Terroir as Territory: Frybread and Fermentation as Critical Settler and Decolonial Practice

Abstract:In this text, I reflect on the relationship between terroir and territory as part of a critical settler practice of sourdough bread-baking in the prairies of Treaty 4 lands, Saskatchewan. I propose that a framework of terroir-as-territory is one way of conceiving of and practising decolonialization within land-based food systems. Writing through conversation, reflection, and provocation, I consider the place of fermentation practices—specifically wheat fermentation—in settler and Indigenous communities in Saskatchewan, where fermentation (the chemical changes brought on by microbes) embodies simultaneously the processes of preservation and transformation. As I write, I draw from my ongoing curatorial research into contemporary art and fermentation as well as my long-standing interest in food security and food justice, pivoting, in this short textual performance, into food writing and criticism as activism.