Thanks to generous support from the Community Fund for Canada’s 150th, Loving Spoonful partnered with the Katarokwi Learning Centre to bring over 20 high school students our cross-cultural foods program, Cook, Camera, Action, in the fall of 2017. Over the course of 12 weeks, students learned about traditional foods and customs, went on five food-related field trips, and documented their whole experience on film. The program took us to a Three Sisters Garden at Topsy Farms, harvesting wild rice in canoes on the Mississippi River, salmon fishing in Napanee, to process a deer with the help of local farmers Jeff Peters and Deb Campaigne, and participating in a sweat lodge ceremony at Robert Lovelace’s house, all the while making and sharing loads of good food. We celebrated our program with the public at our Final Showcase Feast in December where over 70 community members joined us to share in a feast and screen the films which capture our experience.
The program helped us better understand our Indigenous history, practices, and culture while connecting with food and each other in many important ways. By engaging Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth in traditional knowledge sharing, food skills workshops, and film-making, we used food to build relationships to foster and celebrate a more inclusive community while sharing stories, skills, and meals.
Loving Spoonful is so grateful to our co-project coordinator Helena Neveau who wove her traditional knowledge into each class, film-maker Josh Lyon who led the youth in film-making and produced/edited the program’s films, Knowledge holders, Elders, and community members we visited throughout the fall, and Katarokwi Learning Centre staff and students for contributing to this program to make it a resounding success.
Stay tuned for the Cook, Camera, Action films—coming soon to the Loving Spoonful website and social media!
This initiative was made possible by the Community Fund for Canada’s 150th, a collaboration between the Community Foundation of Kingston and Area, the Government of Canada, and extraordinary leaders from coast to coast to coast.