Our Ancestors' Kitchen

Written by Willie Poll

Illustrated by Shaikara David 

Annick Press

978-1-77321-962-2

36 pp.

Ages 4-7

April 2025 

 

Our ancestors teach us that there are memories in our meals.

There is magic in our cooking.

There is culture in our food.

 

So begins Willie Poll's story of a child learning at the stove of her grandma. With each dish comes a story and an invitation to witness how their ancestors lived and her own memories of her Grandpa and her community.

From Our Ancestors' Kitchen, written by Willie Poll, illustrated by Shaikara David

First they cook the minoomin (wild rice) and the girl begins to see a different scene within the kitchen. She can smell the water in which the wild rice grows, and she can hear the frogs, and see her ancestors on the water harvesting the rice. 

From Our Ancestors' Kitchen, written by Willie Poll, illustrated by Shaikara David

Next, Grandma is cooking meat, and the child sees the kitchen transformed with the colours of fall and animals stocking food for winter, and she remembers hunting with her Grandpa. That meat brings memories of finding mooz (moose) with their moose calls, and the tradition of giving thanks with prayer and asemaa (tobacco) after the mooz's "spirit danced into the sky." As important is the sharing of the meat with their Elders so that they might also care for their community. Their cooking together continues with maple syrup (zhiiwaagamizigan) and sunchokes (ashkibwaa) and blueberries, each bringing memories of time with her Grandpa and with the lives of their ancestors. And when the family and friends gather to eat, their ancestors join them.

From Our Ancestors' Kitchen, written by Willie Poll, illustrated by Shaikara David

Willie Poll, a Métis writer from Sault Ste. Marie and now of Prince Edward Island, reminds us of the importance of food to culture and to connecting us with those who came before us. Whether we learned to cook the foods from their hands or how to harvest the ingredients from age-old practices, those culinary experiences are almost bred in the bone. And when connected to our ancestors, the experiences are almost spiritual, as this child recognizes in the richness of the memories and the awareness of her heritage. With each ingredient and dish, she is transported to places she has been and to people she may have never met. But still the sensory experiences of those foods have become a part of her, to share with others now and forever.

 

Shaikara David, an Indigenous Mohawk from Akwesáhsne, uses her double-spread illustrations to bridge the contemporary with the past seamlessly. On a single spread, the child and her grandmother cook in a modern kitchen which transitions to an outdoor setting of trees and water and include Woodland-style artwork on blue backgrounds for animals and more. (See the rabbit, fox, squirrel and birds in the illustration below.) Shaikara David creates an organic connection between the present and the past almost effortlessly but still with some whimsy like the presence of the water rising beneath the kitchen table upon which a frog sits.

From Our Ancestors' Kitchen, written by Willie Poll, illustrated by Shaikara David

Many of us know that connection with our heritage and our ancestors through food but Willie Poll and Shaikara David help us to see the one that comes through an intergenerational relationship and into a culture with which most of us are unfamiliar. Moreover, in her author's note, Willie Poll wants readers to think about Indigenous Peoples and their connection with the land, as well as other cultures and their connection to food and the land. It's a relationship that is borne from acknowledgement and appreciation, enduring generations even as things change around us.