s what I’m most afraid of. Seal is food system, an animal like seal is not part of what makes us who we are.” just a source of protein but also of fuel, W clothing, tools, and commerce —all of it olfrey told me that seal devastated in 2009, when the European is an acquired taste, but Union, prompted by environmental activ most Canadians never have ists, banned the import of seal products. a chance to develop an appreciation for One of the major organizations that it. In Toronto, where Indigenous and protested sealing was Greenpeace; since Indigenous-themed restaurants have the ban was instituted, it has acknow garnered recent interest and can serve as ledged and apologized for its role in urban emissaries for Indigenous c ooking, campaigning against sealing and in par chef Joseph Shawana is determined to ticular its failure to distinguish between do something about that. “I tried veg oil, the commercial industry and Indigen canola, good olive oil, cheap olive oil,” ous traditional practices. In the wake of says Shawana as he pinches coarse salt that acknowledgement, the EU granted in his fingers, his wrist softening as he exemptions from the ban to Inuit com lets the salt rain down over a dark, n early munities in Nunavut and to Inuvialuit in black, hunk of meat. “Then I started the Northwest Territories. But, for many, using ghee. And I was like, ‘This actually this was too late to make a difference: after helps the seal flavour a lot more.’” the EU ban, the price of seal pelts dropped In front of the stove at his restaurant — from $105 to $15. And because it was often Kū-Kŭm Kitchen, in an affluent mid Inuit and First Nations who were engaged town Toronto neighbourhood—Shawana in the commercial seal hunt—there isn’t has a tray of seal loin divided into four- a neat divide between “traditional” and ounce portions. Cranking the gas flame, “commercial” use — when the market Shawana ladles a generous glug of ghee evaporated, so did the ability of Rigolet into a small pan and gently lays the meat and other Inuit and First Nations com down. After he has seared a crust on each munities to earn revenue through this side, he sets the meat on a cutting board core part of their culture. to rest, then slices it into strips, plating In addition to the economic devasta it with wedges of roasted beet, cari tion caused by the EU ban, Rigolet’s seals bou moss, and a drizzle of sweetgrass- are under environmental threat from infused oil. The meat has the character of the nearby dam construction at Muskrat a slightly chewy cut of beef crossed with Falls. Opponents of the dam worry that it the iron-rich minerality of liver. The Walrus april 2019 was circulating to demand he take seal wife and daughter to Thunder Bay. Ter off the menu. This was followed by “Loser” by Beck comes on the radio. are a counterpetition and ignited a series He turns the stereo up louder than it’s never of media stories about Kū-Kŭm, shifting been all day, then cranks it even more the focus from alleged animal cruelty to as Meek Mill’s “Lord Knows” starts a discussion about the importance of seal playing, the smash of bass rattling the in many communities and the history of seat belts. Bell is frust rated. But he wilder misunderstanding by environmental and has faith. “Next week, I’m going start back animal-rights activists. Shawana’s reser looking for beavers. My moose gun will and vation book filled up, and soon the thirty- be with me all the time — eventually, I’m seat restaurant was packed—people were gonna see one.” (one of coming to eat not just seal but pemmican, Joseph LeBlanc has long believed venison, and pine-needle sorbet. that there are many more Indigenous Shawana now has his sights set on people wanting to participate in trad a legal obstacle to the preservation of itional food activities like hunting than Manitou Indigenous cuisines: the limits on selling actually do so. To find out what was iners hunted game meat. The elk, bison, and preventing them, he conducted a com — then boar that have appeared on his restau munity food assessment in Sudbury that rant’s menu have been farmed. identified cost and knowledge as bar “I’ve been trying to get enough balls to riers to entry. In 2016, the community Snakes & serve wild game in here,” says Shawana, launched the Family Hunt Camp; in the “and to see what the repercussions would fall, families are paired with elders and Algon be. If they close us down, they close us experienced hunters, who share their down.” (He is now in talks with the prov knowledge and lead people out on their which incial government to secure permission first hunts. Participants learn not just to sell wild game.) Serving actual game how to safely operate a gun but about Parmesan would allow Shawana to present a more spirituality, philosophy, the r elationship authentic version of the cultures he is between animals and humans, and why I was really representing and create a vital revenue you don’t shoot something that’s r unning my stream for Indigenous hunters — a way away or doesn’t know you’re there (the for urban centres to not just be ambas animal is not offering its body, plus sadors but contribute financially to the chances of a clean kill diminish with astanie, restoration of food systems. a moving target). New hunters can also help supply a food bank in downtown O n the second morning of Mark Sudbury, where people give tobacco in Bell’s moose hunt, he gets up at exchange for elk, deer, or moose meat. six, eats a bowl of instant oat LeBlanc says that, over the years, meal, and loads his gear. He waits until he’s been told by many non-Indigenous (Cree), he arrives at the entrance to the bush road people that it is simply too late to save to offer tobacco (itself another example what has been lost. For him, this is both c ooking of a First Nations agricultural product untrue and a device used to perpetu with that is now bound up with many regu ate damage to the land and Indigenous dish lations) this time emptying out a whole peoples. “It’s a tidy, nice bow to put on cigarette instead of just a pinch. Despite top of 100 years of colonialism to say, patrons, an outward ambivalence, he is starting ‘Our job’s pretty well done—all you need to fidget, compulsively scanning radio to do is let go of your romantic ideals using the stations and fiddling with a rifle maga and we can get on with civilizing you.’” zine with one hand while steering with But LeBlanc, Wolfrey, Shawana, mem as a whole,” the other, his thumb caressing one of the bers of the Xaxli’p Community Forest copper-tipped cartridges. Corporation, Morrow, Bell, and many After another twelve hours of search others are not letting go. “The funda muskox ing, Bell turns south toward home, empty mental element of resurgence, resistance, handed. Tomorrow is Monday, and he whatever you want to call it, that’s hap has to go to his job; he can’t hunt next pening in Indigenous youth in particular, weekend because he needs to take his is challenging that directly,” says LeBlanc. Lorem land ipsumof plenty doLor sit amet 29 2 By William Logan a stillness, the foolish no longer tossed, with unexceptional cloud, ruling the roost. rain, cold mists TD Bank Group — the season straggled PRESENTS the Chinese beauty exposing itself a day labourer trying to finish o’clock whistle. How far gone how skeletal the beginnings, on a vast set change. Inclusion the metamorphosis itself, as such things usually do, How design, technology, education, and more turned the strewn greeniness can remove barriers for puffballs of blossom people with disabilities the burst of Tyrrhenian irises, all that seediness It would come Vancouver Tuesday, May 7 | 7 p.m. sin, eventually. SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema, 149 West Hastings Street, Vancouver t ransition that needs to happen in Can ada at some point. Ultimately, all of our legislators and d ecision makers For tickets and are products of our school system. And information, visit they’ve all been conditioned to think of thewalrus.ca/events us in a particular light....We haven’t even gotten to the point where we can have a truthful conversation about land.” E Corey Mintz has written for the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and the New York Times. of Walrus and its content may not be copied or emailed to without the copyright holder's express written permission. or email articles for individual use.

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