Our annual Indigenous student celebration is moving online! We are excited to create a virtual place that makes our students feel special, honours their achievements, and holds space for Indigenous culture and teachings. Join us Friday, June 5 at noon for a Virtual Indigenous Celebration Facebook live stream featuring some special performances on the Indigenous Education Facebook page.

Get ready to host your own at home celebration by making bannock with a recipe from our own “Cooking with the Coyote” Corey Whitford, Indigenous Language Instructor. We are so excited he is sharing his bannock secrets with us!

“The art of making a delicious bannock as follows:

• In a medium bowl, eye ball all of your ingredients, just like my koko used to do it.
• First, put around three cups of flour.
• Add half a tablespoon of salt and a full tablespoon of baking powder. Stir all the dry ingredients in the bowl.
• Now make a well in the center of your bowl by pushing all the mixed flour towards the edge.
• Next, add about a cup and a half of warm water.
• This next step is the most critical part of the journey to a well-made bannock. Gently use a spoon to begin scraping small portions of the wall of the bowl – be sure to take only small increments each time. Make sure to do this until all the flour is combined into the water.
• When you are done mixing thoroughly and all flour is mixed in; it should be a thick medium texture.
• Start folding the dough right inside the bowl about twenty times or until it feels like it is not sticky.
• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Celsius.
• Pull out the dough from the mixing bowl and put it on a lightly floured area of your counter and begin flattening it with a flat patting down movement.
• This is the part where you don’t want to knead the dough too much because if you do… your bannock will become real hard. So make sure that you knead the dough only about 3-4 times, it should not take too long to do.
• Place it on a baking tray, then take a fork and start poking holes in the flat kneaded dough.
• Put the baking tray in the oven for about 23-25 minutes. It should rise and turn into a golden brown colour as it bakes.
• Take it out and slather it with butter all over; stand it up on the kitchen counter for about 10 minutes.
• After ten minutes of standing, rip-off a giant piece of bannock; put butter on it, and then slather it again with raspberry jam.

And there you go a-la-bakwezhigan!”