CEDAR, BOLOGNA & THE COMPLEX TRUTH OF SURVIVAL FOOD

My niece stands bathed in dappled sunlight, her small hands occupied with two seemingly unrelated treasures, a classic rez bologna sandwich (the white bread and mustard-only variety that’s fueled generations) and a bucket brimming with fragrant cedar we’ve gathered for tea and medicines. This unlikely pairing tells a deeper story about who we are and how we move through the world. Photo by kelsie kilawna

That bologna sandwich in my niece’s hand holds generations of quiet resilience between its slices. It’s the taste of creativity when options were endless, not because we had abundance, but because we made it so. Bologna fried crisp with potatoes for dinner, chopped into macaroni when the deer meat ran out, tucked into school lunches wrapped in wax paper, these weren’t just meals, they were lifelines.

We don’t demonize the foods that carried us through hard winters and harder policies. There’s an unspoken understanding in Indigenous communities that survival sometimes comes packaged in processed meats and government commodity cheese. That bologna represents aunties stretching $20 to feed six kids, uncles working double shifts at the mill who still made sure there was something, anything, to eat. It’s our grannies who turned limited ingredients into love on a plate. To shame these foods would be to shame the ingenuity of those who kept us fed against impossible odds.

But wisdom also tells us that survival looks different now. Where our grandparents might have relied on bologna because it was all they had, we’re reclaiming the right to balance, honouring what sustained us while making space for what truly nourishes us. That same niece who happily munches her sandwich also knows the real names of our medicinal plants. She can identify which hillside’s berries taste sweetest, she understands why we leave the first bush untouched.

This is the beautiful contradiction of Indigenous foodways today: We can laugh about the “bologna days” while simmering bone broth from a deer we harvested ourselves. We can appreciate commodity cheese while getting lost in learning the art of smoking our own. We teach our children to harvest cedar with one hand and accept that sometimes, the other hand might hold a sandwich that comes vacuum-sealed.

The truth lives in the balance, in knowing that food sovereignty isn’t about perfection, but about power. It’s not the absence of bologna, but the presence of choice. Not the rejection of what kept us alive, but the fierce, unapologetic reclaiming of what makes us thrive.

Food sovereignty isn’t pretty.

It’s twisted roots and scarred hands. It’s the ghost of commodity cheese in our freezers and the future of wild game in our smokehouses. It’s knowing the stories of the government-issued cans our grandparents survived on, and exactly which mountains our great-grandparents hunted before the Indian Agents came. It’s bologna and deer, frybread and camas bulbs, the Indian Agent’s rations and the secret gardens our Ancestors tended.

Food sovereignty isn’t purity.

It’s survival and rebellion tangled together like cedar roots and concrete. It’s the ugly, glorious truth that we’re here both because of what we kept and what we lost. That every bite, whether it’s processed meat or pit-cooked salmon, carries the weight of resistance.

So yes, we pass down both teachings. How to ask permission from the cedar trees, and how to doctor up bologna with whatever’s left in the fridge. How to harvest medicine, and how to stretch a dollar.

Because sovereignty isn’t a destination, it’s the fire that burns in the space between what was taken and what we took back. Between survival and ceremony. Between that sandwich in my niece’s hand, and the cedar tea steeping beside it.

We are the contradiction. And that’s exactly how we win.

A gathering day feast. Photo by kelsie kilawna