photography: Heidi Ehalt Photography
REVITALIZING
Indigenous CUISINE
A conversation with Sean Sherman, founder of The Sioux Chef
A
words: Francisca Figueroa & Sean Sherman
striking feature of modern-day Europe—an ancestral origin for many of North America’s current inhabitants—rests in the continuing cultural relevance of the ancient. To travel there as an American might leave the faintly sour taste of something lost, some link to history to whose strange absence we routinely turn a blind eye. Shadowed by the Colosseum or the Pantheon, the stories of Lewis and Clark, Abe Lincoln and Laura Ingalls Wilder seem modern. Popular history prior to the Pilgrims appears to trail off. What history we have of indigenous peoples and the way they lived was mangled by war, genocide, forced migrations and institutionalized racism or otherwise intentionally forgotten.
Yet even rooted in such a dark and distorted past, the vision of the future is bright and clear. Sean Sherman, a member of the Oglala Lakota subtribe of the Great Sioux Nation and founder of The Sioux Chef, the Indigenous Food Lab and the nonprofit North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NATIFS), is on a mission to revitalize Native American cuisine. In the process, his work is re-identifying North American cuisine, reclaiming an important culinary culture long buried and often inaccessible. His cooking focuses on indigenous foods (pre-colonization) and the traditional methods of preparing them. Sherman is intent on reconnecting us to the North America before beef, pork, chicken, dairy,
Above: Chef Sean Sherman, a member of the Oglala Lakota subtribe of the Great Sioux Nation and founder of The Sioux Chef, the Indigenous Food Lab and the nonprofit North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems 44
edible INDY Fall 2018
