Filling Spirits: Community-oriented Cuisine and Gardening

In describing the unique setting of Toronto’s Noojimo’iwewin Gitigaan/Healing Garden, gardener Robin Buyers touches on many issues at the forefront of contemporary food cultures: urban reclamation, interdependence, self-determination, and food sovereignty. Across diverse contexts throughout the GTHA and beyond, we invited chefs, entrepreneurs, gardeners, curators, and scholars to reflect on the interconnected effects of new movements in food, cuisine, and gardening. Each were asked similar questions about how they fit into community-oriented food practices. Alongside Buyers are responses by Camille Mayers, Chef and founder of East York’s Black and Indigenous Deeply Rooted Market; Vasuki Shanmuganathan, founder of Scarborough-based Tamil Archive Project; Sonia Hill, program manager of Kahnekanoron, a Hamilton-based initiative within the Indigenous Sustenance Reclamation Network; and Sienna Fekete, New York City–based curator, and publisher of the two-volume Community Cookbook series. 

Robin Buyers: Started in 2019 as a response to the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, this small space raises more questions about food sovereignty, food insecurity, equity, and self-determination than it answers. After all, the weekly harvest is no more than that grown in a backyard garden; less, in fact.   

What grows best are conversations. About acknowledging the Land by stewarding the Land. About following practices of Indigenous peoples who cared for this place for generations before Europeans arrived. About Sacred Tobacco, and planting and harvesting protocols that came to us from the Na-Me-Res Mashkikii;aki’ing/Medicine Earth Garden in nearby Hillcrest Park.  

The children from the Hippo Nursery School now learn about plants, pollinators, and how the foods they eat grow. Guests at The Stop Wychwood Open Door Drop-In see new greens in their salads. Seniors from nearby Bracondale House and Rakoczi Villa reminisce about gardens now gone. Neighbours gift seeds. 

Demonstrating what can grow in our city speaks to issues of food sovereignty and self-determination, yes. Including plants such as purslane and lambsquarters—labelled “weeds,” but deliciously edible—which raises questions about food security. At the heart of this place, however, is relationship: with plants, people, Land, Water, Sun, Moon. 

We began by planting a Medicine Wheel of Tobacco, Sweetgrass, Sage, and Cedar to honour Indigenous wisdom and spirituality, from which Elder Catherine Brooks discerned a name, Noojimo’iwewin Gitigaan/Healing Garden. Then pandemic lockdowns led us to include food crops, and to contribute to Grow Food Toronto and Toronto Urban Growers.  

At the same time, we joined the coast-to-coast-to-coast network of National Healing Forest projects, in keeping with our focus on remembering the Victims and Survivors of Residential Schools; Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, 2-Spirit, and Trans People; and those lost to the Child Welfare System. 

Generous donors and a federal grant meant that we could hire a gardener, Olivia Dziwak, and 2-Spirit Anishinaabe conceptual artist Bert Whitecrow, to create commemorative earthworks: a winding, pebbled pathway to a conversation circle of upturned logs and, along the sidewalk, moon-shaped rain gardens. PollinateTO and Project Swallowtail helped us access plants necessary for native bees and butterflies to flourish. 

Today, Bert’s painting, Ode’min Giizas/Strawberry Moon, hangs high on the wall opposite the Full Moon Rain Garden. We held our first Moon Ceremony for women, 2-Spirit, and trans people in June, a year after first celebrations of the Solstices and Equinoxes of the Sun cycle. We celebrated the Strawberry, and prayed for the Water, our responsibility. At moonrise, we each placed Tobacco in the Sacred Fire.11Author acknowledgment: Gratitude for the Teachings of Elders Catherine Brooks and Dan and Mary Lou Smoke as well as conversations with Indigenous Peoples Solidarity Group and Noojimo’iwewin Gitigaan Crew colleagues.

Camille Mayers: Currently the dominant food structure is dictated by capitalism. Capitalism has created a globalized industrial agri-food system that puts profit over people. We have become very far removed from the source of the food we consume. In most cases food is transported thousands of miles before it reaches the local chain grocery stores and in turn, undermines local farmers and food chains. In addition, the mass industrial production of food means that the quality and nutrition we receive are inadequate to satisfy our bodies' requirements, thus compromising our overall health.  

 As a Chef and member of the BIPOC community, which also happens to be the most negatively impacted by this, it is important that I do my part to combat this system. This is done through making intentional choices when it comes to the ingredients I purchase and provide, whether it be for catering events or personal use. Whenever possible I make use of products sourced from local BIPOC farmers. I have also created Deeply Rooted Farmers Market for everyone: it’s a market by the Black and Indigenous community to diversify Toronto's food industry, provide access to locally sourced products, and further strengthen local grocers—all of which is a part of reclaiming our food sovereignty.  

CM: Callaloo is a traditional Trinidadian ingredient that was very common in my household growing up and so holds much significance for me. Oftentimes my mother would pair it with crab (Callaloo and Crab) and now as a Chef, it is an ingredient I often include for my clients. I source the ingredients from two Black-owned farms within Toronto, which is important for me as I want to ensure that my dollar is circulating within our community. Unfortunately, the Black community is the number one community to usually spend their dollar elsewhere, and I want to do what I can to combat that statistic. 

Vasuki Shanmuganathan: “We are what we eat” under colonial conditioning where we accept unsafe drinking water in Indigenous communities, exploitation of migrant workers growing our food, and inaccessibility of diverse produce for communities in food deserts. 

Nourishing ourselves is intimately tied to colonial and emotional histories. Large-scale food production is part of ongoing colonial migration that disrupted local pathways, existing caretaking of land, and autonomy of Indigenous people on Turtle Island and elsewhere. Much of the work the Tamil Archive Project collective does is centred on communal care and honouring processes that make us aware of our connections to these complicated histories. 

Some members relied on farming for survival, were driven off the land by the military, and forced to flee the country with their families. They reconnected to food practices through participation in local farming and learning gardening. Others created cooking programs to offer culturally informed spaces for racialized youth to talk about mental health. Food advocacy forms another integral part of a trauma-informed approach in calling for the decentering of Western food practices, which disassociate people from reciprocal relations to land, and the changes brought by diasporic formations and their culinary practices. 

Among Tamil people, the cultural protocol is to ask, “have you eaten?” This gesture signals a responsibility towards communal well-being. Some of us grew up missing meals due to poverty or have parents who worked on farms picking food. Having food at our events was another way we attempted to dismantle barriers we experienced ourselves. Food is a means for us to share with others where we came from. 

VS: Healing Arts Dinner Circle was an arts and dinner series meant to take place at different locations in the Greater Toronto Area from March 2020–21 but we were forced to go online with the onset of the pandemic. Conversations exploring feelings and making space for joy, alongside our conversance with trauma, was and still is our way of practicing communal care. The intention behind the series was to create experiences which move us towards healing with the understanding that this is only part of the picture.  

Reduced to Zoom meetings, restrictions on movement between neighbourhoods, daily reports of illness among family and friends, we were feeling disheartened and unprepared for what unfolded. The ongoing pandemic forced us to better understand what communal care looks like when it is most needed. Our response was to turn to each other first and ensure we were feeling supported in our collective. This inward turn is perhaps unsurprising given we were part of these communities experiencing the impact and in need of mental health, food, and social supports too. The decision helped us understand ourselves in crisis and how this looked different for everyone. 

Racialized youth from other countries were looking for our space because they lacked it in their local community. Food remained part of the conversation. Instead of cooked meals, we sent FoodShare vouchers for people to choose what and when they wanted to eat. While we were concerned about what was lost by going online—like sitting at a table in deep conversation over a meal—other people finally gained access to much needed programming because barriers for them were no longer in place. 

Sonia Hill: When we can sustain our communities off food produced within and for the community, we become less dependent on the settler-state and all its oppressive and alienating structures and institutions. In the last couple of years, I feel more connected to Indigenous practices of processing traditional foods and medicines. Throughout COVID-19, the price of food and necessities has skyrocketed within so-called Canada and beyond. In working with community at a grassroots level, I’ve seen all levels of government leave our people hungry while communities step up to organize gardens and food shares to supplement groceries for folks. Over the last couple of summers, the CUPE 3906 Indigenous Solidarity Working Group in Hamilton has donated thousands of dollars through our Community Impact Fund to families, individuals, and grassroots groups for the development and maintenance of community and family gardens. The Hamilton regional programming with the Indigenous Sustenance Reclamation Network has dedicated summer/fall programming to planting, harvesting, and processing our traditional foods and medicines. More and more Indigenous folks are getting reconnected with our ways of feeding communities. Planting, harvesting, and processing of traditional food sources by and for community is a practice of self-determination and community care that nourishes communities in so many ways while shifting our collective dependance away from the settler-state. 

SH: To me, community care is all of the ways we are working towards the survival and nourishment of the communities we are part of. As Haudenosaunee (People of the Longhouse, the Six Nations) our relationships with food, plants, and animals is very different than in white settler society. Speaking about food plants specifically, ours are medicines—and the ways they nourish us are not taken for granted within a Kanien’keha:ka (People of the Flint, Mohawk) worldview. We have responsibilities that include more than watering and making sure they get enough sun. There are songs to be sung to specific plants at specific times. There are teachings about, for example, when there is more than one corncob wrapped in a husk. Our food plants teach us how to take care of them, and remind us how precious life is. When you look at a cob and think of that, it’s hard not to apply this appreciation of worthiness to yourself and those around you. Every stalk of corn is unique, with stories to tell, and lessons to share, just like every person. Kahnekanoron is a Kanien’keha (Mohawk language) word that translates to “water is precious.” Water is in every living being. When you truly believe water is precious, you start to see that inherent worth in every being. Commodification and exploitation of these beings and our relationships with them becomes an act of harm that cannot be accepted. Continuing to engage with ways of feeding our communities that sustained our ancestors is a deeply nourishing act of community care that fills bellies and spirits, and fuels Indigenous nationhood and self-determination. Reclaiming Indigenous food and medicine teachings and protecting land and water are deeply connected practices of community care.  

Sienna Fekete: There are many elements that go into the building of an ecosystem of equity and care, and even more that go into sustaining it. Food is a beautiful and intimate medium through which we can begin to make these connections. With recipes and the stories behind them—the cultural histories rooted within them—certain dishes can bring you to tears with a single bite by unlocking a forgotten memory or feeling. The Community Cookbook was a project born out of curiosity and wanting to connect more with my friends and family. During the spring of 2020, I invited my community to contribute their most cherished recipes, which I then compiled into a printed and digital PDF book. The directions for each recipe in the Community Cookbook are brilliantly laid out by each contributor, written with intention and care. At the early stages I was thinking about how food acts as a tool for communication, passion, and an entryway into much larger conversations surrounding food sovereignty. At the same time I was conceptualizing this cookbook, I was also taking a graduate course as part of my Art & Public Policy program called Exploring Inclusivity Through the Culture of Food taught by Professor and Chef Scott Barton. In this class, we explored food as a praxis for engagement, activism, and care that is rooted in long-term and sustainable growth. We studied a myriad of current and historic food movements and makers like A Festa da Boa Morte (The Festival of the Good Death) in Brazil, cacerolazos (pot-and-pan rebellions in France, Algeria, Spain, and beyond), Fannie Lou Hamer’s Civil Rights–era “Pig Bank,” the work of Vandana Shiva, Blondell Cummings’ dance performance Chicken Soup, the interracial maroon fishing community on Malaga Island, Rachel Harding’s Welcome Table, and the history of Clay Eaters of the American South. 

SF: I have learned much about the art of cooking through my community. Cooking as a way to feel home, at peace, express oneself, connect with family and ancestors. Through this process, I learned that food was a spiritual practice for many, as well as a way to connect with personal histories, cultures, and traditions. You can hear each author’s voice distinctly by the way they describe their dish—what it means to them, how to prepare it, and all the specificities and memories that come along with it. People submitted poems, playlists, stories, YouTube links, vivid descriptions, family traditions and their joy alongside their recipes. To cook the food of those you love is to know them a little bit better. I feel grateful that so many friends were excited by the project and eager to contribute. It started out as a bcc email asking recipients to submit their favourite recipes, not knowing what people would come back with, and the result was a celebration of all the dishes that my community hold dearly to their hearts, and the step-by-step preparation to experience it with them.  

There is a wide range of recipes and types of dishes as the prompt simply called for recipes that mean something special to the author. I’ve learned about the ways in which certain foods and ingredients pollinate across different cultures and are present across diasporas. One of my favourite ingredients, hibiscus, is prevalent in many cultures and cuisines. Take for example the various hibiscus-centred beverages that exist across continents—bissap (West Africa), agua fresca de jamaica (Mexico), sorrel (Jamaica/Caribbean), etc. I am intrigued by the many ways in which ingredients find themselves being remixed across cultures utilizing the same central flavour profile, properties, and palette. 

SF: Jazzy Romero’s Ceviche de Coliflor22Jazzy Romero, Ceviche de Coliflor, Community Cookbook Volume 02, (New York: self-published, 2021), 64. is a dish I’ve had the pleasure of tasting myself, brought to me as a birthday treat during the summer of 2020. It’s the most scrumptious, acidic, lime-y, crunchy snack! Everyone sat in the park together, spread out on a mismatched assemblage of blankets in the grass, and excitingly dolloped helpings of this vegan ceviche onto crispy tostadas with fresh avocado and lime. I have never experienced such a delicious and flavourful ceviche to this day. It’s a recipe that her mom taught her that she makes in the summertime when she’s missing the marisquerias (seafood restaurants) of Los Angeles. It’s clear this dish was prepared with skill, familiarity, lots of love, and it showed.