'This tastes like memories': Jasmine Mangalaseril sits with Mohawk chef Tawnya Brant
Brant ties traditional foods with non-traditional dishes
It wasn't until adulthood when chef Tawnya Brant realized her upbringing was different to many.
"I never really thought my family had anything special. We just did what it was we did every year," said Brant. "By the time of year, it was: 'Where we tapping trees? Are we planting? Are we harvesting different things?'"
Brant is a Mohawk woman of the Tekarihoken Turtle clan, raised in Six Nations. There, she and her sisters learned traditional food cycles. Her father, a hunter and fisher, filled their freezers. Her mother, a seed keeper with an expansive knowledge of traditional plants, had a large garden, part of which was a nursery for traditional plants.
Occasionally, the future chef's mother handed her a challenge disguised as a freshly harvested vegetable.
"She was like, 'Here, go make it a food...that's your job,'" Brant recalled.
When she began waiting tables at 12 years old, she didn't think food would become her chosen career. But after a year in university, she switched to a college culinary management program before working in professional kitchens in Ontario and New York State.
"I was 20 years into my career of being a chef, where I [decided] to take what I was doing professionally and then to take Indigenous foods and kind of put those things together," explained Brant.
She put together a concept of "everyday Indigenous eating," an approach that's helping to revitalize Indigenous cuisine. Rather than focusing on traditional techniques and flavour combinations, she re-imagines familiar, contemporary dishes with traditional foods and flavours.
Brant's culinary ethos also embraces upholding community and familial traditions. It could be preparing ceremonial foods or making seasonal dishes, or delving into almost forgotten flavours, like her 120-year-old shortcake recipe.
"If I make that in this community, I'm going to have an elder come in," said Brant. "They're going to be literally crying because this tastes like memories. Those are the things that move me the most."
Traditional food knowledge
While many focus on removing foods introduced to Indigenous diets, post-contact (decolonizing), Brant's approach is informed by her mother.
"She said, 'You know, Haudenosaunee people were never against anything that was good.' If it made your life easier, if it didn't disrupt anything and you weren't hurting anybody, there was no reason not to accept or use those things."
Brant said, by incorporating traditional food knowledge, community members eat better, are outside and exercise more, and feel better. That domino effect leads to a stronger, healthier community.
However, Brant said when colonizers decided which traditional Indigenous foods would be valued and which ones wouldn't, gaps in traditional food knowledge took hold.
"We have no idea how many recipes we've lost, totally new ways of eating," said Brant. "To me, if they are traditional foods, they are traditional foods, no how matter how it is we decide to prepare them."
It tastes good
In 2015, Brant launched her catering company, Yawékon, in Ohsweken, which translates to "it tastes good" in the Mohawk language. Doing that let her to work closer with her mother in the years before her death. She extended her knowledge about traditional foods, including planning and planting gardens, harvesting and seed keeping.
Five years later, Yawékon evolved into a restaurant focusing on bold and familiar flavours through Indigenized dishes.
"I'm not trying to give somebody a Fear Factor experience," said Brant. "They just want something good, something hearty. To put a new spin on our traditional food."
She set new menus regularly, based on what was available. Much of it was vegan, including dishes like quinoa vegetable power bowls and squash Alfredo ravioli. She also created non-vegetarian dishes including bison stroganoff and butter chicken over wild rice and hominy.
Yawékon was popular in the three years it was open but Brant was pulled in many directions, including filming her APTN docuseries One Dish One Spoon, so she closed the restaurant.
She said Yawékon may evolve into something different in the future.
"In doing this work, it's pretty exciting to see what it is that's happening. I just kind of wish it was happening a little bit faster."
LISTEN | Chef Tawnya Brant shares her vision of Indigenous food sovereignty:
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