New Indigenous-led projects coming to Waterloo Region: Andrew Coppolino
Indigenous organizations partner with The Family Centre, Conestoga College, City of Kitchener
June is one of the year's busiest months with a bevy of food and beverage events as well as celebrations and acknowledgements that include National Indigenous Peoples' Month and a day, June 21, dedicated to it.
Here's a short update on the status of a couple of important projects in Waterloo Region being developed by local Indigenous communities and their stakeholders and partners.
Aandanjige Café
Coming this fall, Aandanjige Café is a new endeavour currently setting up for business at the White Owl Native Ancestry Association on Hanson Avenue, inside Family & Children's Services of the Waterloo Region.
The name roughly translates to "changing the way we eat" in Ojibwe. Helping operate the café is Indigenous chef Sydney Keedwell, formerly of Uptown Waterloo's Taco Farm Co.
Keedwell, who is also White Owl's food and nutrition coordinator, says the café is scheduled to open in the fall; currently, she says the café is busy creating recipes, doing catering and building a following.
"We'll be doing Indigenous-inspired food and trying to cook as local and seasonal as possible, and we will be using produce we grow with Wisahkotewinowak Urban Indigenous Garden Collective," she says.
The Collective has gardens in Kitchener, Guelph and Blair.
Profits from the café will go back into White Owl programming, and Keedwell says the space will be a collaborative community endeavour that will eventually give cooking classes and will be offered for rental during off hours.
"People have been visiting as we get ready, and that's really encouraging. We're building a strong community here," Keedwell says.
Wiijindamaan: An Indigenous Land-based Futurity
Conestoga College, which has an Indigenous Studies program, received federal funding in the form of a three-year NSERC grant that will be applied to a research project "focused on urban land co-management strategies rooted in traditional Indigenous land-based practices and knowledge," according to the College's website.
Credit for obtaining the grant includes former professor of Indigenous Studies at Conestoga, Garrison McCleary, who has since moved to Nova Scotia. McCleary is an Indigenous educator and was a professor of Indigenous Studies at Conestoga researching Indigenous languages, traditional ecological knowledge and food security while on staff.
Key stakeholders on the land will be White Owl and Wisahkotewinowak, along with the College and City of Kitchener.
According to Shawn Brake, executive dean of Interdisciplinary Studies at Conestoga, the work on the grant began in April of this year, but only after discussions with Indigenous communities, partners and stakeholders.
"In this first year, we are looking at some rudimentary but very important pieces where we're starting to plant seeds, literally. The idea is that we want to have some basic crops that were part of the land earlier: corn, beans, squash, sunflower, amaranth, potatoes, strawberries and pawpaws," Brake says.
(The pawpaw is a large tree native to North America with edible bright yellow fruit which tastes like a combination of mango, banana and citrus.)
Food is central to the project, he adds, in that part of the focus of the work is to boost food security, but yet it's a holistic approach to the ecosystem. That means planting native tree species on just over three hectares and re-introducing species such as bluebirds, barn owls and American kestrels.
'Conversations about Indigenous food culture are happening'
This practical, hands-on work, the purview of White Owl and Wisahkotewinowak, is an initiative that likely satisfies Waterloo Region-based Indigenous cook Destiny Moser.
She operates FoodZen personal chef services and visits Waterloo Region District School Board students to teach Indigenous food culture and about her path to becoming a chef.
From the perspective of an update on the progress of various initiatives, for Moser there are positive signs – including when it comes to awareness of Indigenous cooking, food and ingredients.
"There are many individual organizations, companies and people at the local level doing a lot of great things, and conversations about Indigenous food culture are happening," she says.
But while there is a lot of talk and many processes in motion, she'd like to see more tangible "products."
"At some levels of government, there's a lot of checking off of boxes, but what I'm not seeing is the action that goes with it."
According to Brake, that tangibility is in fact at the very heart of Wiijindamaan with its hands-on nature and vision that the entire community become engaged and want to see this restoration thrive and grow as a community-driven project, he says.
"The problem is always, 'what are you doing beyond just talking about it?' This project literally has a very physical aspect to it and a front-centred community aspect. It's really about bringing people together to help with a land-based practice."
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