The Wolastoqey culture in cooking

Without necessarily claiming that I have assimilated this entire culture, there is a part of me that wants to be a guardian of this culture, of the language, of the history, of all the cultural aspects related to food. Some people dance to preserve their culture. I cook to preserve my culture. My Indigenous roots have had a huge influence on my career and therefore on my personal life as well. First of all, it’s been personal because I wanted to reconnect with this culture, which I should perhaps have known, but which was lost somewhere far back in the generations. Personally, I really wanted to keep it alive, to learn as much as possible about this foreign culture that is nevertheless a part of me. Then, professionally, it led me into a virtuous circle of collaboration, opportunity, and visibility. But the primary goal was really, ultimately, to take this culture, keep it alive, and then I would say assimilate it and invite it into my kitchen.

So how does culture manifest itself in my cooking? Well, I like to say that I have four pillars. It’s funny, I used to give lectures on this when I had time, when I didn’t have a restaurant to run. So there are traditional or ancestral ingredients, traditional or ancestral techniques, the use of the land around us, and then the philosophy surrounding Indigenous or Wolastoqey culture. When we talk about philosophy, we’re talking about respect for Mother Earth, we’re talking today about, let’s say, using as many organic, locally sourced ingredients as possible. So we try to ensure that the ingredients have traveled as little as possible. After that, using the land also means reconnecting with the people who live there. Even though we are in a territory that is now inhabited by many different cultures, the fact remains that Wolastokuk is our ancestral territory. And I want to work with this territory, which was also used by my ancestors in the past. Then there are the ingredients, the ancestral ingredients, such as corn, everything that grows in the boreal forest, forest flora, non-timber forest products, spices, berries, squash, beans. I already mentioned corn.

Working with herbs that grow locally, but also meat and fish. Because in the restaurant business, the challenge of using traditional or ancestral meats, such as beaver, moose, and so on, is that it’s not legal to sell them, it’s not legal to market them. So we use farmed game, such as duck, deer, elk, bison, maybe rabbit, quail, and farmed partridge. We work with these products, but otherwise, when there are events where I can cook beaver, Indigenous events, or moose, we definitely do it. Then, in terms of ancestral and traditional techniques, well there’s cooking over a fire, smoking and drying, which I use a lot in my cooking. You can’t really imagine the aromatic potential of a dried fruit that you rehydrate in a sauce, which really brings out its flavor, a flavor that has already been concentrated by the drying process. So it’s all these aspects that ultimately build a bridge between my current cuisine and my Indigenous roots.

Of course, when it comes to learning techniques, let’s say, traditional cooking techniques, the language has helped me a lot. I have realized to a certain extent that if there’s a word in the Wolastoqey language that has no roots in French or English, and that word exists, then it is very likely that that the ingredient was used. I’m thinking in particular of polam, which means salmon. It doesn’t sound like saumon or salmon. I’m thinking of, let’s say, Cikon, which means apple. It doesn’t sound like apple; it doesn’t sound like pomme. Then there are other ingredients like pork. Pork in Wolastoqey is Piks. Clearly, it has an English root, so we understand that pork wasn’t available before the arrival of, for example, English or French speakers, in short, colonization. I found it really fascinating to discover ingredients through language. So language has really allowed me to understand and learn about food traditions, at least the food heritage of the Wolastoqiyik.