Happy birthday, Canada, my favourite country in the whole world!
You're getting older, you old girl, but I'm still looking for signs that you're getting wiser on this, your 144th birthday.
For instance, something most Canadians are barely wise to yet - with the exception of one obvious group - are the rich cultures of the aboriginal peoples who lived in this exquisitely varied, lovable, awkward land long before The West was won, the rivers were portaged, the trap lines and rail lines were laid, and Sir John A. and his henchmen sat down in Charlottetown in 1864 to set the wheels in motion for confederation three years later.
Put up your hand if, like me, you still cling to some tattered memory-remnant of Grade 5 social studies where we learned that plains "Indians," as we called them then, pretty much lived on buffalo meat and pemmican, made by drying some buffalo meat mixed with wild berries, and coastal "Indians" lived on salmon and more wild berries. Your hand up? Then this column's for you.
It was inspired by Dawn Morrison, a member of the Secwepemc (Shuswap) First Nation and the BC Food Systems Networking Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty. She spoke at a recent conference on B.C.'s food security, or lack thereof, one more thing we don't seem to be too wise to these days.
Dawn described how resilient First Nations people have always been; her words still ring in my ears: "We weren't hungry in the Great Depression because we knew how to hunt, fish and gather; work hard; have great gardens; and look after each other."
Sounds like a great thing to celebrate to me!
So without further ado, here's a toast - clink! - and a tip of the red and white hat to aboriginal food. Even though we're celebrating our whole nation, there's so much ground to cover, I've kept it to traditional aboriginal food in our little province only because of limited space, not a shortfall of ideas. Just to keep things interesting, I've also flipped Pique 's traditional Canada Day quiz on its head. I provide the answers; can you guess the right questions?
1. 14
A. How many First Nations are found in B.C.?
B. How many wild fruits and berries were traditionally used on B.C.'s central coast?
C. What's the total number of wild food sources used by some coastal aboriginal peoples?
2. Indian cheese
A. What's made out of beaver milk left out in the sun for five days to ferment, then traditionally served with herring roe on hemlock branches?
B. What's paneer?
C. What's made from dog salmon eggs, hung in a smoke house for two days, then put into cedar boxes and served four days later?
3. Devil burgers
A. What can you make out of devil's club roots?
B. What can you make out of octopus?
C. What did the Dakelh people call the first hamburgers they saw served near Barkerville during the gold rush?
4. Delicious
A. How would you describe the Squamish salmon chowder served at the café at the Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Centre?
B. What would you call their Lil'wat venison chili?
C. What do you say after you taste their maple sugar pie?
ANSWERS
1. B.C. alone has 27 different First Nations. In Canada, by the 2006 census, there were approximately 1.2 million aboriginal peoples living here, with more than 600 different First Nations governments or bands, each with its own culture. While it's pretty tricky quantifying all the various foods B.C.'s aboriginal people use throughout the province, a report compiled in a joint study by the Bella Bella Community School and the Open Learning Agency on central coast foods used by the Heiltsuk people alone lists 67 different types of traditional foods, all of them found just "out there" in the forests, fields and waterways. No wonder First Nations didn't go hungry during the Depression, and this is a list for only one local area! It includes 28 different kinds of fish and shellfish, included the legendary salmon as well as lesser known seafood such as china slippers and sea prunes (kinds of chitons) and sea mammals like seals and sea lions as well as seven kinds of wild edible plants, like cow parsnip and nettles. Fourteen (B.) is the number of wild fruits and berries traditionally used by the Heiltsuk: blueberries, huckleberries, blackberries, salmonberries, gooseberries, high-bush cranberries, salal berries, saskatoons, strawberries, thimbleberries, elderberries, soapberries (also called soopolallie and buffaloberries) and crab apples.
2. Yes, paneer is a fresh curd cheese used in South Asian cuisine that originated in eastern India. You might have enjoyed it in mattar paneer, a tomato-based vegetarian dish, or saag paneer, a cooked spinach dish made with paneer and seasoned with curry. But the correct answer here is C., a fish-egg paste traditionally made by the Heiltsuk people, whose lands are around Bella Bella on B.C.'s central coast.
3. Who knows? Since hamburgers are pretty much centuries old and the first mention of one on a North American menu occurred in 1826 - in Delmonico's in New York city - it's possible someone served one up somewhere, somehow during the Cariboo gold rush. What the indigenous residents thought of that would be anybody's guess, but "devil burgers" has a nice ring to it. Devil's club, that distinctive shrub with huge maple-like leaves and big spines on the stems that you can find in forests all over the coast, including those around Whistler, is an important medicinal plant to aboriginal peoples. But to the best of my knowledge they don't make burgers out of the root. So the answer is B., burgers you can make from octopus. This from a description by Lily and Diane Brown of Skidegate in Indian Food: A Cookbook of Native Foods from British Columbia put out by Health and Welfare Canada in 1974. Here, they call octopus "devil fish" and a recipe is given for devil burgers: Clean and skin an octopus. Cut off the suckers. Grind the meat and add an egg and rolled oats to extend it. Press into patties and fry.
4. No wrong in saying A. and B. here. For C. you'd have to say, unbelievably good. Visit the Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Centre Café at 4584 Blackcomb Way to find out for yourself. Can't think of a better place to stop for a bite on Canada Day.
Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning freelance writer who gave up on life in the U.S.A. after 10 years for her home and native land.
