The Sioux Chef: Restoring Indigenous Food Ways with Sean Sherman

What would American food look like if the story had not been interrupted?

That's the question at the center of this conversation with Chef Sean Sherman — an Ogala Lakota chef who grew up on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and has spent his career restoring the indigenous food knowledge that colonization, displacement, and forced assimilation nearly erased.

Sean is the founder of the Indigenous Food Lab and the award-winning restaurant Owamni in Minneapolis. His latest book, Turtle Island, maps the full tapestry of indigenous food across North America — erasing colonial borders to reveal the regional diversity, plant knowledge, and food sovereignty that existed long before European settlement.

In this conversation, we talk about what was lost when indigenous food systems were dismantled — not centuries ago, but within just a few generations. We talk about the government commodity food programs that replaced traditional diets on reservations, the 90% unemployment rates Sean grew up around, and the moment in Mexico when he realized he knew hundreds of European recipes but nothing about Lakota food.

And we talk about what becomes possible when that knowledge is restored — for health, for culture, for land, for local economies, and for the future of American food.

Because long before regenerative agriculture and farm to table were trends, they were the foundation of indigenous food systems across North America. This conversation asks what it would look like to build from that foundation instead of ignoring it.

Key themes:

• Turtle Island and the erasure of colonial borders in food
• Growing up on Pine Ridge Reservation and the USDA Commodity Food Program
• How Sean became a chef before he became an indigenous food advocate
• The moment in Mexico that sent him back to Lakota food knowledge
• Owamni restaurant and the Indigenous Food Lab in Minneapolis
• Native Wise and Dream of Wild Health — indigenous food producers and youth programs
• Food sovereignty, biodiversity, and what regional food systems could look like
• The connection between indigenous food knowledge and the future of American farming

Connect with Sean Sherman:

• Owamni restaurant: owamni.com
• Indigenous Food Lab: indigenousfoodlab.org
• Instagram: @seanjsherman

Production credits: Co-produced by Sonia Dhillon with sound design and original music by Russell Chapa.

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