How to Eat with Awareness and Purpose (w/ Sean Sherman)

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• Chef Sean Sherman's restaurant, Owamni, spotlights indigenous produce by intentionally excluding colonial ingredients like dairy, wheat flour, cane sugar, beef, pork, and chicken to reclaim indigenous history and culture.  Copied to clipboard!
• Food serves as a powerful vehicle for education, connecting people to the context, history, and diversity of Indigenous peoples and their relationship with the environment.  Copied to clipboard!
• Decolonizing diets involves a positive shift toward community-based values, environmental respect, and food sovereignty, contrasting sharply with the divisive and exploitative values of colonization.  Copied to clipboard!

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Food’s Connection to Memory

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(00:01:12)

• Key Takeaway: Food powerfully connects individuals to memories and emotional histories, but the context and history surrounding food are often overlooked.
• Summary: Food serves as a strong link to personal memories and emotional histories. Tasting new foods can be delightful, but understanding the surrounding context, history, and systems that enable ingredients to reach the plate is often neglected. Listeners have the power to become curious about the origins and history of their food.

Sean Sherman’s Culinary Philosophy

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(00:02:21)

• Key Takeaway: Chef Sean Sherman uses modern Indigenous food as a vehicle to discuss Native American culture, history, and values by excluding colonial ingredients.
• Summary: Sean Sherman’s critically acclaimed food highlights Indigenous lives and values in the United States and globally. His restaurant philosophy involves removing colonial ingredients like dairy, wheat flour, cane sugar, beef, pork, and chicken. This approach spotlights what was present in North America first and supports Indigenous producers.

Reality of Reservation Food

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(00:02:46)

• Key Takeaway: Many Native Americans, including Sherman, grew up on commodity food programs, which contrasts with romanticized media portrayals of traditional diets.
• Summary: Media often seeks romanticized stories of Native food, but Sherman grew up poor on the reservation relying on commodity food programs. This included low-quality canned goods and processed items, leading to health issues. He notes that even dishes like Indian tacos tasted influenced by Mexican cuisine, indicating a disconnect from original Lakota foodways.

Celebrating Indigenous Diversity

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(00:03:26)

• Key Takeaway: North America holds immense Indigenous diversity, encompassing hundreds of tribes whose stewardship is crucial for protecting remaining biodiversity from colonial erasure.
• Summary: There are 573 recognized tribes in the U.S. and 634 in Canada, highlighting vast Indigenous diversity that should be celebrated. Indigenous peoples are stewards of remaining biodiversity, much of which was wiped out during 19th-century colonialism. Protecting this diversity is essential for future generations, emphasizing a symbiotic relationship with nature.

Food as Tool for Control

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(00:04:19)

• Key Takeaway: Controlling one’s food supply is directly linked to controlling one’s future, driving an Indigenous evolution and revolution.
• Summary: The ability to control food sources—growing, harvesting, and preserving—is fundamental to controlling the future. Sherman’s work involves relearning ancestral lessons and applying them to modern contexts. This process is described as an Indigenous evolution and revolution happening today.

Owamni Location and History

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(00:07:22)

• Key Takeaway: Owamni is located in Minneapolis near the Mississippi River, named after the original Dakota name for the now-destroyed waterfall, ‘Awamni Omne’.
• Summary: The restaurant Owamni is situated in Minneapolis near the Mississippi River. Its name is derived from ‘Awamni Omne,’ meaning ‘Place of the falling, swirling water.’ The original waterfall was destroyed during the colonial history of the area due to the construction of mills and tunnels.

Defining Indigenous Cuisine

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(00:08:40)

• Key Takeaway: Indigenous cuisine at Owamni is defined by removing colonial ingredients and focusing on what was present in North America first.
• Summary: Owamni features a modern vision of Indigenous food based on a philosophy of exclusion of colonial ingredients. This includes removing dairy, wheat flour, cane sugar, beef, pork, and chicken. The restaurant prioritizes featuring Indigenous products from Indigenous producers to ensure food dollars support those communities.

Ironically Foreign Foods

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(00:09:22)

• Key Takeaway: Indigenous foods are called ‘ironically foreign’ because the Western diet has ignored the vast bounty of North American botanicals.
• Summary: The food served is considered foreign because many people are unaware of the native botany of North America. Western diets, being industrialized, rely on grocery store staples, ignoring the abundance of local, edible plants. Indigenous diets emphasize this plant diversity, offering health and nutrition that is often unseen.

Food with Story and Context

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(00:10:44)

• Key Takeaway: Food served at Owamni is intentionally linked to story, seasonality, and cultural relevance, changing menus around solstices and equinoxes.
• Summary: Food with story is considered powerful, which is why the menu changes consistently, often aligning with seasonal changes like solstices and equinoxes. The goal is to showcase what is seasonal, local, wild, and sourced from Indigenous producers. Food is viewed as an essential tool for storytelling, especially since Native American history is often excluded from mainstream narratives.

Intentional Erasure of History

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(00:11:38)

• Key Takeaway: The lack of Native American restaurants and cuisine knowledge is not accidental but a result of conscious programs designed to erase Indigenous history and culture.
• Summary: The erasure of Indigenous peoples dates back to the late 1400s, with the 1800s being an extremely violent century of aggressive land takeover by the U.S. government. Assimilation processes, like boarding schools, stripped generations of culture, contributing to the current lack of visibility for Indigenous cuisine. Addressing this history is vital to understanding current issues.

Food Sovereignty and Future

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(00:13:34)

• Key Takeaway: Achieving food sovereignty—controlling one’s food systems—is key to empowering Indigenous communities for the future by applying ancestral knowledge to modern realities.
• Summary: Food sovereignty means tribes gaining control over growing, harvesting, and preserving their own food supplies. This control is seen as a path to future power for Indigenous communities. The approach is not about creating museum pieces but applying ancestral knowledge to contemporary life to shape the future.

History and Political Context

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(00:15:15)

• Key Takeaway: History must be addressed honestly to identify trauma, especially as political figures attempt to erase the histories of people of color, including Black and Indigenous peoples.
• Summary: American history is often taught from a colonial perspective, overlooking the hardships faced by non-white populations. Current political climates involve attempts to further erase the histories of people of color. Acknowledging history, even when painful, is necessary to name the trauma created by these events.

Colonialism vs. Indigenous Values

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(00:16:27)

• Key Takeaway: Colonialism is defined by policies of control, exploitation, and environmental destruction, contrasting with Indigenous values centered on community, environmental respect, and basic human rights like clean water.
• Summary: Colonial borders and governments are built to support a mindset of environmental ruin and division based on race and religion. Indigenous values emphasize a close relationship with the environment, protection of clean water, and community well-being. Embracing Indigenous diversity is necessary to counteract centuries of homogenization efforts.

Defining Tribal Cuisines

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(00:18:02)

• Key Takeaway: Native American cuisine is diverse, with specific tribal dishes reflecting regional differences and unique cultural intentions behind food preparation.
• Summary: There are hundreds of Native American tribes across North America, leading to diverse regional cuisines. Specific tribal dishes exist because different groups utilized the same regions with distinct cultural meanings attached to their food. Understanding this diversity is key to appreciating Native American culinary traditions.

Identifying Colonial Ingredients

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(00:05:04)

• Key Takeaway: Colonial ingredients are those introduced to the Americas, such as wheat flour, dairy (which was historically for child-rearing, not adult consumption), and cane sugar.
• Summary: Colonial ingredients are defined as those that did not naturally exist in the Americas before European introduction. Dairy products are included because lactose tolerance was not genetically widespread among Indigenous populations. The focus shifts to native proteins (wild animals, fish, birds) and the vast knowledge of wild vegetation, roots, and agricultural practices taught by Indigenous peoples to colonizers.

Health Benefits of Indigenous Diet

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(00:20:47)

• Key Takeaway: Removing colonial ingredients results in a diet that is naturally gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, and soy-free, aligning with modern health trends.
• Summary: By removing colonial ingredients, the food at Owamni adheres to several restrictive modern diets simultaneously. This indigenous diet of North America naturally excludes gluten, dairy, sugar, soy, and pork. This alignment with current health goals is an important outcome of reclaiming traditional foodways.

Childhood Food Experiences

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(00:23:10)

• Key Takeaway: Sherman’s childhood diet on the Pine Ridge Reservation was dominated by over-processed commodity foods from the USDA, contributing to present-day health issues.
• Summary: Growing up rural and segregated, Sherman consumed large amounts of commodity food, including canned vegetables packed in sodium and fruits in corn syrup. This diet consisted of empty carbs and powdered milk, which are over-processed. This historical food environment is directly linked to the current health crises discussed.

Owamni’s Success and Nonprofit Role

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(00:24:18)

• Key Takeaway: Owamni has achieved significant success, winning the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant, and operates as a tool for the Natives nonprofit to build skills and direct food dollars to Indigenous producers.
• Summary: Owamni has been consistently sold out since 2021 and won the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant in the U.S. The restaurant is part of the Natives nonprofit, using its job creation and purchasing power to support local and regional Indigenous producers. This single kitchen pushes over half a million dollars annually to Indigenous producers alone.

Education Sovereignty Goals

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(00:26:58)

• Key Takeaway: The Natives nonprofit focuses on education sovereignty by reclaiming knowledge of history, crafts, and foodways through non-Eurocentric education, including extensive video content.
• Summary: Education sovereignty involves pulling the power of education, storytelling, and history back toward Indigenous communities for cultural relevance. The nonprofit produces educational video content, with over 180 videos largely focused on foodways, available on their YouTube channel. Expansion plans include new restaurants and large institutional culinary production to increase food access.

Cultural Resurgence and Pushback

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(00:28:06)

• Key Takeaway: There is an emerging wave of Native representation in media (literature, TV, food), but this creativity faces political pushback in the current American climate.
• Summary: Sherman notes the rise of creative thought leaders in Native representation across literature (Tommy Orange) and television (Reservation Dogs). While this is changing how people think about food and empathize with Indigenous hardships, it is met with political resistance. The goal remains to showcase the beauty of Indigenous food and culture.

Plants as Essential Relatives

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(00:29:09)

• Key Takeaway: Locally grown plants are often dismissed as weeds due to poor education, yet botanicals provide food, medicine, tools, and are central to Indigenous spirituality and stories.
• Summary: The perception of local plants as ‘weeds’ stems from a lack of education regarding their names and uses. Plants are fundamental, serving as food, medicine, crafting materials, and spiritual components for Indigenous peoples. Sherman’s team implements passive education by labeling local plants with their true Dakota names alongside English descriptors.

Personal Flavor Memories

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(00:30:21)

• Key Takeaway: For Sean Sherman, the flavor of choke cherry wojape sauce evokes the smell of his grandmother’s kitchen, symbolizing comfort and cultural continuity.
• Summary: Flavors are deeply tied to personal memory and sense of place. Choke cherries, which grow locally, are used to make wojape, a sauce served on special occasions. Sherman hopes to normalize these culturally relevant foods so future generations experience them daily, not just on special occasions.

Decolonizing Diets and Values

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(00:32:48)

• Key Takeaway: Decolonizing diets means adopting Indigenous values of community, respect for the environment, and ensuring food access, moving away from the division and exploitation inherent in colonization.
• Summary: Colonial values involve division, dehumanization, and land theft for profit, whereas Indigenous values focus on community support, ensuring everyone has enough food, and respecting the environment. This contrast highlights that colonization is an ongoing historical process globally. The solution lies in embracing human connection and prioritizing basic needs like clean water and relevant education.

Food as Human Language

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(00:35:29)

• Key Takeaway: There is a baffling disconnect where people enjoy food from other cultures but fail to care for the people or places where that food originates, which food can help bridge.
• Summary: Historically, segregation in the U.S. has made it difficult for communities to connect across racial lines. Food is a universal common ground that facilitates conversation and sharing between humans. It acts as a powerful language to overcome societal noise and foster genuine connection.