BU students gather for bannock cooked over fire

Smoke rose from a small fire in Brandon University’s Kavanagh Courtyard on Friday as students and passersby gathered for something warm and cultural.

About 50 people showed up around lunchtime to watch, wait for and eat bannock prepared over an open flame as part of a new Indigenous foodways of the Western Hemisphere course. Some stopped briefly to grab a piece and move on, while others lingered in the cold, chatting and waiting their turn.

The outdoor cooking session was a way to bring classroom discussions to life, Ian Puppe of BU’s Rural Development Department told the Sun in an interview.

“I’m teaching a course right now on Indigenous foodways of the Western Hemisphere, and we’ve been talking about a bunch of different kinds of food that people made and continue to make here in Canada and across Turtle Island,” he said. “Bannock, or fry bread as it’s sometimes called, is a really popular food in lots of communities.”

He said bannock is deceptively simple — typically made with flour, baking powder, water, salt and sometimes sugar, cinnamon or raisins — but carries deep cultural meaning.

“These are foods that people ate and continue to eat as soul food and heartwarming foods,” Puppe said. “They’re easy to whip up. Grandma will whip up a warm fry bread when you’re just hanging out in the afternoon, or you’ll have it for breakfast or after dinner.”

Bannock also opens the door to complex conversations about history and colonialism, and most of its ingredients are not indigenous to Turtle Island, said Puppe, an assistant professor.

“Wheat comes from Europe, and the olive oil we’re using today definitely comes from somewhere else,” he said. “Yet these recipes are mainly thought of as First Nations food. Most communities, including Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe, Dakota, have their own version.”

Cooking over a fire, he said, allowed students to explore not just taste, but technique and knowledge passed down over generations.

“Sometimes things get burnt, sometimes things aren’t cooked as much as you’d hope,” he said. “Learning how skilled people had to be to make use of fire and much more direct ways of cooking is one of the things we’re looking at.”

The session sparked discussion among students about regional and family variations, from adding oil directly into the dough to cooking Bannock dry over the fire.

“It gave us a chance to talk about why we would do it differently and what the effects of cooking differently would be,” Puppe said. “So we’re doing everything from a little bit of Indigenous chemistry and cooking to a little bit of Indigenous philosophy and politics in the course.”

Puppe said he was surprised by the turnout, especially given the cold.

“We have 30 enrolled in the class, and I saw about 20 or 25 of them,” he said. “But more people from outside the class than inside the class turned out, and they snapped up the bannock. It got eaten pretty quickly.”

Any leftovers, he said, would be dropped off at the Indigenous Peoples’ Centre on campus.

Friday’s event marked several firsts for Puppe.

“This is the first time I’ve taught the course, and the first time I’ve had a campfire on campus,” he said.

Organizing it came with challenges. “It’s not something people are used to doing on campus, so there were a few hiccups.”

Still, he hopes it won’t be the last.

“Now that we’ve got it rolling, I think it would be easy to do it again,” Puppe said.

“I might make it a pretty common event.”

» aodutola@brandonsun.com

» X: @AbiolaOdutola