The Conversation: Chef Joseph Shawana on teaching, culinary competitions, his next big swing, and what matters most
Having recently judged the Garland Canada Culinary Competition, and closed out the winter semester at Centennial College where he is Indigenous Culinary Advisor, Chef Joseph is moving into the summer season, but he’s not thinking about vacation. We were fortunate to grab a little time in between classes, feast preparations and planning for his next, very big venture.
MM: Could you tell us a little about the Indigenous culinary program at Centennial and your role as a culinary advisor?
Chef Joseph Shawana: I teach anywhere between three and four classes each semester and ultimately, I’m trying to tell the Indigenous true history of Canada through a culinary lens, so to speak. Everything from teaching the traditional stories of The Three Sisters, to sweetgrass braiding, to tanning hides, to using 100 per cent of the animal for various purposes— and not just culinary uses, but also for clothing, tools, housing, and so forth. This Indigenous knowledge sharing that I do daily, I’m teaching to students who are newcomers. I figured it was the best way to show students who come to Canada, sometimes from the other side of the world, what and who Indigenous people are, rather than have them learn a version of that through the media. For many of them, this will be their first time seeing and meeting with an Indigenous person, so it’s very important to me to give them that experience directly.
For a lot of these students, this is their first time away from their home, away from their country, and in Canada itself. So, I want to teach these students on a more personal level. For example, I went to Day School when I was a kid and a lot of them have never heard of residential schools or understand what that concept was and what they tried to do. They’re very eager, in a very positive way, to learn the true history of Indigenous people in Canada, and I’m very fortunate to be able to teach it through a culinary lens.
MM: How do students arriving in Canada for the first time receive this knowledge differently than you know, a Canadian-born student? What’s the difference in terms of their response?
JS: They’re more perceptive to it, right? If you’re born and raised in North America, you’ve been taught a certain curriculum in school on Indigenous people throughout Turtle Island, and that’s the concept you go with throughout your entire life.
Newcomers who come into my classroom or who just meet me in the hallway get to hear the story of where I come from—my history and the true history of the territory where I’m from—not just what they read in a book or read in their citizenship test or something someone else has told them. It’s actually told through the lens of an Indigenous chef and Indigenous person.
MM: Has this approach been more gratifying for you?
JS: For me, it’s been humbling. It’s allowed me to open up more. My wife has really peeled back the onion on me over the years, so to speak. She’s really helped me open up and let my voice be heard. Talking to the students is also helping me a lot more—basically because I don’t know them. I like to hear their stories and where they come from as well.
On the first day of class, I always tell them I would love it if they could speak their own language because it would allow me to better understand where they’re coming from as individuals. Their sense of humour and their personality are shown through their language. I also tell them that, unfortunately for me, we lost our language. We’re slowly trying to retain it and reclaim it. I was born around it, and I can understand it, but to openly speak it is difficult for me unless I’m around a fluent speaker.
I try and make those kinds of connections with the students and then they open up more and they’re more themselves in the classroom, which brings in a more fun environment. More humility and more understanding to counter the industrial education sector.
MM: What’s your vision for Indigenous culinary education? Where do you want to see it go?
JS: I would love to see an Indigenous culinary and foodways education course in every single college, post-secondary school and trade school—for culinary or accounting or any subject—and see an Indigenous perspective and our ways of learning.
Our knowledge was never written down. It was always passed through storytelling, and it was up to the individual who received that information to interpret it and then take back what they needed to help them in life. And that’s the way I teach too. Essentially, I share my version or interpretation of the curriculum for that day and they’re very receptive and I think more reflective when they’re taught that way. I’m not saying that the way that we’re teaching now is bad, but everybody has their own method to get their information across. For me, it’s more through storytelling and it’s more through knowledge sharing.
It’s very important for an individual like me or another Indigenous person who’s representing their field to have a space to teach the way we teach and the way we were taught.
So, I think it’s very important to have an Indigenous voice in the education field to focus on each specific area. I focus on culinary and Indigenous foods, and there should be an Indigenous chef in every single culinary program across the country representing each region. For example, I’m part of the Three Fires Confederacy, which is the Odawas, the Potawatomis and the Ojibwes, and together we encompass most of the Great Lakes, so I try to teach what I know and what I’ve been told about our food system within the Great Lakes area. So ideally there should be a West Coast Indigenous chef focused on West Coast Indigenous foods and others representing the East, the North and everywhere in between. Every province and territory should have their specific cuisine represented in schools across the country.
MM: Have Indigenous culinary courses become more popular since you’ve been teaching?
JS: Yes. There’s been a lot of post-secondary schools and colleges with culinary schools that are trying to make headway in Indigenous foods, and it’s very difficult. Like, people always ask me to explain what Indigenous food is, and I don’t even have an answer for them, right? Indigenous food encompasses all the tribes, and all the communities everywhere across the country and you’re trying to define all of that in one paragraph? It’s impossible.
Each of us, as Indigenous chefs, have our own knowledge we want to share and our own way of how we want to teach and share it.
So, there’s been a huge demand and want for Indigenous food in these culinary schools, which is very good, but in order to make that happen I think we have to do this right, with the best possible representation.
MM: What types of students are seeking out knowledge and education on Indigenous foods and cuisine?
JS: The students who are really seeking it are the ones that are really focused on a specific niche or area of culinary. So, there’s French, Italian, Mandarin, Cantonese—there’s a whole slew of cuisines, but the students who are asking for this knowledge are the ones who are very centred in what they want to do and focus on in their careers. They can already envision themselves being a chef and, after 20 years of taking command of a kitchen, running their own restaurant and putting what they learned over those 20 years to work for themselves.
There are also a lot of newcomers. Centennial is an international school, so we have international communities and individuals who are very open-minded to Indigenous foods because they don’t even know what wild rice is. We have students who try to cook wild rice the way they would cook basmati rice, but it’s nowhere near the same. It takes longer and you need more liquid, more patience and time to get it right or it just turns into mush. I always tell them you have to understand your ingredients first before you can even start cooking with them. Indigenous foods are land-based foods, and you can’t consume too much at one given time. You have to space it out. For example, you can’t drink cedar tea every single day or it’ll upset your stomach. These foods are meant to nourish us, more so than commercial foods, but we have to take them in moderation. We have to understand the quality of the ingredients, their history, how they’re harvested, processed and served.
MM: You have seen significant change and growth in the Indigenous culinary scene. What are you most excited about?
JS: We’re making headway here at Centennial. I can’t say too much about what we’re planning just yet, but it will be the first initiative of its kind in Canada, if not North America, for culinary students. I’m very excited for that.
Outside of the realm of teaching, I’m looking at spaces now to open a new restaurant here in Toronto with a chef-partner of mine, Mark De Passorio—a Michelin Star-quality Indigenous restaurant. He already has two Michelin Stars from France, so he knows what he’s doing, and I know I’m ready for that level of dedication and patience, so we need to get it done.
He’s on the same page as I am—let’s find a spot where we both feel comfortable and that really welcomes people in before they even enter the restaurant. It’s a very specific thing we’re looking for and it has to be. We’re putting a lot of time and money into it.
I’m also excited to focus a little more on myself and spend more time with my wife and son and our families. Over the past few years, we haven’t really been able to do that because we were running the restaurant up North.
I’m also glad to see the return of our Full Moon Feasts at the College. We had them when I started here, but COVID put a nail in it. We recently relaunched it and we’re celebrating the Bear Moon tonight. We talk about the spiritual meaning behind it and the foods we’re going to serve. Chef Rodney Bowers and I plan the menu and students who want to learn about the Indigenous foods we’re making and the stories behind them come in and help. They get that experience and help with the front of house and develop a non-alcoholic drink. Our Elder in residence also comes and speaks to the meaning of that moon sharing knowledge with the group.
MM: Who attends the dinner?
JS: It’s open to all the students free of cost, and if there are any seats left, faculty and people from within the community are more than welcome to join. It’s a very informative dinner series and it’s something that’s close to my heart because my wife and son always come to support me. My son comes into the kitchen, and he helps with plating and doing the finishing touches. He just turned nine and is always very eager to help in the kitchen. He actually got to cook in Paris, France last year. I made up the dish—we made a wild rice pasta with really fresh chanterelles and finished off with a fried sage—but he did everything. He ground the flour from the wild rice, he made the whole pasta. He rolled it. He cut it. He blanched it. He fried the mushrooms. I want to say that he’s probably the first eight-year-old who has ever cooked in École Ducasse at that kind of level.
MM: Does he want to be a chef?
JS: He really liked it, but he’s still at a young age. I do think he’ll actually be a chef because he has that level of precision and that level of attention to detail—he notices everything—but it’s all up to him.
MM: There have been voices suggesting that fine dining is on the decline, yet you’ve chosen to go with your gut on your new concept. What gives you faith?
JS: Oh, it’s one hundred percent down, but the restaurant industry has always been unpredictable, even before COVID. I tend to go with whatever my gut is telling me because it’s more accurate than any data that’s out there.
It’s very difficult, but as long as you have the dedication and patience, you know what you’re doing is right, and you have that essence you need to be a restaurateur, then, once you get there, it’s the most rewarding thing ever. The restaurant business is very unpredictable. It goes up and it goes down and you can close in a heartbeat, but to have something that’s successful, that’s up and running, is like nothing else.
The people who do well at it have that drive and dedication. If you understand what the industry is, how it behaves, and how it’s marketed, I think you will do very well.
MM: You were an esteemed judge at this year’s Garland Culinary Competition. Why did you choose to participate and what do you appreciate about competition in the culinary world?
JS: From an audience standpoint, you’re seeing these chefs on stage battle it out against each other and that’s exactly how it is every single night of our lives when we’re on the line working in the kitchen. It’s very unpredictable. It’s very precise. It’s very demanding. That’s exactly what competitions bring—especially one like Garland that’s so open on stage where everybody can see you cooking. They can see your excellence and they can see your mistakes. It’s a very high-stakes, demanding thing to participate in and it brings out the best and the worst in people.
But, at the end of the day, it brings a sense of community back to the restaurant industry, right? There may be millions of restaurants in the world, but it’s such a tight community and such a small world because we all know somebody who knows somebody. It’s also a very supportive community and I like to support as much as I possibly can. Judging the Garland Canada Competition wasn’t something I ever thought I’d be doing, but it’s something I’m very happy to have taken on and I’m very honoured to have been part of it because I know some great chefs that have gone through the competition itself and they have made a name for themselves.
MM: Have you judged other culinary competitions?
JS: Nothing to this standard or at this level. I’ve judged closed-door competitions in the past and I really like it because I get to be really open and honest.
Competitors are not getting judged by the audience, but by the judge’s palate, the judge’s perception of your dish and how well you presented yourself in the kitchen. It’s a very individualized thing to go through.
MM: Have you ever competed yourself?
JS: I have, but it’s not for me. Everybody’s better at something than somebody else, right? I have 24 students in my class, and I always tell them, “I could give 24 of the world’s best chefs the same recipe and they’ll come back with 24 different dishes.” It’s very individualized, and I’m most interested in seeing what’s left on people’s plates at the end of their meal.
Personally, I don’t like to put myself above anybody else. I have won a couple of competitions, and the praise and that pedestal are not for me. That’s just my own personality; I like to remain humble. I like to remember that anything I have in this world can be taken away from me within a minute, right? In order for me to maintain my level of professionalism, I need to remain grounded. Ego can get in the way on so many different levels in this industry and that’s difficult to deal with.
MM: Do you approach judging more with the mindset of a teacher?
JS: As a teacher, I’m teaching how to do things in a specific way as the curriculum tells me to do, but as a knowledge sharer, I like to observe what people are doing. If I’m judging something, I’ll judge it based on the culinary techniques I’ve been educated on versus the things that I would do in a kitchen when time is on the line. Culinary competitions are very precise and detail oriented and they have to be. You’re being judged not only on how your dish looks, but how it tastes, how the cuts are, how everything is seasoned, whether you seared it properly and to the judges’ liking, which also comes into effect. It’s all of these technical details that are judged that I like to judge on. I don’t like to judge just based on my own personal taste, but I’ll always ask those questions: “What was the outcome that you envisioned for this dish?” or, “What are the flavour profiles you wanted to highlight in this dish?” And then I’ll judge based on how the chef prepared it and the vision behind it. If it’s lacking something the competitor said should be in there, I’ll move away from it.
MM: What’s next in the national Indigenous culinary scene?
JS: At Indigenous Culinary of Associated Nations (ICAN), we represent a lot of chefs from across the country and we’re really trying to open up doors that haven’t been opened before in the culinary and tourism space. So, it’s very important that we have the right representation in the right places and the right individuals teaching our future generations.
Having somebody that is representative to a place where they claim is very important and sets a precedent for how everything is perceived and taught from that moment onward. ICAN is trying to get that right representation into those fields and into those places of employment to ensure we have a voice, and we are breaking more barriers down as we move along.
It’s very important not only to me, but also to my board and our executive director that we accomplish our goals that we set out every single year and that we’re allowed to speak and tell our truth in everything. We’ve been there since the inception of ICAN, so we know where we want to take it and how we want to get there. It’s a very slow pace, but it’s better than no pace at all.
MM: Are you seeing more young people, in culinary or other disciplines, stepping into some of the opportunities ICAN is creating?
JS: Yes. There are a lot of tourism businesses that are focusing on culinary offerings now. With that comes more jobs within our field for Indigenous culinary students. By creating those positions, we’re actually creating a better economy for our communities as well
as for those individuals. It’s important for us to focus on that kind of work, but also important to focus on how we want to teach these individuals to be and thrive in that workplace. How we get there is very important. That’s why we’re taking things slowly, building up our accomplishments and bringing more people into our organization who can represent those territories and provinces across the country.
Chef Joseph Shawana is a member of the Quell talent roster of diverse chefs, certified drink experts and health, lifestyle and food content creators. We’re ready. Let’s make real change together.
