“I actually moved my way up rather quickly in the [Twin] Cities and because I had a good eye for art, it also helped me have a good eye for making plates look pretty,” he says.After about six years, he landed his first executive chef role at the innovative Solera tapas restaurant in downtown Minneapolis.
While many non-Natives can name and often cook dishes from other countries, regardless of their immigrant histories or nationalities, very few can describe a traditional American Indian dish, or even the kinds of ingredients that would be used in Indigenous cooking.
— Hope Flanagan, Dream of Wild HealthThis is a multifactorial loss, one that stems from the long-term genocide of Native Americans, visible through events like the forced consolidation of Indigenous people and the eradication of traditional ingredients and culinary knowledge.
While doing his own study of indigenous plants, medicinal ingredients, and the commoditized food of the nation’s Indian reservations, Sherman traveled widely, and spoke to community elders in places ranging from Mexico to Montana.
In fact, the only restaurant Sherman could find serving Native American fare was the Mitsitam Native American Foods Cafe at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.One such elder that Sherman has formed a strong bond with is Hope Flanagan of the Turtle Band of the Seneca Nation in what is today New York State.
As a culture teacher and part of the community outreach at Dream of Wild Health, a comprehensive Indigenous-focused farm and food sovereignty initiative in central Minnesota, Flanagan’s deep passion is the bounty of the earth around her—not what is cultivated, but what arises naturally, like nettle, ground cherries, and juneberries.
She also works with chefs like Sherman, members of farther-flung tribes, and schoolchildren, helping them in locating and appreciating native plants for their diverse array of uses, whether on the Dream of Wild Health farm or on plant walks near the learners.
Members of the Little Earth of United Tribes, the only urban housing assistance development for Native people in the United States, heard him speak about Indigenous ingredients and soon invited him to develop a menu for their freshly purchased food truck.Little Earth is located in the poorest neighborhood of Minneapolis, where 48% of people live in poverty.
“They [Little Earth] were talking to another Native chef in town who had been working with Shakopee for a while, the Mdewakanton Sioux [tribe], but his concept was a fry bread truck,” says Sherman.
It is at once a stereotypical American Indian food as depicted in mainstream media; a real fixture at community gatherings; and also a scapegoat for those who fret about rates of diabetes (23.5% among American Indian and Alaska Native adults, in contrast to 8% of non-Hispanic whites), obesity (Native Americans are 60% more likely to be obese than non-Hispanic whites), and heart disease (American Indian and Alaska Natives have a 50% greater risk).
On October 8, 2021, President Joe Biden signed a proclamation establishing October 11 as Indigenous People’s Day. The first celebration of the new holiday on a national scale fell at a time of toppling statutes, changing public opinion about harms suffered by Native Americans, during a global pandemic that disproportionately impacted people of color, and in the face of growing outrage over multiple pipelines running through sacred land and threatening water.
President Biden’s message included, “On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, our Nation celebrates the invaluable contributions and resilience of Indigenous peoples, recognizes their inherent sovereignty, and commits to honoring the Federal Government’s trust and treaty obligations to Tribal Nations.” Yet Columbus Day was not eradicated.Sherman operated the Tatanka Truck on a consultant basis.
Eventually, in autumn 2017, the truck was sold to the White Earth Band of Chippewa Tribe in Northern Minnesota to further its mission of reaching even more remote families with Indigenous food, and to allow Sherman and his team to focus on other endeavors.
“I think the event presaged a lot of Sherman’s international resonance—he represents a fight to uncover, develop, preserve, and advance a critical food story that has long been in danger of fading away.” Preservation is important to Sherman.
The cookbook, “The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen,” discusses Sherman’s childhood foodways, which were a mix of government rations and foraged foods, and won a James Beard Foundation Media Award for Best American Cookbook in 2018.
“I just wanted to focus on what the work was—modernizing Indigenous food and showcasing how it can be done,” he says.That same sentiment could also describe Sherman’s latest restaurant project, Owamni by The Sioux Chef, which opened in July 2021 to much critical acclaim and anticipation, in part due to its enormously successful Kickstarter campaign.
— Elena Terry, Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance and Wild BeariesJoatta Siebert, who has since departed from her role as chef de cuisine at Owamni, grew up cooking wild game like bison and elk.
“People who have had experience at the farm now are passing that on at the restaurant.” Flanagan sees the visible success of Owamni as a key to a better and much-needed understanding of Indigenous foods.
Farms like Dream of Wild Health and Wozupi Tribal Gardens are mainstays in Sherman’s supply chain, as they maintain and expand Native-kept seeds and growing techniques.
The cost is—it’s pretty high,” says Curt Basina, whose Copper Crow Distillery is the first documented Native-owned distillery in the country.
“Unfortunately, due to various economic circumstances, there aren’t a lot of Native Americans that have thousands of dollars lying around,” Basina says.Relationships with other Native-owned businesses have been key for Copper Crow’s distribution, which include links with other Native-made gins and vodkas, as well as local partnerships with inns and restaurants.
Like, We’ve got one of our own people here running the first Native-owned distillery, we should carry it,” Basina says.At Owamni, the model is to source all products in an intentional way, including beer and wine.
“We purchase local Indigenous first, national Indigenous second, and then we support BIPOC local, BIPOC national, and then local allies,” Sherman explains.
“With the wine list we did really well, we were able to find a bunch of Native wineries,” says Sherman.
The iced and warm tea blends also feature Indigenous ingredients, like Hot Nimaamaa, made with raspberry leaf, nettle leaf, oatstraw, lemon balm, and peppermint.“We were on the fence about even having beer and wine, just because there is a lot of negative stigma around alcohol and Native communities,” says Sherman.
Currently, Sherman is in talks with the Native-woman-owned Bow & Arrow Brewing Company in Albuquerque—the brewery behind the Native Land collaboration project, which benefits Indigenous causes—in the hopes of finding a distributor to bring their beer to Owamni.
While Sherman is pleased at the positive response to his work furthering Indigenous fine dining, it’s clear from our conversation that his deepest passion is manifested in his nonprofit, NāTIFS, or North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems.
Within NāTIFS, Sherman and Thompson have created a nonprofit outreach center called Indigenous Food Lab, which functions as a venue for training and education, and also promotes Indigenous food access.
So we are just going to start growing and building and creating a support center to get more Indigenous food operations out there everywhere,” he says.Indigenous Food Lab is where some of Owamni’s leadership and staff, the majority of whom identify as Indigenous, reclaimed the use of Indigenous ingredients before joining the restaurant crew.
Siebert spent a month in the lab testing out ingredients prior to Owamni’s opening, learning their Indian names and how to use them.“One thing that’s very clear about food sovereignty is that groups of people can be controlled through food access,” says Flanagan.
As Indigenous people are given greater access to the food of their ancestors, it doesn’t just heal individuals.
Terry is a contributing member of the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance and the founder of Wild Bearies, a nonprofit network of seed savers, chefs, and restaurateurs.
She is also a friend of Sherman’s, and the two cooked together at the Taste of the Tribes event at the 2019 Great Lakes Intertribal Food Summit in Michigan, an event showcasing tribal agriculture.Witnessing Sherman’s ascent into the public eye, into personal and professional success, is not strictly surprising, though it is undoubtedly impressive.
With educators like Sherman and Terry, there’s more opportunity to center Indigenous people in these conversations, to provide wider awareness of and access to Indigenous cooking, and to uplift these culinary traditions into the future.When I speak with Sherman, the James Beard Foundation Awards Ceremony is approaching; a few days later, Owamni wins the Best New Restaurant award, an honor that Sherman is quick to share among his team.
As he tells the crowd to an uproar of applause, “We hope that one day we can find Native American restaurants in every single city.” “I love Sean.
He and I both were presenting at the National Native Nutrition Conference,” says Flanagan.
“He had reminded me of things I had totally forgotten,” Flanagan tells me, reflecting on the threat of residential schools during her childhood and the history of food being weaponized, like the mass killings of buffalo.
The stronger network we have supporting our food, the more sustainable it will be going forward.” As the seasons change into warm and informal, Owamni will follow suit, opening its patio and moving from a tasting menu to family-style and à la carte options.
As Sherman writes in his book, “Creating an Indigenous kitchen for the modern world requires attention to the cycle of food and our responsibility to nurture ourselves, each other, and our mother earth.” At this pivotal juncture in his work, Sherman seems deeply attuned to that wider picture.