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Indigenous, Hunting
In the early 1850s, all Canadians and Indigenous people knew was hunting. They would solely hunt the common animals in the wild like buffalo and fish. Back then their knowledge of hunting was not advanced enough and their trade game was not supplying them with the needed materials. They would not trade to find new tools and hunting methods to catch more efficiently. They did have hunting materials but they were very basic like spears and knives or sharp objects. -
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Advances and Evolution of Canadian Indigenous Food, Preparation, and Materials
A timeline showing how the preparation of foods have advanced over time and the advances in foods. -
Evolution of Materials, Hunting
The Indigenous people hunting evolved over the years and that was mainly because of their methods and hunting materials. Weapons that were brought into use at this time included the trap, gorge, noose, net, pitfall, deadfall, bolo, throwing-stick or boomerang, club, knife, spear, javelin, blowpipe, bow and arrow, and harpoon. These weapons started the first evolution of food reception of the Indigenous culture. -
Cooking/Preperation
The common way of preparation was to cook meat and eat it fresh. However, this was not very common because of the shortage of fuel for cooking. The second method was to dry the meat as a way to preserve it. They also froze meat to save it, and eat it later. However, most of the meat was eaten raw. The Indigenous harvested, trapped, hunted and fished for country food. To prepare such food for consumption, roots and berries would've been cleaned, and animals require both cleaning and skinning. -
Preparation and Cooking of Traditional Dishes
Making Pemmican:
Buffalo meat was cut into strips, hung to dry, then the meat was pounded into shreds with a stone, mixed with hot buffalo fat and berries, and poured into a bag, and then left to cool and harden.
The bark of dried willow branches was scraped off and the branches seared. The branches were tied together then the meat was hung over them and dried.
This is one of the examples of traditional dishes that were brought in then and still made today. -
Crops and Harvesting
The wendat people farmed, hunted and gathered most of the food they ate. the metis mostly hunted animals for their meat and fat to use and eat. Also fish was a big food source for the Metis. The metis kept buffalo meat on racks to dry. Although There were plenty of meats and hunting products, they lived off of crops as mainly as they did hunting products. Corn, beans and squash were the three sisters because they thrived together to form the main source of crops. -
Cooking/Preparation Advancements
Storage and cooking containers were made from buffalo hides, mainly rawhide with a willow wood frame.
These skin pots could not be placed directly over a source of heat. Instead, stones were heated over a fire and placed inside the container. If the container was filled with water, then the stones brought the water to a boil. Preparing the food and the meat was done by roasting, baking, and smoked
Minced to make meals and traditional Indigenous culture dishes. -
Weapon evolution
Most tools that the Inuit used were made out of stone, or parts of animals, like bone, ivory, antlers, teeth, and horns. When fishing, the Inuit attached sealskin floats to harpoon heads (with lines), which kept the animal close to the surface after being killed. Most harpoon heads were made out of ivory from walrus tusks or whalebone. To catch fish they also used fishing lines, nets, leisters and three-pronged spears. For hunting, the Inuit used spears, bow and arrows, clubs and stone traps. -
Speciality Dishes
Ladles people have many different types of dishes. Some of the more popular ones include, bannock, which is like a pastry, birch syrup beans, which consist of beans with a tiny bit of syrup, and honey garlic moose meatballs, which are made with tender moose and sweet honey garlic sauce. A lot of dishes are created from plants and animals that were found in the land that different Indigenous groups lived in. -
Fishing method
When fishing, the Inuit attached sealskin floats to harpoon heads (with lines), which kept the animal close to the surface after being killed. Most harpoon heads were made out of ivory from walrus tusks or whalebone. -
Buffalo methods
Buffalo hunt:
Band members attempted to shoot Buffalo with bow and arrow
The Buffalo was driven into a corral or compound and speared or shot with an arrow.
A "Buffalo Jump" - Bands united in the summer to stampede an entire herd of Buffalo off a high cliff, providing food for a year or more. At Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, you can still see the place where thousands of buffalo were stampeded over the cliff each year. This site has many pictures and exhibits to take you back in time. -
Hunting methods evolution
First Nations also used traps and snares—a type of noose that caught the animal by the neck or leg. Northern hunters built elaborate routing fences with stakes and brush. They used these fences to stampede animals into the area where snares had been set to trap them. To provide for times of hardship the people dried large stores of meat, fish and berries during the summer. During the winter food was kept high in trees with the trunk peeled of bark to keep away from animals. -
Crops and Harvesting Evolved
As of 1990, about 550 different species of plants have been documented in the literature as having been utilized in one way or another in the traditional diets of Indigenous Peoples in Canada. When the variety of food types yielded by these plants is considered, the diversity is even greater, since many plants provide more than one type of food. Many traditional indigenous plant foods include root vegetables, green vegetables, fleshy fruits, seeds, nuts, and grains, and mushrooms. -
Results in today's culture
Modern-day First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people have added processed foods and convenience foods to their traditional diet, and are experiencing the health problems that come from consumption of foods rich in sugar and additives (such as tooth decay and obesity). These are side-effects from a lifetime of generations creating dishes using the limited materials and no knowledge of health and diet to make traditional dishes still used today.
