Tonight we did something a little different and stayed closer to home. With the recent gruesome discovery in BC I wanted to highlight this part of Canada’s past with my family and try to honour those whose voices were quieted for so long.
I reached out to an Indigenous friend for meal suggestions and learned a lot from her. As we didn’t have deer, moose, or grouse at home we opted to go fishing for salmon at our local grocery store. Though we weren’t able to smoke or preserve the salmon as would have been traditionally done, we ate it fresh, cooked with thyme and rosemary from our garden, adding dried sumac berries for added flavour.
We paired this with a spring mix salad and simple dressing. We didn’t have any greens in our garden so instead chose something that went along with the idea of living off the land as they did.
For dessert we had Saskatoonberries fresh off the tree. They aren’t quite ready here so we went down south to find some a little more ripe. These berries can be found all over here, evidence of what those local would have eaten.
Did you know that the Okanagan people are the syilx and their language is nsyilxcaen, which sadly only has 50 fluent speakers remaining. The sequoia tree was named in honour of Chief Sequoyah, having helped his people create their alphabet. One theory of hockey is that it was created by the Mohawks.
More that half of the 634 registered First Nations communities are in BC and Ontario and each nation has its own culture, customs, beliefs, and traditions based on their experiences. They believe all things are connected and that the circle is a sacred shape.
In 2011 13% of on-reserve and 6% of off-reserve First Nation’s people of British Columbia lived in crowded homes (where more than one person per room) compared to 5% of the non-Aboriginal.
What I learned from my friend is that Bannock is not a traditional food but came around after reserves were created by the government. They were not allowed to leave the reserves without a pass, regardless of where their food came from, and so they relied on rations from the government of flour, lard, and sugar. This in turn caused an increase of health issues such as diabetes. She never got to learn her family’s language as her mother and all her siblings went to residential school where they would lose any language they would have learned.
Her mom would be the same generation as my mom and I cannot imagine the kind of things they would have endured in these schools from what we are learning. A whole generation of brokenness trying to deal with trauma while really keeping quiet for so many years.
While we cannot rewrite the past, let us learn from it and with compassion reach out to those who were broken by it and walk alongside them in healing.