Concession a staple on the powwow circuit
- Tiffany Head | July 25, 2016
There is nothing like hot, fresh food served at powwows in the south of Saskatchewan, with a concession of soft ice-cream, candy apples and popcorn to take care of that sweet tooth.
Sixty-five year-old residential school survivor Marlene Moise-Hansen, daughter of 105 year-old Philomena Moise-Hansen, had gone back to school to pursue her dream.
And after she had accomplished that dream with a high average, she proudly uses her skills to serve her own people.
“I went into commercial cooking and graduated 30 years ago. I like powwow and I wanted to serve a good product out to my people at the powwow,” she said.
She has owned a food truck with an all stainless steel kitchen for 13 years now, a big 48-passenger purple bus which she named Minnies Grill, after her own nickname.
“Luckily, I have a good husband who fixed it up for me; we salvaged the stainless steel and fixed it up ourselves, our trailer is custom made,” she said proudly.
Over the years she has provided employment for single mothers and others who have had a rough time getting jobs or with life in general.
“I have eight employees. I give them jobs and train them in food handling techniques,” said Moise-Hansen.
With a big heart for her employees and elders, she makes sure to always feed breakfast to the elders and their helpers with the pipe ceremony and flag carriers.
She says there are so many good memories in her bus, which is a happy place with a lot of laughter and all of them enjoy their work.
Moise-Hansen said they had once driven on a flat tire unaware. “I didn’t even know I had a flat, until someone flagged us and stopped me, you have a flat”.
As an initiation, workers who start there, usually find out that there are some low areas in the bus where you have to bend down to pass. “Normally when we get new workers to train, they bump their heads somewhere, and that’s how we know they are going to be with us for a long time,” she said.
Moise-Hansen said she is the bannock maker and works beside her employees.
“Once my bannock, one of my taco shells, comes out looking like a face and we compared it to one of my workers, we he had a good laugh over that. It’s a lot of hard work, dedication and the most I worked is 18 hours in there, you need a lot of motivation and I love it, it’s my passion,” she said.
Not only is she teaching young people who have never had any experience in the kitchen, she is motivating them to find their own paths, some which follow her path in the love of cooking.
“There’s one young lady I trained that is going into cooking, she’s finished some courses already and she mentioned to me that this job motivated her,” she said.
She said there is a lot of investment in the business which requires dedication and motivation because it is a lot of hard work, “If I can do it, anyone else can do it”.
Through all weather, they are there, serving fresh soup, bannock burgers, Indian tacos, fries and poutine and all sorts of other hot food for their customers.
It’s always a busy season, but when powwow season is over, she’s back in her home community of Muskowekwan First Nation, cooking just as hard at the Youth Civilization Centre for troubled teens.