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Fast foodie fit teri12/5/2023 ![]() ![]() Canada’s formation is a history of legislating First Nations, Inuit, and Métis out of existence, including by erasing Indigenous food cultures: the Gradual Civilization Act, the banning of potlatch ceremonies, the signing of treaties that exchanged life-sustaining hunting grounds for farmland, livestock, and pitiful amounts of cash. Indigenous food sovereignty was decimated by design: the separation of people from their historic food systems and land is not a side effect of colonialism but a function of it. ![]() The landscape is silent, motionless, and to Bell, a vast, empty fridge.ī ell is one of many Indigenous people who are privately and publicly engaged with the restoration of their food cultures, returning to a more traditional diet through activities like sustenance hunting-practices long under threat of eradication but not gone forever. There is little breeze, and the remaining trees have no leaves to sway. The birds have all flown south for the winter. All the while, Bell swivels his head left and right, scanning the horizon for any sign of movement. The quad bounces up and down as it traverses hills and valleys, charging over ice and through slush and mashing down vegetation. Slinging a bolt-action rifle over his shoulder, he pushes farther into the bush. Reaching a point in the trail impassable even in his heavy-duty pickup, Bell pulls a quad, an all-terrain vehicle, off the trailer. As the truck jostles along the bumpy road, Bell begins to see more tracks, then wolf markings mingled with the moose prints. There are bare trees with broken branches from where moose rubbed their antlers to remove the “velvet”-the soft fuzz that nourishes the fast-growing bones while they regenerate every year. Right away, he sees big hoofprints some, he estimates, are only twenty minutes old. Bell has heard from friends that moose have been spotted around here recently. on a Saturday near the end of October-already the middle of the moose-hunting season. If he sees a moose today and gets a clear shot, it will feed him, his wife, Siru Kantola, and daughter, Taiga, as well as his father, brother, and sister-in-law, for another year. Moose is his primary source of meat, but it has been over a year since he killed one-a butcher processed it into 486 pounds of steaks, roasts, sausages, pepperettes, and ground meat, and it has lasted until now. ![]() Canada’s National Parks are Colonial Crime Scenesīell hunts, fishes, and traps for much of his food.The closest supermarket is the No Frills in Geraldton, about forty-five minutes south-131 kilometres round trip. Since last March, when the North West Company closed the Northern store in Nakina, the only groceries available in town are the selection of chocolate bars, chips, and shrink-wrapped sandwiches at the gas station. A band councillor at Aroland First Nation, part of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, Bell lives in Nakina, Ontario, 341 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay. Determined to fill his freezer with food, he gets back in the truck and keeps driving into the predawn darkness. ![]()
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