The staple bread helps native chefs move one step closer to food sovereignty.
In British Columbia , Indigenous knowledge is passed over baskets of lovesome bannock . The dinero , also eff as the “ Aboriginal stave of life , ” is a connection to the yesteryear , a raw material among nations that have existed long ago . But it continues to have a place at the tabular array , Indigenous or otherwise , as the kind of comfort food for thought that has no boundaries .
Bannock can be many things . The pillowy dough — a childlike mixture of flour , water supply , broil pulverization , and salt — is either broil , fried , or cook over an open fire . Depending on how you set it , the bread can sit around crumbly and scone - like alongside a selection of jams , serve as a roll on a godforsaken salmon hamburger , or , with a niggling bit of petroleum , take the form of a doughnut .
Inez Cook , founder of Vancouver ’s only Indigenous - have restaurantSalmon n ’ Bannock , remembers making bannock at summer camp — a place where many British Columbians first come across the bread .
Wild mushrooms on bannock|Photo courtesy of Quaaout Lodge and Spa
“ Sometimes I swear my summertime inner circle bannock was cheated , and it was probably Bisquick , ” Cook jokes . “ But I have doting memories of making it on the flak and pose corn sirup on it . ” Though Cook have intercourse it was a native bread , it was not something she ate at home .
Cook was born Nuxalk , but raise white . When she was just a yr old , she was taken off from her mother during theSixties Scoop , a government insurance of cultural assimilation that began in the fifties and last well into the ’ 80s . It involved forcibly polish off Indigenous children from their family and rate them in non - autochthonic homes across Canada .
geezerhood subsequently , while driving past the autochthonous - ownedKekuli Cafein Kelowna , she escort a house that learn “ Do n’t panic … We have bannock ! , ” the restaurant ’s trademark motto . “ It brought me right back , ” she say . Cook ’s reconnection with her culture is a work in onward motion , and she continues to get wind about Indigenous foods every day at Salmon n ’ Bannock .
Deep-fried bannock|David Buzzard/Shutterstock.com
The restaurant ’s signature bannock is served in innumerable ways : in the form of cracker , accompanying Salmon River mousse ; or topped with sauteed mushrooms , melted brie , sage - blueberries , and bison gravy . “ All Indigenous people in the world have made some sort of bread , precontact , ” she explains . “ I wanted it in our name because it ’s a verbatim message to Indigenous mass that this is your post . ”
What is the history of bannock?
The story go that Scotch fur dealer prognosticate Selkirk introduced a reading of bannock , made of oatmeal , to the autochthonous people of North America during the 18th and 19th century . These communities adapted the formula , replacing oat with corn and nut meal , as well as flour made from ground plant bulbs .
But in late days , researchers revealed that autochthonal people had their own pre - compound versions of bannock . “ Obviously carbohydrate - rich foods like wheat were nonexistent here . Pre - contact , it was n’t something that we really cultivated , ” saysValerie Segrest , a fellow member of the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe and native nutrition educator who specialise in Northwest Coastal foods .
“ But there are forms of bread that were source from barks like birch or alder trees , ” she impart . “ It was a really laborious practice in which you ’d reap the bark , pound it forever , and fundamentally bend it into a powder . There were other plants that might have been added , like cattail pollen , and the pelf was broil in the grit . ” This is what ’s bear on to as an earthen oven , in which you ’d build a flak , dig a short hole nearby , and put the dough near that flame to allow it bake in the earth .
Bannock is related tofrybread , a intellectual nourishment more commonly associated with Indigenous community in the United States . Named the official state bread of South Dakota , frybread was created from governing rations , give to Navajo citizens after they were hale to relocate from Arizona to New Mexico in 1864 . Generally speak , bannock is a rising sugar , whereas frybread is more or less a patty — sometimes made with barm — and deep - fried on both sides .
“ I think of it as culinary innovation to utilize those stuff and factor and transmute them into something that ’s interchangeable to a traditional food , ” Segrest adds . “ And that ’s why I mean frybread is so idolise . It was something similar to what we call a bark simoleons that transformed into bannock dinero , which eventually transformed into frybread . And that fed hoi polloi during a sentence of starvation . ”
How bannock has evolved over the years
Quaaout Lodge and Spa , located on the shores of Little Shuswap Lake , is on Secwepemc Territory . Bannock has always been a part of the repast servicing at the hotel ’s topically - inspiredJack Sam ’s eatery . It makes its way onto eggs Benedict , as a substitution for English muffins , or in panzanella salads , in piazza of stale bread .
“ When people think of bannock , they do n’t think ‘ Oh , settlers brought it to us , ” suppose Tristan Jules , chef at Quaaout Lodge and Spa . “ No , we took the concept and made it our own dish . Go to any prisoner of war wow in North America , and I can ensure you ’ll have bannock , frybread , or some variation of the two . ”
Jules grew up attend annual bannock competitions that took lieu in the Shuswap region . “ All of the communities would come together and have bannock James Cook - offs to see who had the best in the area , ” he says , and they would serve up everything from bannock hot click to bannock tacos .
Each region has its own direction of preparing bannock , and the edition Jules is familiar with involves a starchy fruit , which is demolish , dry out out in the sun , and turned into dough . At the eating house , he opt to cook his bannock in lard . “ It give it a good taste than any other oil I ’ve tasted so far , ” he says . “ But it also comes down to what you put in the bannock , too . Some people add all variety of sweeteners , like sugar or love , before they even put it in the fryer . ”
Some recipes experiment with tidy interpretation . Segrest worked with tribal communities in the Northwest to put together a imagination calledFeeding the People , fertilize the Spirit . Though the book is now out of print , it feature bannock recipe that incorporated more plant - found ingredients , “ like hazelnut flour , which is traditional here , or nettle leaf pulverisation to amplify the nutritious density , ” she says .
Many Indigenous people miss memory access to nutritional foods ( It ’s why Cook does n’t function Coca Cola at her eating house ) due to economical barriers and environmental outcome . “ It could be environmental toxins in the food for thought , climate variety , lack of admission to grocery stores or areas where harvesting is safe , ” Segrest explains . “ deficiency of noesis take to a severe dislocation of the transmission system of cultural nutrient cognition from one generation to the next due to colonisation and federal policies in our country . ”
But Segrest believes bannock can still play a function in a healthy meal plan . “ I really try not to spiel the vilifying food biz that many nutritionists are known for , ” she says . By replacing elegant bloodless flour , or integrate more raw ingredient , Segrest maintains that one can still enjoy the foods that mold their culture .
Bannock can play a role in food sovereignty
intellectual nourishment reign is specially important to Segrest , which she defines as “ the inherent rightfield of a people to define and forge their dieting . ” Through theMuckleshoot Food Sovereignty Project , she play on ways to increase accession to traditional foods in her community , let in educational initiatives for harvest , hunting , and fishing .
Cook , of Salmon n ’ Bannock , believes we still have a long way to go in achieving food for thought sovereignty for Indigenous communities . sure foods , like fantastic secret plan , have to go through a routine of regulations to make it on a menu .
“ In Canada , there are over 600 nations . In BC alone , there are over 200 nations . We ’re very , very rich in culture , and we ’re not permitted to service our traditional nutrient , ” she explains . “ What needs to happen for the health inspector to approve us do these foods is that there ask to be commercially approved kitchen in all the communities . ”
She continues , “ Just ideate . There ’s only one Nipponese eatery in all of Tokyo . Only one . And they ’re not allowed to dish their food . What would happen ? ” While there is still much work to be done , the breakage of bannock might be one step towards the conservation of Indigenous culture .
As Cook says : “ I like to look at it as celebrate the here and now . ”
