--- See Shane Chartrand in Red Chef Revival, Tuesdays 9pm on SBS Food from 27 April, and also available at ---
Shane Chartrand says he doesn’t know enough to teach others – but in many ways, he’s the perfect teacher for anyone interested in learning more about the foodways of the Indigenous peoples of Northern America.
The Canadian chef, author and co-host of Red Chef Revival, spent a chunk of his early childhood in foster homes before being adopted as a seven-year-old. He knew he was First Nations, but he was almost 30 before he discovered what tribe he came from – Plains Cree, from the Enoch Nation – and those years of not knowing are a big part of his passion for learning as much as he can, not just about his own people, but other Indigenous foodways too.
“I don’t even have enough information to teach. I’m still learning every day. I mean, that’s why I go from nation to nation as much as I can, to get that information. Celebrating their stories, and their honour system, and their ceremonies, and their food, and their beliefs, and their families. So, that’s kind of my approach to food. My career, until the day I expire, is gonna be about learning other indigenous tribes and people,” he says in Red Chef Revival, a TV series that explores modern Indigenous Canadian cuisine through the eyes of three chefs: , chef, author and filmmaker , and chef and public speaker .
Chartrand, an active advocate of sustainable Indigenous cuisine, is also the author of a fantastic cookbook, (House of Anansi Press). As the name suggests, it’s a book that reflects his journey as a chef, where much of his training was in European and Asian cooking traditions. He says in the book, “What does it mean to be an Indigenous person who is an executive chef in charge of his own professional kitchen and staff? … How do I create — one dish, one menu, one dinner at a time — a progressive Indigenous cuisine? Not a historical re-creation but a cuisine that reflects who I am and how I live with one foot in the Indigenous world and the other in the non-Indigenous world?”
Shane Chartrand, right, cooking in Red Chef Revival Source: Red Chef Revival
The book, divided into four seasons, features recipes that combine his Indigenous heritage and wide-ranging modern cooking styles, from simple stews and salads, to elegant dishes that display his experience as an executive chef: Smoked Haida Gwaii sablefish with cucumbers, sprouted beans, and rosehips, for example.
There’s also an insight into the dilemma presented by , a popular bread with many First Nations people. “Some Indigenous people (including chefs) do not believe that bannock has a place in Indigenous cuisine, since it’s a food adopted from early European contact, and the ingredients include processed white flour and white sugar. We acknowledge that it’s controversial, and we suggest that it only be enjoyed occasionally. That said, it’s everywhere in our communities, it’s part of our celebrations, and many homes have favourite versions — including mine,” he writes.
Chopped bison with nettle pesto, from Tawâw Source: House of Anansi Press / Cathryn Sprague
In between the recipes, Tawâw shares a glimpse of Chartrand’s life, and a little of the history and current issues facing Indigenous Canadians.
“My birth name is Shane St. John Gordon. But for the first three decades of my life, I didn’t know this fact,” he writes. “I also didn’t know the names of my birth parents or my home Nation. I was a part of a large group of Indigenous children in Canada who were taken from our biological parents, placed into foster care, and then put up for adoption from the early 1960s through to the mid-1980s — what is now known as the 'Sixties Scoop'. I was given up when I was a year and a half old and was in foster care for five years. Though I was so young, I remember being alone, moving from place to place, and I remember being hungry. In those early years, I didn’t have a lot of food. I wasn’t starving, but I remember being hungry all the time. That’s really my earliest memory.”
In the foreword to the book, Marlene and Laurie Buffalo, of the Samson Cree Nation, explain a little of how food is tied to nêhiyâwiwin: Plains Cree culture, traditions, teachings, principles, and value systems. Marlene also says when she first met Shane, he reminded her of a shark – tenacious, always moving, and looking for information. That hunger for knowledge shines through in the book and in Red Chef Revival.
Indigenous cuisine is not Indian tacos. It’s not bannock… What it is and what should be celebrated is where you’re from, what’s around you.
In the show, each chef hosts two episodes. In his first (episode 3 in the series), Chartrand visits an Indigenous fishing village and the port city of Prince Rupert, in northern British Columbia; in the second (episode 5 in the series) he visits the Kainai Nation, also known as the Blood Tribe.
“I don’t think about food just for a few hours a day, I think about food all day long. My childhood was not about Indigenous ingredients ever. It was about my Metis family, because I was adopted. One day we’d have salmon, the next day we had tea and toast. I didn’t know where I was from. I didn’t have an identity… When I found out I was from the nation I’m from, the Enoch Nation, at 29, then it was catch-up time. I decided then I want to focus on not just my own nation but other nations because I sat there lost for so long,” he says ahead of his Blood Tribe trip, where he learns about the importance of bison to the local people, and the devastating impact when colonisation saw bison numbers drastically reduced. He visits a bison rancher and is inspired by that and other encounters to cook bison heart on an open fire.
Bison remains an important and nutritious food source in Canada, and it features several recipes in the book: chopped bison with nettle pesto, bison stew, bison liver and parsley soup, pasta with bison, and more. Many of these can be made with beef instead – such as the , which his publishers have shared with us.
There's a link to his visit to the fishing village of Ginglox, too, in a . In a sidebar to the recipe, he talks of that visit, where he learned to make boiled seal meal. And his introduction to the recipe itself is another learning point: "There’s so much boiled food in Indigenous cuisine — it’s one of the main food preparation techniques. This dish is a fancy version of so much of the simple, boiled food that our communities eat, yet it’s an example of how truly good simple can be. The silky potatoes bathed in sweet and garlic-tinted cream could be a meal on their own. Or serve them with a crispy, pan-fried fish fillet or with a bison pot roast or a simple roast chicken."
Both the book and the series offer a glimpse, through the window of food, of the meeting of history, tradition and change.
Shane's iron pot stew, which can be made with bison or beef Source: House of Anansi Press / Cathryn Sprague
Potatoes boiled in garlic cream Source: House of Anansi Press / Cathryn Sprague
Chartrand says in the show, “Indigenous cuisine is not Indian tacos. It’s not bannock… What it is and what should be celebrated is where you’re from, what’s around you.”
Chartrand’s food does both, with an honest and open passion.
Portrait and recipe images from (House of Anansi Press, 2019).
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