Sherman, an Oglala Lakota tribal member with an unassuming demeanor, a soft smile, and a signature long braid hanging down his back, has endeavored to revitalize Native American food traditions since 2014, when he founded The Sioux Chef, a catering and educational enterprise. His focus is on “decolonized” food—made without Eurocentric ingredients such as beef, pork, chicken, dairy, wheat flour, and cane sugar—most notably at his acclaimed Minneapolis restaurant, Owamni.
“We’re scaling up our efforts almost simultaneously in Minnesota and Montana, and the goal is that we’re developing a model that works anywhere.”
There he’s become known for cedar-braising bison (flavoring meat with sprigs of the coniferous tree), chopping up plant medicines like ramps, morels, and sweet potatoes, and finishing off dishes with seasonings like sumac and sage. His Indigenous Food Lab (IFL), also in Minneapolis, is an incubator and training kitchen where Native chefs and entrepreneurs can access equipment and information from Sherman and other knowledge keepers.
Sherman still cooks at his restaurant, but these days, he has his sights set on a triad of initiatives that bring him closer to the goal of making the U.S. food system more inclusive and indeed more Indigenous. The opening later this year of an Indigenous Food Lab satellite in Bozeman, Montana, is part of that vision. So too is his cookbook Turtle Island (Clarkson Potter), which I coauthored, covering Native foodways across North America.
But in this moment, Sherman is most excited about Meals for Native Institutions, which will provide schools, hospitals, penitentiaries, and community centers with large-format Indigenous foods.
“This model has such immense potential to have a huge impact on the way we eat, especially for kids and elders—and really everyone,” he says about the larger efforts to decolonize institutional food.
Realizing a Vision
This year feels like a full-circle moment for Sherman, who grew up eating government commodity foods—think canned beef and neon-orange blocks of cheese—on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation. That tribal community has endured some of the most devastating impacts of European colonization and U.S. policies on Indigenous cultures, practices, and foodways, including the government-sanctioned slaughter of the all-important bison.
Sherman cooking at the Indigenous Food Lab incubator and training kitchen in Minneapolis. (Photo credit: Bill Phelps Studio)
Today, Pine Ridge has some of the highest poverty rates in the nation and lowest life expectancies in the world. For Sherman, a TIME 100 honoree and three-time James Beard Award winner, a return to Indigenous foods can address some of those marked inequities.
“Maybe down the road we’ll even be able to get some of these Native food products into the commodity food program, which so many rural Indigenous communities like the Navajo Nation and Pine Ridge still utilize today,” he added.
His mission to revitalize Indigenous foodways began with a yearning to learn more about his people’s food while also curtailing the marked health inequities tribal communities experience, including disproportionate rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease. He’s done this through his nonprofit, North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NATIFS), and through Owamni, and now he’ll have additional ways to move toward these goals.
Meals for Native Institutions will be housed in a newly acquired space that Sherman has named Wóyute Thipi (meaning “food building” in Dakota), situated along what’s known as the American Indian Cultural Corridor on Minneapolis’ Franklin Avenue, a cultural district home to several Indigenous-owned businesses, including a coffee shop and an art gallery.
The building will serve as NATIFS’ headquarters and feature a counter-service Indigenous BBQ restaurant dubbed ŠHOTÁ—the Dakota word for smoke—that’s expected to open later this year. Like Owamni, that public-facing eatery is meant to bring more meaningful attention to his big-picture goal.