Growing up in Missouri, I didn’t eat a lot of seafood as a kid. Now that I live in Maine, I am spoiled by the bounty and availability of delicious local fish and shellfish. The day before leaving for Thanksgiving week, however, I experienced an unexpected fishy connection between my past and present home states. In Maine, it is unusual to see a freshwater fish on the menu, but that’s exactly what I had last Friday at the Goodfire Brewing Company’s Freeport location, thanks to a celebration of Native American History Month that featured Wabanaki-inspired recipes prepared by award-winning Penobscot Chef Joe Robbins to benefit the Wabanaki Cultural Alliance.

The Wabanaki Cultural Alliance is a group that “formed to educate people of Maine about the need for securing sovereignty of the tribes in Maine.” It was formed in June of 2020 by the Mi’kmaq Nation, the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, the Passamaquoddy Tribe and the Penobscot Nation. The alliance advocates for Maine’s tribes to have the same or similar sovereignty as the more than 500 other tribes across America and encourages people to educate themselves on the issues and why they are important. As a part of the benefit weekend at Goodfire, which donated 20% of the proceeds from those days, volunteers had a table with information for visitors about their mission.

While it was difficult to choose from the many delicious dishes on the menu last weekend, which also included broiled oysters, fried duck wings, and corn and squash fritters, I was particularly curious about the “Whole Griddled Mi’kmaq Trout,” which was served with wild rice, black trumpets, sunchoke, black walnut and spruce. It was artistically presented, split down the middle, each filet laid out in a butterfly style with the skin and head facing up. It was absolutely delicious and, after the meal, I took a moment to thank the chef and to ask him where the trout had come from. He shared that they were farmed at the Mi’kmaq hatchery in Caribou. I had heard a little bit about the hatchery and was now interested in learning more about the operation.

Maine has the most abundant population of wild brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) in the United States. And yet numbers have declined in recent years. Brook trout are one of a number of species in the char family, which also includes other trout and salmonid species. Some of these are entirely freshwater and others are classified as “salters,” or more scientifically, as anadromous because they spend part of their life cycle in salt water.

Brook trout are among the freshwater species and typically live in gravelly bottomed streams. They are beautifully colored and marked and can be up to 15 inches in length. Maine anglers are allowed to fish for them recreationally, but the limit is only one per day and there are additional size restrictions as well. Part of the fishery takes place in the warmer months and another part during the winter when fishermen drill holes in the ice to reach them. There is no commercial fishery for them in Maine. But the Mi’kmaq hatchery provides a limited supply for consumers in addition to its production aimed at restocking Maine’s freshwater lakes and streams.

The Mi’kmaq hatchery started back in 2010 with funding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs that allowed the Aroostook Band of Mi’kmaq to build a 36,000-gallon indoor fish hatchery in Caribou. The hatchery was built adjacent to a farm and farm stand where they were already raising and selling produce. The hatchery was designed as an indoor recirculating tank that would provide fertilizer via its wastewater to the nearby farm. The fish, then, could be sold at the Mi’kmaq Market farm stand as well as used to restock Maine’s wild populations. Part of the reason for both of these efforts was to improve the food sovereignty of the native populations in the area in what is otherwise sometimes described as a “food desert.” Working with Bangor-based nonprofit Wabanaki Public Health & Wellness, the farm and hatchery has provided food to neighboring communities via a mobile food pantry. Since 2010, the demand has continued to grow, and the hatchery has recently received additional funding from the U.S. Economic Development Administration to expand its facility. The goal is to have the newly expanded facility up and running by next spring.

Like Maine, Missouri has its own wild population of trout. Rainbow trout are the most common there. Similar to Maine, the wild populations have declined and hatcheries have been built to restock lakes and streams throughout the state. The scale of these hatcheries is much larger, and many more are grown to market size, making farmed rainbow trout readily available at supermarket seafood counters. As such, as a pre-Thanksgiving meal for my family, I tried to recreate the recipe I enjoyed in Maine. Swapping delicata squash for sunchokes and shiitake mushrooms for black trumpets, and sneaking in a clipping off a household Norfolk pine for garnish, I got pretty close. It made for good conversation about the unexpected connections between seemingly unrelated places and cultures through food. That’s really what Thanksgiving is all about, and I am thankful for the unexpected opportunity to enjoy a fish I don’t often eat to remind me of that — although, perhaps I’m more of a “salter,” migrating from freshwater to salt at different points in the year.

Susan Olcott is the director of strategic partnerships at Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association.