Every time Phillip McLeod went boating along the Churchill River in northern Saskatchewan, he saw huge cleared areas along the forested riverbank.

Curious about who had once tamed the land, the Lac La Ronge Indian Band member told the elders what he’d seen.

“They said ‘That used to be our garden,’ ” McLeod recalls. They told him stories of using dynamite to blast away rocks and trees and of nurturing a wide range of crops including strawberries, melons, potatoes and carrots.