Innovation and Tradition in Algonquin’s Indigenous Cook Program
Posted on Wednesday, June 30th, 2021
Cornbread pudding with a sweetgrass and cedar caramel sauce and creamy sweetgrass ice cream.
A bowl of roasted, seasonal vegetables, earthy wild rice, sweet corn, and toasted pumpkin seeds drizzled with wojape, a berry dressing.
A hearty bison burger with crispy squash fries.
The students in Algonquin’s Indigenous Cook Pre-Apprenticeship Program use a mix of traditional Indigenous ingredients, French and Indigenous culinary techniques, and a sense of ingenuity to make these and countless other dishes during their time in the revolutionary culinary program.
In this program, students learn the same skills and techniques you would in other culinary programs, but using traditional Indigenous ingredients, while also learning the stories, history and philosophies behind them.
“What’s unique to the program is we’re not just taking classic French techniques and introducing them to the students, we’re introducing them with ingredients they’re familiar with,” explains Chef Instructor and Program Coordinator Chris Commandant, who is Mohawk from Kanesatake, a graduate from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, and a 27-year industry veteran. “So, things they have worked with: hominy corn, wild rice, we’re seeing venison, bison, we’re talking about elk. We’re seeing salmon, artic char, so these ingredients come into play.”
You aren’t going to see students squeezing lemon over a dish, says Commandant, as this isn’t a local, seasonal ingredient (their recipes are geared toward summer, as that’s when the program runs), but you might find sumac in its place to give a similar tang.
Pre-pandemic, the program also invited guests, such as Elders, to come in and teach traditional Indigenous methods of cooking, such as smoking, or the twisting method, where poultry is tied up over open coals and twisted until taut, then left to untwist and twist itself back up again as it cooks. Commandant says twisting is a method that was traditionally used by the Cree, as well as the Sioux in the southern United States.
The Indigenous Cook Pre-Apprenticeship program was originally launched in 2016, conceived of as a way to boost graduation rates among Indigenous students. Commandant explains that the idea was to create a program that was almost interchangeable with other culinary programs, but with the “extra” of “the culture portions: the teachings that go behind it, the stories, who we are as a people being involved with our foods.”
Both Commandant and Instructor Chantel Verner, who is an instructional coach for Indigenous Education at the OCDSB and teaches two courses in the Indigenous Cook program, believe having Indigenous professors teaching Indigenous content is essential to improving graduation rates among Indigenous students.
“It’s important because we’re in a time when the students need to be able to see themselves in the buildings that they are working in and learning from,” says Verner. “For them to be able to see people who are successful and are Indigenous is such an important thing, because it shows them that they can be as well, which was not the case 20 years ago. We were not supposed to be successful. We were not supposed to hold higher positions.”
Verner says it’s all about being able to identify with the people you are learning from. Verner’s two courses in the program are Aboriginal Careers and Essential Skills. The latter is all about teaching basic skills that employers expect, such as interview and writing skills, while the former is focused on Indigenous culture and how that might apply to the workplace. Commandant describes the class as “more of a personal study and a personal program about yourself and what you hope to pull from the program…it is a study of you and your relationship to culture.”
Verner describes the careers class as a conversation. “I really learn from them as well,” she says.
It’s a sentiment Commandant echoes—how the program is about learning from each other. “I encourage students to share their stories and histories,” he says, “It is very much an oral history, so you learn some interesting and exciting things from students right away, right off the bat.”
Students in Indigenous Cook also take a food theory class, where they study the stories behind the food they make, and some general food philosophies and principles from Indigenous cultures. There’s also a restaurant class, where they take the basics they learn and advance them, trying to produce a traditional dish in a way that is culturally relevant. That bison burger is a good example: instead of beef for a hamburger, use bison, instead of regular fries, make squash fries, and maybe use some traditional Indigenous condiments.
“Indigenous students walk with a Moccasin in one world and a Blundstone in the other, as I say all the time, and it’s a very big challenge,” notes Commandant. “This is a way to bridge their culture and be empowered by that.”
Students also do a placement in a restaurant during the program, whether in their own communities, or in Ottawa.
Commandant feels they are having promising results and is confident the program will help boost graduation rates among Indigenous students.
“Some students come to us from some tough and challenging backgrounds, and when they move into something new, it’s exciting to see. And it’s an honour and a privilege to be part of that journey,” he says.
“It always took a community of us to raise members of its community and that’s what I think we’re doing here. The Algonquin College Community has pulled together to help raise members of its Indigenous community to a higher learning and to a higher standard.”
And hopefully it will help the program achieve another goal as well, which, as Commandant puts it, is “to make Indigenous cuisine rise again to its rightful place in the Canadian culinary scene.”
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To view recipes for two dishes they make in the Indigenous Cook program, click on the links below:
Wild Rice and Wojape Harvest Bowl
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