Page 33 - Georgina Island

Food

Less formal parts of First Nations culture, which might be
unfamiliar to a non-Indigenous person, are the delicious foods
traditionally prepared on the island from ingredients that can be
fished, harvested, or bought from the grocery store.

Fish

For many Georgina Island people, fish is a favourite and
continuous staple in our diet. Other people prefer to eat other
foods since fish is all they ate when they were growing up. We
prepare fish in a variety of ways such as baking, grilling, and One of our favourite events is
to get together and have a big
frying. We catch and eat whitefish, trout, and perch regularly,
fish fry.
but we favour pickerel. There aren’t many pickerel left in our
lakes, so we purchase this fish from other First Nations.

WORDS TO KNOW
Harvest
bakwezhigan: any type of
The Anishinaabe people traditionally harvested sap and bread, including scone (see
produced maple syrup as a delicious addition to our diet. To page 33)
this day, the people of Georgina Island harvest maple sap and
produce maple syrup. We use maple syrup to sweeten tea or to
pour over bread or what is on the table as bakwezhigan.

It is a lot of work to collect the sap that runs from
the trees.

Once the sap is collected, it takes all day to boil down
the clear sap in big kettles over an open fire to create
the syrup we all love.

Georgina Island First Nation 31

ogemawahj_community_book1.indd 31 2019-02-27 10:32 AM