Hi there, my name is Sean Sherman,
Unfortunately, I don't have foodfor you guys tonight.
Food for thought, I guess, maybe.
I'm here to talkabout Native American food.
I was born and raisedin Pine Ridge in South Dakota,
and our focus are on Indigenous foods.
And, you know, it's beena really interesting journey so far.
I started my companycalled The Sioux Chef --
S-I-O-U-X, a little play on words --
back in 2014.
But it had come from quite a few yearsof trying to research and understand
because I kind of grew up in restaurants.
I grew up in Spearfishand in South Dakota in the Black Hills.
And I started workinga lot of touristy restaurants.
And, you know, I had just a long career.
All through high school and college,I worked restaurants.
After college, I moved to Minneapolis.
I became a chefat a young age in the city.
And I'd just been cheffingfor a long time.
And a few years into my chef career,
I realized the complete absenceof Indigenous foods.
And even for myself,I realized that I couldn't even name --
I could name less than a handfulof Lakota recipes that were truly Lakota,
things without cream of mushroomsoup in it, right?
(Laughter)
It, you know, put me on a pathto try and understand what happened,
like where are all the Native Americanfoods at, you know?
And so it's been really interesting.
So Indigenous foods, that shouldn't be --
there shouldn't bea big question mark, you know,
because no matter where we arein North America, we're --
you know, North America obviously begins,
all of its history beginswith Indigenous history, right?
And no matter where we are,we're standing on indigenous land.
And so we should have a really good,strong sense of Native American food
because it's just the land that we're on.
It's just the historyof the land that we're on.
So for us, it became morethan just serving foods.
It really became talking about itand talking about why it isn't here.
And I think it's a really importantstory for us to know.
And it's also really important to see
the benefit of whyunderstanding Indigenous foods
could really help all of us in the future.
So, you know, but where areall the Native American restaurants?
We live in a world today,you know, where we have --
as the US, we’re like food capitalsof the world, right?
We have some of the best restaurantsin New York City, in Chicago and LA,
and zero Indigenous restaurants
that are focused on the landthat they're sitting on,
You can have every other restaurants --and Indian restaurants don't count,
because that wasmy only choice on Facebook,
because when I was trying to decidehow to describe our restaurant --
is it Indian or is itnew American or old American?
But anyways, so what we've doneis like we tried to focus on, first off,
just understanding what wereprecontact foods, precolonial foods.
And I realized that that term didn't evenreally make a lot of sense to people.
So I think it's really importantto go through the storyline
because to understand colonialor what is a precolonial food,
you have to understand colonialism itself.
And to understand colonialism,the easiest way is just to Google it.
So if you Google the word "colonialism,"
you'll get a definition,"it's a policy or practice
of acquiring full or partialpolitical control over another country,
occupying it with settlersand exploiting it economically."
And this is somethingthat's happened not uniquely here.
It's happened all across the globe.
So all over the Americas,North and South, all over Africa,
all over India, all over Southeast Asia,
Australia, New Zealand,Hawaii, you name it,
like this has been a very common history
for a lot of areas around the globe.
For the US, which is our focus,
because we're right here smack dabin the middle of the United States,
it's really importantto understand the history
because the US did a really good jobof smudging its history a little bit.
So if you're going through high school,
the history you get on Indigenous peoplesprobably isn't the best history.
So you really should read a little bitmore about what really happened.
So let's start with Manifest Destiny,
which is really kind of somethingthat was born from the idea
of what was originallydoctrine of discovery,
which basically gave European powerstheir own rights to say,
if we discover it, then we own it.
Right? But that policydoesn't really work that well,
because if you go into an Apple Storeand you discover a brand new MacBook,
most likely you're not going to havethe rights to walk out the door with it.
But a lot of our policies and a lot of --
like, our country was built on this notion
that we just havethis right to everything, right?
And people have to rememberhow young our history is.
We're such a young country, you know?
There's like, barely any time has passed.
So just go back a couple hundred years
So in 1800, the United Statesis still not much more
than just the 13 coloniesat that point in history.
And it’s the 1800s that are the mostdeadly century for Indigenous peoples.
So a lot of really bad things happenedduring this time period,
almost all of what is the USis still completely occupied
by Indigenous peoples and communities
and a huge diversity of themacross the board.
Even despite European powershaving big land claims, you know,
France has a big sectionand Spain's got big chunks
and England is holding on to chunksand Russia is coming in
and there's all sortsof just big land grabs happening.
But in reality,it's the Indigenous communities
But this century is a mass centuryof change, you know.
So during this time period,things move really fast.
So this is just a really tough time.
And for me, this is likemy great-grandfather's era
because my great-grandfatherwas born in the late 1850s
and during his lifetime,he sees so much change so quickly,
he sees so many battles betweenthe Lakota and the US government.
He sees the Battle of Little Bighornwhen he's 18 years old,
during the battle on the Lakota side.
He sees his kids having to goto boarding school, cut their hair,
learn to speak English,learn Christianity.
some of his children even grow upto fight for the US government.
So it's such a crazy amount of changeto see in one single lifetime, right?
And during this time period,people are getting pushed around.
At the beginning of that century,
over 80 percent of that landmasswas under Indigenous control.
And by the end of the centuryless than two percent,
only because of the reservation systems.
And this is all just part of the story
of why there aren'tNative American restaurants,
because we just went througha really traumatic time in history
where we're still -- we haven't evenhad the time to heal yet,
let alone evolve, right,when it comes down to all this.
there's a lot of these big movementslike the Indian Removal Act of 1830,
that basically saidwe're wards the states,
that we're not our own entities anymore,
And all these pieces were very focused
and the government was really, really goodat what they did, you know.
And it all starts withtaking our food away from us.
So the loss of Indigenous food
is something that startsfrom the very beginning.
George Washington, one of hisvery first things that he does
is send General Sullivan out to pushall the native people outside of the US.
He wanted them captured.He wanted them brought back.
And they went on this marchthat lasts a single summer
there's no more native peoplein all of that New York area,
from D.C. all the way up, basically.
And they named George Washington
They gave the name for a USpresident: Town Destroyer,
which is still the namethat they use today
because he just devastated a whole area.
And this is the precedent that gets set
for how the US governmenttreats the Indigenous peoples
throughout the next century, basically.
So here, in our area,the very systematic destruction of bison,
which they knew would hurta lot of people, and it did.
And by the end of the century,there was less than 500 on the planet.
And it was very purposeful. So ...
But I think what's most damaging for us
and why we don't havea lot of Indigenous restaurants out there
was the loss of our education,
because this whole generation,
like my great-grandfather's generation
and my grandfather'sgeneration especially,
like, those generationsshould have been getting
the full extent of Indigenous education.
They should have been learning everythingtheir ancestors intended them to learn.
How to fish, how to hunt,how to gather, how to identify plants,
how to live sustainably,utilising plants and animals around us.
But instead, we went througha really intense assimilation period
stripped this whole generationof all that knowledge and education.
because this was not a fun situationfor these kids to go through.
This was a military-style schooland they popped up all over the US,
These kids being again forcedto speak different languages,
forced to learn new religions,
forced to learn skillsthat had nothing to do with them.
And being forced to is the situation.
You know, a lot of these kids perished.
We shouldn't have to worryabout sending kids to school
to see if they'll survive or not.
But this was a very harsh situationfor kids to go through.
And they went throughphysical abuse, sexual abuse.
They went through mental abuse.
And we're still reeling from thatin our communities today
because of this direct linkto the trauma that happened there.
And being Indigenous in the 1900swasn't much better.
My grandparents were bornbefore they were even citizens,
which doesn't happen until 1924.
the US government starteddismantling a lot of tribes.
So over 100 tribes got dismantled
so they could continueto take over more land spaces.
We couldn't celebrate religionsuntil '78, you know.
So what does it look like for megrowing up in this?
I was born in the mid-70sand growing up in postcolonial America.
Like, what kind of foods was I eating?
because people in the mediaare always like,
"You're native, like what kind of foodsdid you grow up with?"
Because they want to hear a cool storylike, "I'd get up in the morning,
take down an elk with a slingshot,we'd have a big family feast."
because like I grew upwith the Commodity Food Program
because we were poor,like a lot of people on the reservation.
And we didn't even have the pretty canswhen I was growing up.
We just had, you know, theseblack and white cans, beef with juices.
And that's dinner, you know,and that sucks. So ...
And Indian tacos, you know,even when I was a kid, I was like,
why does our Lakota foodtaste like Mexican food?
It didn't even make senseto me at the time.
Because we could do better than this.
There's so much more to learnand more to offer with indigenous foods.
So it’s really important to understandwhat Indigenous foods are.
But first, you have to understandjust like how diverse our nation is.
We're so diverse, there's all sortsof plants and animals out there.
And when you layerIndigenous peoples on it,
you can see so muchamazing diversity, you know?
So just look at all thosehuge color blocks
there's all sorts of diversitywithin those two, right?
Still today, we have 634 tribes in Canada,
573 in the US and 20 percent of Mexicoidentifies as Indigenous.
So there's an immense amountof indigeneity out there today
and we should be celebratingthat diversity because it's awesome.
You know, just compare colonialsettler states to Indigenous territories
and you can see that diversity.
It should change everywhere we go.
You know, the US, the food system
shouldn't just behamburgers across the board,
or in Canada shouldn't just be poutine.
We could do so much betterdescribing our foods, right?
And so we have to really focuson Indigenous education
because it's important for us to learn.
So when we're lookingat Indigenous education,
it's a study of all these pieces,wild food, permaculture,
native agriculture, seed saving,seasonal lifestyles, ethno-oceanography,
hunting, fishing, whole animal butchery,
mycology, salt, sugar and fat productions,
crafting, land stewardship, cooking,metallurgy, Indigenous history,
traditional medicines, food preservation,fermentation, nutrition, health,
spirituality, gender roles,sustainability --
all of that stuffis this really important education
that we need to learn, you know.
So let's just break downsome foods real quick.
We learn about how natives were ableto use every single part of a bison.
But that's just because we didn't havethe privilege to be wasteful.
We figured out how to be resourcefulwith everything that we had
and we treated everything like that.
But basically, anything moving aroundis literally game.
And we cut out beef, pork and chickenbecause those animals didn't exist here.
And there are other animals to eatout there that aren't those three.
So there's just a ton of stuff out there.
And you shouldn't be afraid of somethingif it's not a cow, a pig or a chicken
because there's a lot of cool foodsout there, and even insects,
it's so normalin so many parts of the world
But for us, our biggest loveis plant knowledge
because you start to learnthe plants around us,
you just see food and medicine everywhere.
The Western diet has neverreally taken the time
to learn this amazing biologythat surround us
and all these plants all around us.
Because there's so much to learn.
There's all sorts of staples out there,like the timpsula,
which is the prairie turnipwhich grows around these plains.
Camas root from the Pacific Northwest,wild rice from the Great Lakes,
even just seaweed out there in the oceans,
which a lot of families were utilizing,
or in the desertswhere all the plants look like
they want to hurt you or maim you.
The Indigenous peoplesknew how to live with them.
And another piecelike the domesticated piece,
with all the agriculture,it's really important,
because we think of this as agriculturebut we know how damaging this is.
And it's scary when you see headlineslike, "What should we do
if glyphosate was found in our Cheerios?"
You guys should bereally scared about that.
That stuff's really nasty, you know.
But it's just amazing to learnabout Indigenous agriculture
and people figured outall sorts of ways to farm
and build sustained, huge civilisations,
whether they'rein the middle of the desert,
whether they're on the coastal regions,or way up here in the Dakotas.
People were able to farm amazing things
that had an amazing amount of diversitythat we need to protect.
We are the stewardsof what's left of this diversity.
And a lot of it got wiped off the map
in the 1800s with all that colonialismthat was going on.
So we have to be understanding so we canprotect these for the next generation
because these could disappearif we don't do anything about it.
So it's really importantto understand that.
So to use Indigenous knowledgein today's world,
it's just important to open up your eyes,you know, stop calling everything a weed
because that just meansyou don't know what it is.
You know, our kids can namemore K-Pop bands than they can trees
and that's your fault, you know?
(Laughter)
We need to teach them thingsthat are important.
Because, like, just look around.
There's food everywhereand we should be making pantries,
like our grandparents did,and our great-grandparents.
They just used the foodthat was around us.
So we should justbe making our own pantries
that tastes like where we are,
what makes us unique in our own region.
And that's why we should haveNative American food restaurants
all over the nation,run by Indigenous peoples.
There's so much flavor.There's so much health.
And it's just super healthy, you know,
and it's fun for chefs to createand play with all these flavors.
Chefs should be really excitedabout getting to learn all of these plants
because they're just goingout of a French cookbook.
And for us, we just want to get this foodback into tribal communities especially,
and make people healthy and happyand break a lot of the cycle of, you know,
and huge rates of type 2 diabetesand obesity and heart disease
because of this low nutritional food base
that the government'sbeen feeding us for too long.
And we just need to thinkabout how we can adjust
We need to use our land spaces better.
(Laughter)
We need to really do something better.
We could just be growing foodout there, you know?
We could just be puttingfood plants everywhere.
We need more community gardens,more permacultural landscapes.
If we can grow 30 golf courses
in Palm Springsin the middle of the desert,
just think what we could doif we just did that for good
and just put food everywhere, you know?
An organic food, food that wantsto grow in that certain region.
So, you know, Indigenous diet
is really the most ideal diet.
It's diverse proteins,it's low carbs, it's low salt.
It's a ton of plant diversity.It's organic agriculture.
It's celebrating culturaland regional diversity.
It's like what the paleo dietwishes it was,
when it comes down to it,
because that just makes sense,you know, and we need to protect this.
We need to get this out there.
And again, it's not unique here.
There's Indigenous peoplesall around the world
and there's an Indigenous knowledge base
that's basically untappedbecause of the colonial structure
We need to be protecting peoplein Africa and India
and Southeast Asia and Australia,New Zealand, Hawaii,
We need to be celebrating diversity
instead of trying to build stupid wallsto keep people out.
We need to have, you know,healthy food access,
regional food systems,local control of food systems,
access to Indigenous educationand environmental protections
to protect a lot of thisnatural food that surround us.
We need to be better connectedto our nature around us
and really, truly understandhow it's a symbiotic relationship.
If we can control our food,we can control our future.
And for us, it's an exciting timeto be Indigenous
because we are takingall of these lessons from our ancestors
that should have been passed down to us,
relearning themand utilizing the world today
with everything it has to offer
and becoming something different.
We're at the stagewhere we're ready to evolve.
This is an Indigenous evolutionand revolution at the same time.
So I hope somedaythat you can drive across this nation,
stop at Indigenous-run food businesses