what we grew up on

a lot of us grew up on processed food. things in boxes, cans and bags. things that were cheap, filling and lasted a long time. nobody in our families was doing anything wrong. they were feeding their kids with what they had, and a lot of the time what they had was not much.

and then there is bannock. so many of us think of bannock as our traditional food. it is at every gathering, every feast, every kitchen table. we love it. but look at what is in it. flour, lard, salt. none of that came from our lands. those ingredients came with the fur trade and then with rations, when our people were pushed onto reserves and cut off from the foods that had always fed us.

bannock was a survival meal. our grandmothers took what they were handed and made something that kept their families alive. that is brilliant, and it deserves respect. but it is not what sustained us for thousands of years. for us as nehiyaw people, that was the buffalo.

this is not about never eating bannock again. it is about knowing the story of what is on our plate. a lot of what came to us through colonial food systems came out of survival, and survival is not where we want to keep living from.

what sustained us

before any of that, our peoples fed themselves. on the plains it was the buffalo, and we used every piece. the meat fed us. the hide became our homes and our clothing. the bones became tools. the buffalo was in our ceremony.

that is exactly why the buffalo was used against us. take away the buffalo and you take away the food, the home, the tools and the ceremony all at once. within a few decades the herds were nearly wiped out, and hunger was used to make our people submit.

mistahimaskwa, big bear, saw it coming. dakota is his descendant, so this is family history for us.

when treaty 6 came to the plains in 1876, the leaders who signed were already worried about starvation, and they made sure a promise of help in times of famine was written into it. big bear would not sign. he said the treaty would be a rope around our necks. he saw the buffalo disappearing, and he saw what that paper would mean for a people with no buffalo left.

he held out for six years, for as long as the buffalo lasted. he took his people south to montana to hunt the last of the herds. he sat with government officials and told them about the vanishing buffalo and the treaties that were not enough. he tried to bring the cree together so we could speak with one voice.

the government’s answer was hunger. rations were held back from the people who would not sign and would not move. food sat in ration houses and rotted while people went hungry outside. on december 8, 1882, at fort walsh, with his people starving, big bear signed so they could eat.

he kept pushing after that, for reserves side by side so our people could stay together, and the government refused. in 1885 he counselled peace and did not fight, and they put him in stony mountain penitentiary anyway. he came out sick and died in january 1888.

that is how flour and lard ended up on our tables.

a people who can feed themselves are hard to control. that is why our food was targeted, and it is why taking it back matters so much.

the story of the holiday

our peoples were giving thanks long before there was a holiday for it. harvest feasts, ceremonies, giveaways. gratitude was never one day on a calendar. it was how we lived.

in the united states, the story starts in 1621 with pilgrims and “friendly indians.” the wampanoag tell it differently. they were not invited. they heard gunfire, and their leader ousamequin came with ninety men, ready for war. when they saw it was a harvest celebration, they went out, hunted and brought food to share. they fed people who had already taken their corn and settled on a village emptied by disease.

within one generation, ousamequin’s own son metacom was killed defending their homelands. his head was displayed in plymouth for more than twenty years, and his wife and son were sold into slavery. the pequot were massacred in 1637 and then forbidden by treaty from even using their own name. both nations are still here.

in canada, the story usually starts in 1578 with martin frobisher giving thanks in the arctic. he was there to mine. the year before, he had kidnapped three inuit, a man, a woman and her baby, and taken them to england, where they died. inuit kept the memory of those voyages for nearly three hundred years.

canada made thanksgiving an annual holiday in 1879, while our people on the plains were starving. six years later it banned the potlatch. ten years after that it banned our giveaways, the sun dance and the thirst dance.

our people kept feasting anyway, sometimes in secret. that is why we still have them.

so when the long weekend comes, know that the gratitude is ours. it is older than the holiday, and it survived the holiday. if you want these stories told properly, go to the people they belong to. read wamsutta frank james’s suppressed speech from 1970. listen to wampanoag, pequot and inuit voices tell it themselves.

the table we are rebuilding

so what does it look like to eat from a place that is not survival? for us it starts with who is at the table.

dakota’s great grandma was named anne. in residential school she was number 34. they gave her a number. we say her name.

when she was alive, the family gathered for meals all the time. after she passed, everybody stopped. it took time to heal.

now we all live in vancouver, and we gather way more. family meals are something we do on purpose. we make sure we are showing up, eating together and building each other up.

that is food sovereignty too. it is not only about what is on the plate. it is about food doing what it has always done for our people, which is bring us together.

anyone can practise this. you do not need land or a garden to start. you need a table and people. cook for somebody. eat together. bring back the meal your family stopped having.

and then keep going. learn what is in the food you grew up on. bring in more of what actually nourishes you. learn the foods that sustained your people and who still knows how to harvest and prepare them.

now look at the world we are in. our people used every piece of the buffalo. today food gets thrown out every day while people go hungry and line up at the food bank. that is what a food system looks like when it forgets we are related.

we have a word for this. wâhkôhtowin. it is about kinship, about how we are all related, to each other and to everything that feeds us. all my relations. it is not just something we say. it is a responsibility. if we are all related, then nobody around us should be going hungry while food goes in the garbage.

so we take care of each other, collectively. share what you have. take only what you need. bring something to the food bank or the community fridge. feed the people around you.

our people survived, and we honour everybody who got us here. now we get to do more than survive. we get to nourish ourselves and gather again.

we keep feeding each other.