Decolonized: How “The Sioux Chef” Sean Sherman is Leading a Cultural Revolution Beyond the Kitchen
“It's not a typical restaurant, and that was kind of the point of it. You can drive all over this country and find food from all over the world, just not food from the land that you're standing on.”
These are the powerful words of James Beard Award-winning chef Sean Sherman (Oglala Lakota) when pointing out why the Indigenous cuisine concept of his latest restaurant is so simple and yet so important.
More commonly known as “The Sioux Chef”, a moniker he created ages ago as a play on words to incorporate his Oglala Lakota heritage when he needed an AOL email address, Sherman is quickly becoming the face of the Indigenous foodways movement thanks in large part to his restaurant Owamni, which launched in 2021 in downtown Minneapolis. Located right by the St. Anthony Falls, the name is derived from the Dakota word, Owámniyomni, which translates to "place of the falling, swirling water”. The restaurant immediately became a hit with patrons and critics alike thanks to its concept of a “decolonized menu”.
“Our Indigenous diet is kind of like the perfect diet because we're gluten free, dairy free, sugar free, soy free, and pork free. All these fad diets are trying to get to that point, and it just happens to be this natural diet of the Indigenous people of North America. We're not trying to be traditional and cook like it's 1491 or pretend colonization didn't happen. We're just trying to reclaim as much knowledge from our ancestry as possible and apply it to right now so we can really be a role model.”
The restaurant itself is quite unassuming; no big signs, no fanfare, a subtle brick building overlooking the falls. However, once inside there is no mistaking you are on Native land. From the food and the decor to the restaurant staff itself, 70% of whom identify as Indigenous, the restaurant offers an immersive and authentic experience that has resonated with not only the culinary scene but the Native community as well.
“When I had the epiphany of doing this work and started looking around and realizing that I, number one, didn't know much about my own heritage food, and I knew a lot about European food. For example, there were no Native restaurants that I could just drive to and check out and see what they were doing. And there were very few books on the whole situation also. So for me, it was really just trying to do something where it's a place where people can come and learn, where people could literally ingest and experience this whole situation. I just feel like we're doing something different, but it's so needed when it comes down to it.”
Patrons immediately took notice of the rare opportunity that Owmani offered. They have flown in from all over the world for a chance to sample exquisite cuisine with ingredients derived straight from the land with purpose and intentionality. The restaurant has been booked out every night since its opening. In June of 2022, just shy of a year since it opened its doors, Owamni was named The Best New Restaurant in the United States by the James Beard Foundation.
“I appreciate all the attention. It's a huge honor to get some of these really prestigious honors and pieces, but I just hope it opens up more doors for more people to see. I hope people want to support other operations out there, other Indigenous entrepreneurs trying to do similar work and other creatives that could be bigger and better than I can be.”
The success of Owamni has opened new doors quite literally for Sherman and his team to continue towards their ultimate goal of educating the masses on Native culture. The recent opening of their new Indigenous Food Lab in Minneapolis thanks to their nonprofit, N.A.T.I.F.S.(North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems), shows that they are ready and willing to put their money where your mouth is.
“The Indigenous Food Lab is a space where there's a Native marketplace, and it's a place where people can come and purchase Native food that we've been curating from Native food producers and also some health and wellness products and books, some games and all sorts of things that just kind of have an Indigenous focus. It gives our local community access to those particular pieces, but we also have a Native classroom where we're gonna be teaching about a whole bunch of facets of Indigenous-focused education. And when we're looking at Indigenous education, we're looking at the knowledge that Indigenous communities passed down for thousands of generations that got disrupted during the assimilation efforts. So it's a knowledge of wild foods and agriculture and permaculture and seed saving and medicinals and food preservation and cooking techniques and farming techniques and language and crafting. And it goes on and on. But it's just basically everything that people need to know about how to live sustainably with the world around us.”
Recently Time Magazine named Sherman to their list of the 100 Most Influential people of 2023. At the ceremony, he wore a tuxedo adorned with Lakota beading designed by Indigenous designer Kayla Lookinghorse to continue his mission of using his platform to bring positive attention to other members of the Native community.
“This work isn't about me, it's not centered around me. I get a lot of attention, but I just see it as it builds my platform larger and larger and it gets my voice bigger and bigger. And I feel responsible because there's a lot of things that we have to talk about. There's a lot of history out there that needs to be understood. Because there's a lot of struggles that our Indigenous communities went through and are still going through today. We're in a weird world today where there's places like Florida that are whitewashing histories for the sake of comfort and it's just the wrong move because we should be understanding everything that happened in history, the good and the bad, just so we can have some empathy with other people and really understand how we can be better humans.”
Highly aware that his name and face have become synonymous with the increasing popularity of the Indigenous foodways movement, Sherman tirelessly tries to move the spotlight and conversation away from himself and his restaurant in hopes that he can continue to grow the movement — knowing full well that one person does not make a revolution but can have the power to ignite one.
“I hope that people, whatever region they might be from, can become curious and seek out who else is doing this kind of work and why don't we have a Native restaurant in our region, in our community? Who can we support to help make that happen? And how can we help some of these Indigenous farmers that have been holding onto some of these seeds for countless generations and how do we really promote some? And you're not trying to just capitalize it, not treating it like it's some kind of fad, you know? Because the last thing the Indigenous community wants are non-Indigenous peoples making Indigenous restaurants for the sake of cash. Because that's just another form of colonization. And we just really want to allow this space and time for Indigenous peoples to define their own food, to define their own philosophies around what they're gonna do moving forward.”
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