Abenaki citizens taste traditions, preserve culture at home-cooked banquet

Local News

With a home-cooked banquet, Abenaki citizens taste traditional foods and preserve culture

开云体育 | By Elodie Reed

Published May 21, 2025 at 5:00 AM EDT

A photo of two younger people inside a kitchen. Both are wearing glasses and aprons, and they're standing at a metal counter with baking items on it, including metal bowls full of baked goods. — Cousins Sigwanis Lachapelle, left, and Isaak Lachapelle-Gill make the bread bannock 鈥� a mainstay for many North American Indigenous peoples 鈥� on Saturday, May 3. Isaak was the main organizer for a home-cooked banquet at the Odanak First Nation reserve in Quebec.

By 10 a.m. on the first Saturday in May, a fire was crackling behind the community hall on the Odanak First Nation reserve in Quebec.

The flames were hot and ready to cook the Canada goose lying across the lap of Yves Landry.

"I'm gonna pluck it and cook it over the fire, like, traditional way," he said.

A photo of an older man in a brown sweater, a white apron and black latex gloves, seated and holding out the wing of a goose that's lying on his lap next to a trash bag. — W么linak First Nation citizen Yves Landry plucks a goose that he hunted with his son and some other folks earlier this spring.

A close-up photo of hands using a large needle and twine to sew up the opening of a cooked goose. — Yves Landry uses his grandfather's leather needle to sew up the goose.

Yves is a 72-year-old Abenaki citizen of W么linak First Nation. That reserve is located about a 45-minute drive northeast of the Odanak reserve, along the St. Lawrence River.

And it鈥檚 the area where Yves, his son and other folks went geese hunting this spring.

"We got some 60 or something like that," Yves said.

He has been hunting geese since he was young.

But he said the places he used to go with his dad and uncles 鈥� 鈥� are no longer accessible. The Quebec government put the lakes inside in the '90s.

"They didn't consult the Abenaki in W么linak," Yves said.

A photo of a green sign with white lettering reading W么linak with a white church building and green trees in the background. — The W么linak First Nation reserve, photographed here in May 2024, is about a 45-minute drive northeast along the St. Lawrence River from the Odanak First Nation reserve. Both Abenaki communities are headquartered in Quebec, but have ancestral homelands across the Northeast.

In Canada and the United States, colonial governments have , on those communities and

Today, the reserves for Odanak and W么linak First Nations add up to a combined 2.5 square miles.

But the First Nations , or Ndakina, in Quebec and New England. And through their . Including those two lakes where Yves Landry grew up hunting geese.

An image of a map of what's now the northeastern U.S. and southeastern Canada, overlaid with the Native communities those lands belonged to before colonization. In the center is W么banakiak Abenakis, which takes up much of present-day Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. — A map at the Mus茅e des Ab茅nakis on the Odanak First Nation reserve shows the ancestral lands of Northeast Native communities pre-colonization. Abenaki territory stretches down from present-day Quebec through Vermont as well as into New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts.

"We're trying to be 鈥� steward of the place," said Yves, who works for the Ndakina Office. "So we could go back and do our activities, but with in mind protecting what is supposed to be protected."

Odanak and W么linak First Nations are also increasingly trying to teach Abenaki citizens how to hunt, fish and trap and gather plants on their territory. And 鈥� to prepare and eat those foods, through an annual community banquet.

From there, the younger generations might be able to carry their culture forward. Like 25-year-old Isaak Lachapelle-Gill and his 27-year-old cousin, Sigwanis Lachapelle.

They鈥檙e both citizens of Odanak First Nation and also work for the Ndakina Office. And for the banquet, they made a mainstay of many North American Indigenous nations:

"The recipe is easy to steal," Isaak joked. "It's water and 鈥�"

Before he could finish revealing the secret, though, Sigwanis jumped in: "Hey hey hey!"

A photo of a metal bowl and two pans full of bannock, which looks like little biscuits. The bannock in the bowl have chocolate chips in them. — Sigwanis Lachapelle made some bannock with chocolate chips in them, the way her mom used to when she was young.

A photo of a younger person wearing jeans, sneakers, a tshirt, sturgeon beaded earrings, an apron and oven mitts pulling a baking sheet with bannock on it out of the oven. — Sigwanis Lachapelle pulls out the last batch of bannock before the Wlipogwat banquet.

Isaak was the main organizer of the banquet project, and he had a lot of help from Sigwanis.

"So the project's name is Wlipogwat," she said. "So Wlipogwat means 'it tastes good' or 'it has good taste.'"

And Isaak explained that a lot of Abenaki citizens maybe haven't necessarily tried meat from muskrats or beavers 鈥� or they haven't tried it in a long time.

"So they want to taste it again," he said. "Maybe they'll get the interest to go trap it for themselves, or at least be involved more in some of the community gatherings that happen."

A photo of a paper reading "menu wlipogwat" with round photos of food on it. The menu is sitting on a table. — The Wlipogwat menu included things like blueberry soup, muskrat tacos and three sisters salad with ramps and fiddleheads.

Though Sigwanis and Isaak say they don鈥檛 want to put too much pressure on themselves or fellow Abenaki citizens.

"It builds a lot of stress saying, 'I need to learn every single thing there is so that like the culture doesn't die,'" Sigwanis said. "But it's just one 鈥� like, you need to put one foot in front of the other."