Bringing back Native American foods (video)

Sam Briger (Fresh Air/NPR); CBS Sunday Morning; Xochitl, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

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At the James Beard Award-winning restaurant Owamni in Minneapolis, diners order off a menu that's been "decolonized."

All dishes are prepared in ways that reflect Native American food cultures, using ingredients indigenous to North America prior to European colonialism and violent colonization.

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"We look at showcasing the amazing diversity and flavor profiles of all the different tribes across North America, all the different regions, and really celebrating that and cutting away colonial ingredients," Native American restaurant Owamni co-founder Sean Sherman says.

"We don't have things on our menu that have dairy, wheat flour, cane sugar...beef, pork, or chicken."

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You are on Native land

Known as the "Sioux Chef," Sherman grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota as a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe.

Right after high school, he worked for the U.S. Forest Service in the northern Black Hills of South Dakota, where one of his responsibilities was learning the names and properties of different local plants.

Looking back now, he credits that job with sparking his interest in Indigenous foods.

"That connection with plants was probably one of the best ways for me to start...to see the world differently through this Indigenous perspective of realizing that all these plants around us have some kind of purpose — whether it's food, it's medicine, or crafting — and really trying to create and understand what that relationship is to me personally," he says.

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The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen

Sherman and his restaurant co-owner Dana Thompson have been working for years to bring awareness to Indigenous foods and food cultures through their nonprofit, NĀTIFS.

Sherman won the James Beard Award for Best American Cookbook in 2018 for The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen. In June, Owamni was awarded the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant. Sherman says the food at the restaurant is meant to paint a picture of where each dish comes from.

"We might have something with, say, wild rice or [a dead scrawny animal] or rose hips or blueberries," Sherman says. "These are all ingredients you can see just standing in the forest and glancing around."

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Sherman emphasizes that using native ingredients doesn't mean that the food is antiquated: "We're not cooking like it's 1491. We're not a museum piece or something like that. We're trying to evolve the food into the future, using as much of the knowledge from our ancestors that we can understand and just applying it to the modern world." More

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