By: Grace Ingraham
“I hope I am encouraging people to think about the food that we eat not as products but as relations” – Natalie Doonan
Credits: Courtesy of Natalie Doonan.
Natalie is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at l’Université de Montréal. For many years her research has been based in food, studying the relationship between taste, place and the senses. During the 2021 Food Matters and Materialities Conference, Natalie presented her fieldwork from the Montreal shores of the St. Lawrence where she engaged with hunters, fishers and foragers to gain a deeper understanding of the ways in which wild plants, animals and food intersect and communicate with humans. I recently had the opportunity to interview Natalie and ask her questions about her work.
GI: To begin, what inspired you to locate your research on the Montreal shores of the St. Lawrence River?
ND: I decided to focus on Verdun which is a borough of Montreal. I got interested in this area because both my dad and grandfather grew up there and my grandfather is quite a storyteller, so I grew up listening to his stories about the area. These stories led me to specific spots in Verdun and has helped me explore where my family is from.
GI: Can you provide more detail on what the Verdun area is like?
ND: It is a segment of the St. Lawrence that is accessible to pedestrians, where people can come into direct contact with the river. I began my research by going on walks through the site with individuals that would bring me to spots that they associated with food memories.
Through this I realized that Verdun is a fascinating place. There is a great quote from Hugh MacLennan’s book, Two Solitudes, where he talks about the St. Lawrence River as being the heart of the country. I find it interesting to think about Verdun in this way because in a sense it is the colonial heart of the country. The Lachine Rapids are located in this area and the rapids represented the last hurdle to colonizing Canada because Jacque Cartier had difficulty navigating them. Therefore, it is a symbolically fascinating place that has a deep food history.
GI: In your work you use the term inter-species communication, could you explain what it means?
ND: The term simply means communication between different species. One of the main things that has come out of my work in Verdun is learning about the different kinds of communication techniques that hunters, fishers and foragers use to hear, see and sense other species. Of course, that communication will always be incomplete, but I’m interested in striving towards developing an awareness for other species by using a range of these techniques.
GI: To build on that do you have any ideas in mind for better modes of co-habitation between species and humans?
ND: There seems to be an increasing awareness amongst people in general. I’ve seen an increase in the number of YouTube videos and Netflix documentaries that discuss animal skills and intelligence. A good example is My Octopus Teacher (2020)* on Netflix. I believe things like this are opening people’s minds and hearts to understand that other species have intelligence and feelings.
But there are still ways that we don’t think of other animals like that. For instance, even though we love our pets we still treat them in ways that you wouldn’t treat another human being such as using a leash or keeping them inside. What I hope is that growing access to audio-visual recording tools will allow us to learn more about animal intelligence and transform our ways of being with other species in a positive way.
GI: Based on your experiences in Montreal, do you have any recommendations on how to get urbanites more accustomed to viewing cities as a wild place?
ND: I have been working with La Maison de l’environnement de Verdun (The Verdun Environment Center) since 2017 and they have been doing a re-naturalization project where they set aside certain areas along the waterfront of Verdun that they no longer touch and just allow the area to grow freely without human intervention.
I encourage people to go down to these re-naturalized spaces and experience the diversity of life there. Use it as an opportunity to reflect on the ways that our senses are trained to perceive certain environments as beautiful simply because they are manicured. Think about what that means and what types of life we are encouraging and discouraging in our urban spaces.
GI: Are there any steps we can take to improve barriers that exist between humans and the wilderness?
ND: We often think about domestic and wild as very polarized terms. Whereas we are really talking about a spectrum. In a manuscript I am currently working on, one of my starting points was looking at Canadian cookbooks. I found that many cookbooks were structured as cross-country road trips and classify Canadian cuisine as wild. I then became interested in focusing on a specific place and trying to locate that wild. To explore what spaces are telling us about the ways we manage human and non-human relations.
By doing this, I hope I am encouraging people to think about the food that we eat not as products but as relations, meaning that when we eat a meal, we think about all the processes involved such as other people, species, and the burning of fossil fuels. That way, we’re not merely consuming a product we are engaging in sets of relations.
GI: Before we wrap up, where do you see your research going in the future?
ND: Currently, I’m working on a series of workshops with a grade five school group. Recently we introduced the kids to waterproof video cameras which they used to view fish and see the underside of a duck swimming. We did these activities to open a conversation about biodiversity and to try to imagine the world from the perspective of other species. I’m going to be continuing these workshops throughout the year and hopefully put together an exhibition of our work next summer.
I will also be releasing a website companion to my upcoming book. The website will have interactive elements such as 360 videos that depict the landscape of Verdun from the perspective of different species. Various interviews I did with hunters, fishers, foragers, activists, and local artists will also be available to listen to.
Thank you Natalie for taking the time to answer my questions and share some of your insights on your work from Verdun. I have gained a new perspective on wild matters and the different relations involved in the food we eat.
* My Octopus Teacher (2020) is a Netflix documentary directed by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed which chronicles the developing relationship between a man named Craig Foster and a wild octopus in South Africa.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.