You know that fancy bison burger or wild boar stew you were so excited to find on a menu? The dish that brought you closer to the land, featuring the best of wild Ontario?

Yeah, not so much.

I hate to break it to you, but that caribou or goose you ordered was probably farmed: It is almost entirely illegal to sell or serve wild game meat in Ontario. Not at your local farmers’ market, or the neighbourhood butcher, and not in a restaurant, either, unless it’s a private event, for which you need special permission and to inform your guests in writing that the meat has not been processed at an inspected plant.

Occasionally chefs complain about this, wanting to serve deer, or make salami out of elk from a hunter friend. For most of them, game meat would be a nice addition. But for Indigenous chefs, it isn’t a question of having a few more choices: the prohibition is the difference between being able to cook their own cuisines or not.

This is not a coincidence: historically, the reason the ban exists is because it was introduced as part of a conscious effort by Canadian governments to destroy and assimilate Indigenous peoples. (See also: banning of cultural practices, limiting of hunting rights.)

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In a modern context, it’s about food safety, making sure that meat — where it comes from and how it was raised — is traceable. “Hunted game meat that is uninspected may contain parasites, pathogens, and other contaminants that may lead to adverse health outcomes such as food borne illness,” says David Jensen, spokesperson for the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, which oversees the enforcement of the Food Premises Act.

Ontario restaurants and butchers can only sell inspected meat, obtained from licensed meat plants. The handling, preparation, storage, sale, and serving of “uninspected” meat, including hunted game meat, is prohibited. Though Quebec experimented with a pilot program in 2014, Newfoundland and Labrador is the only province where you can serve game meat in a restaurant.

Meanwhile, just this year, three Indigenous restaurants have opened in Toronto: Ku-Kum, NishDish, and Pow Wow Café. While Ku-Kum chef Joseph Shawana has been trying to track down moose meat to serve, it’s unlikely he’ll be able to put it on the menu.

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So why don’t hunters just take their animals to one of these licensed plants? “Federal meat inspection rules limit the commercial sale of game meat,” says Lisa Murphy, spokesperson for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. “The meat must come from an animal that has been raised in captivity (for example, farmed bison and farmed elk) and slaughtered in a federally registered establishment. In the case of caribou, reindeer, or muskox, the meat must come from an animal that was hunter-harvested under a special CFIA-inspected northern harvest.” Though it is possible to process other hunted game meat in a federally registered slaughterhouse, it has to be returned to the owner/hunter for their own use. And any meat that is going to be exported outside of Ontario has to comply with federal regulations.

But I remember when Toronto first banned smoking in bars and restaurants. Soon after, I walked into a bar and was handed a clipboard and told that if I wanted to smoke, I just had to sign a form that said I was a member of the newly formed “private club.”

When people want to get around a law, they get around it. If the Ontario government can make an exception for game meat served at special events, why not an exemption for Indigenous chefs? Just get diners to sign a waiver.

“I haven’t gotten anyone sick,” Algonquin chef Marie-Cecile Nottaway told me when we spoke about the issue last year. Through her catering business on the border of Quebec, she’s served game meat to plenty of politicians in Ottawa. What galls her is that it’s legal to serve animals that are pumped full of growth hormones and antibiotics, but not ones she’s caught and killed on her own land.

“With pigs and beef you have no idea what they’re fed, how they’re killed. And with a deer, you know where it’s coming from, what they’re eating, how it’s been killed. I’d rather be serving that meat and put myself on the line than serve this other stuff.”

An exemption for Indigenous chefs would not only allow people like Nottaway to commercialize their culinary traditions, but provide an opportunity to economically support hunters. “Allowing Indigenous hunters and gatherers to gain financially through traditional ways would impact our social structure,” says Lee Arden Lewis, owner of the Public School House at Jackson Falls in Milford. “The possibilities and what that could mean economically in our native communities — it would be big.”

While Lewis is maintaining Mohawk culinary traditions — soups brimming with lyed corn, salads layered with wild rice and smoked beans — she can’t legally serve wild meat caught on nearby Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, where she is from. Because of that, her business can’t financially benefit people like her friend Dennis Hill, who hunts deer and turkey. “I hunt traditionally, with a bow. And I spear my fish in the spring,” says the 38-year-old Hill, whose father began teaching him when he was seven.

“I taught my kids at a young age how to hold a bow, hold knives, where to cut the deer. I started my two daughters at about five. I’ve been teaching them my ways because I don’t want them growing up to be dependent on a man to hunt for them.” Hill saves the feathers, hide and antlers. He leaves the guts out for coyotes, before portioning the meat into steaks, burgers, and stewing meat to be frozen. “But we can’t sell it. We gift it or we trade it.”

Hill works at a gas station. And while he wouldn’t want to over-hunt any species, he can see the economic benefit of granting hunters special permission to sell to Indigenous chefs. “Back in the day we didn’t have to go through the government to get our meat approved. Why do we have to suffer?”

Corey Mintz is a Toronto-based food writer.