Skip to content

Forest to Fork provides Deni House residents traditional food

The program is designed to reconnect elders with traditional and comfort food
17471708_web1_TFP-Deni_2
Patrick Lulua (Xeni Gwet’in First Nation) providing a drum song for residents at the opening.

Food might seem a simple thing to your average citizen, but for elders and seniors, the right traditional food can make all the difference.

It’s why Interior Health has launched a new weekly program at Deni House called Forest to Fork, which aims to provide traditional dishes for residents once a week. This initiative has come out of a partnership with the Tsilhqot’in National Government, who provided information on local traditional dishes.

Megan Dark, the population health dietitian for the Cariboo-Chilcotin, previously worked for the TNG as an Indigenous Health Dietitian, whom she partnered with on this program. Work on this initiative first began in 2017 at the request of the TNG following community input, Dark said.

Originally, she said the “lofty goal” was to provide a true Indigenous foods program for the entirety of Williams Lake, with a pilot program begun at Deni House. This would consist only of local traditional dishes made from locally sourced food including berries, deer and salmon. However, they quickly realized that there are currently legislative barriers that would prevent a citywide initiative of this sort to be implemented, making them redirect their efforts.

Read More: Deni House residents enjoy a brand new sound system

Instead, they have since designed a traditional foods-inspired menu based off of the experience of local elders and knowledge keepers. Dark said they were very careful to make the dishes as true to tradition as possible and often had elders teach Interior Health workers how to make the dishes.

Now with a full four-week alternating menu, Dark said they’ve begun to serve it at Deni House every Thursday for lunch, now known as the Forest to Fork project. This includes blueberry soup, elk stew, salmon, deer meat and Saskatoon berries to name but a few as well as some common comfort foods from First Nations communities like bannock, yeast bread and cabbage pudding.

Providing residents with quality traditional foods is important for their long-term care, Dark said, as it reminds them of home and increases their quality of life by connecting them to culture and themselves. Programs like this already have been employed in other provinces and Dark hopes initiatives like this help encourage their adoption throughout B.C.

“As a dietitian, I know that the nutrient density of traditional foods is much higher than market foods or commercial foods. We know that people who eat more traditional food are healthier and suffer from less chronic diseases,” Dark said.

Elders who enter residential care and are unable to access their traditional foods often suffer a disconnection from their culture, Dark said, while being able to eat the food they grew up on provides a lot of comfort and connection to themselves. In addition, the Truth and Reconciliation report found that denying people their traditional food is like denying them their culture and its always good to reduce these barriers when they can for cultural reconciliation.

In the future Dark hopes to expand the project and menu to include more local foods, including those of other nations and bands within the Cariboo.

She also encourages people with relatives in Deni House to attend the lunchtime on Thursdays to make the lunch more of a social event for the seniors. Non-residents will have to pay a $6 fee to eat.



patrick.davies@wltribune.com

Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter

17471708_web1_TFP-Deni_3
Baked salmon on the menu at the May 2 launch.
17471708_web1_TFP_Deni_10
Gheboa Zeleniski (Interim Food Service Supervisor), Tsideldel elder Edna Lulua, and me (Megan Dark, dietitian with Interior Health and Tsilhqot’in National Government) at Edna’s in-service training on the traditional menu.


Patrick Davies

About the Author: Patrick Davies

An avid lover of theatre, media, and the arts in all its forms, I've enjoyed building my professional reputation in 100 Mile House.
Read more