Country food, reconciliation and butchering my 1st seal at age 45

Joseph Murdoch-Flowers is co-executive director of Qajuqturvik Community Food Centre in Iqaluit

My father’s name is Bill Flowers. He is of Inuit descent and grew up in Rigolet, Nunatsiavut, in Labrador.

Dad is now 72. He went to residential school at the age of 13. He attended the Yale School in North West River, Labrador, from 1965 to 1967. The school was run by the International Grenfell Association.

I recently asked Dad about the food they served at “the dorm,” as he called the residence associated with the school. I wanted to understand the relationship between residential schools, food, and the role of food in reconciliation.

“I don’t remember any meals of country food,” he told me.

Country food is what Inuit call animals harvested from the land, air or water.

“We’d talk about the kinds of things we’d eat back home. There was always a kind of longing — we’d talk about caribou, seal, goose and other home-cooked meals.”

As co-executive director of Qajuqturvik Community Food Centre in Iqaluit, I think about food a lot. But I hadn’t realized how different my childhood experience with food was from my dad’s. Growing up, he relied on salmon, cod, caribou, berries and wild fowl. Only about a quarter of his diet came from store-bought food.

As a child, I was a picky eater whose diet consisted mostly of processed western foods, with an occasional meal of country food.

“We didn’t like the food, that’s the bottom line,” my dad said about the residential school cafeteria. “It wasn’t appetizing. And there wasn’t enough. I’d go to bed hungry a lot of times. That wasn’t unusual for any of us.”

William Flowers, age 15, stands with his sister Shirley Flowers, age 13, in Rigolet, Nunatsiavut, in 1966. (Photo courtesy of William Flowers)

Today, Dad realizes that the residential school cafeteria did a lot more than serve subpar food — it severed him from his culture and identity.

“There are some huge pieces that make up culture. Language is one. Food is another,” he said.

“When people want to know you, they ask what did you grow up on? Lingonberries, cloudberries, caribou, salmon, cod — food is what identifies you. What beef might be to someone else in another part of the world, these foods identified me and my culture.”

Talking to Dad helped me better understand the disconnect survivors of residential schools have often told me about. It was a rupture within families and across generations, a disruption of our whole way of life and culture. And that extended to our food.

As a 45-year-old Inuk, an intergenerational survivor of residential schools, trained as a chef in French cuisine, educated as a lawyer in the Canadian legal system, talking to Dad about food helped me understand my own disconnection from Inuit culture.

I don’t speak Inuktitut, nor do I hunt. I don’t know some fairly important things about what it means to be Inuk.

What I can recognize is the impact that removing Inuit children from their cultural practices had, and continues to have, on our sense of identity and wholeness as people. And I can act on that knowledge in hopes of repairing a little bit of the damage caused by those disconnections.

Food sovereignty is a central value and aim of Qajuqturvik Community Food Centre. I contribute to this by helping to provide a space and learning opportunities for Inuit, including myself, to hunt or butcher a seal. In the process, I can connect with and reclaim parts of my culture and identity.

There are generations of Indigenous people who know the importance of culture, language and food, and are finding ways to live with the disconnection. We’re learning how to reclaim and reconnect with our cultures in so many different ways. Having community spaces where food knowledge and practices can be shared is an integral part of that.

I recently sent my Dad a photo of me helping to butcher a seal at Qajuqturvik. Though I had attended culinary school and butchered many animals in professional kitchens before, I’d never touched a seal.

Dad told me, “Your late Uncle Arch butchered many a seal.”

When I asked how it felt to see his son, at 45, cutting a seal for the first time, Dad said: “Proud to see it.”