David and McGoliath: The politics of food

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It was a beautiful Easter weekend and the Skydome was abuzz with the sounds

of thousands upon thousands of people enjoying the first-ever Toronto International Powwow. People of all nations were bustling around shopping at all the Native arts and crafts booth, or watching the dancing and drumming taking place on the field. To these powwow-jaded eyes it looked like people were having a good time.

Unfortunately I, on the other hand, was not. Off in the corner at one of the nine food booths that were to sell a variety of traditional Native cuisine, I was being involved as a reluctant participant in an amazingly stupid corporate food fight. As strange as it may sound, it was between the clown and the deer.

Like all great wars, the inciting incident is often the silliest thing you can imagine. And far too often, innocent civilians are often drawn into the line of fire. Case in point: Native Earth Performing Arts, the Native theatre company I am affiliated with, had co-sponsored a Native nouvelle cuisine food stall with the award winning and equally innocent Native chef David Wolfman. There we were, happily cooking away - grilling venison burgers, buffalo sausages, and heating a succulent salmon chowder when the proverbial corporate boom was lowered.

According to a McDonald's spokesperson who was making the first of several

trips to our humble little stall, because of all the money the Big Mac Boys had put into the Skydome, (which by the way is an Iroquois term used to describe the shape of the sky), we were not allowed to sell burgers or anything named a burger. If we did, they had full authorization and inclination to shut our little fundraising booth down. It seems the Quarter Pounder carries a lot of weight at the Skydome.

We had already been informed that we could not sell any soft drinks or coffee because of that monopoly. Fine, we thought, a little paranoid, but we figured if you're going to put millions into a place like this, you're entitled to some perks. But venison burgers?! Somehow I couldn't imagine David's tasty creations taking away any part of

the McDonald's market share. Somehow I had trouble imagining all those kids from Scarborough rushing out of the Towncentre McDonald's down to the Skydome to get a Venison burger. David should be so lucky.

So not wanting to be argumentative, David changed the offending item to venison Manwhiches (though I had suggested the PC name of Venison People-of-nonspecific-gender whiches.) Still not good enough, according to the McPolice. It was still a meat patty in a bun. To the uninformed public, that would be a hamburger, or more specifically, a McDonald's hamburger.

Uh huh.

David's bright solution - cut the burgers into quarters and sell them as grilled venison meatballs. It seems that was acceptable except we were also informed that we could not place the meat inside the bun but had to put it beside the bun. Those damn hamburger bylaws again.

And to add further insult to bizarreness, our buffalo sausages seemed to the BMBs to resemble their hog dogs a wee too much so David was forced to cut them into one inch lengths to confuse the public. They also had to be put on the side, not in the bun. The hamburger bylaws - Subsection B - the Hog Dog Amendment.

Needless to say, we at the booth just shook our heads in amazement. One would think this big enormous faceless entity would have better things to do than tell us we were not allowed to cook our traditional food.

Later that day, my mother and I talked about the interesting events of the day. We marvelled at how well organized the Powwow was overall, but we couldn't help but think how lucky it wasn't a dance or music studio that had put money into the Skydome or all the dancers and drummers would have been out of luck, not to mention all the people who came to watch.

Then we shook our heads over all the fuss being made about the buffalo and deer meat and its shape. She was pouring a cup of coffee from her themos and I quickly told her to keep it hidden or the McPolice would get her. We had learned the fearful wrath of Ronald McDonald. Bambi had been run out of town .