#1649 Sean Sherman and Native American Food

Listening to America

History, Politics, Unitedstates, Society & Culture, American

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Clay talks with noted chef, author, activist, and visionary Sean Sherman, an Oglala Lakota man who is changing the world of indigenous food. Sean is the author of an award-winning book, The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen, and another book, Turtle Island, which is coming out in November. They discuss the white conquest of the North American continent, the shattering of Native American ways and traditions, the forced assimilation policies that have brought disease to Native communities, and how surplus white food — white flour, cheap cheese, sugary sodas, and noodles — have been dumped by the USDA farm program on Native communities. Sherman created an extremely popular restaurant in Minneapolis, Owamni — claiming one of the most coveted dining reservations in the Midwest. Based on the stunning success of his efforts so far, Sean Sherman is planning more restaurants in places like Bozeman, Portland, and Rapid City and freely sharing his ideas with Native communities who want to reform their diets and achieve food sovereignty.

This interview was recorded on March 17, 2025

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everyone. What a treat this was. I had a chance to talk with Sean Sherman,
0:06.5	who is Ogalala Lakota, Ogalala Sioux, from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He is a kind of
0:14.2	revolutionary, is an advocate for a revolutionary change in the indigenous diet. As you probably know, indigenous people
0:24.6	around the world, but particularly in America, suffer from diabetes and obesity and all sorts of
0:31.7	other issues. Not that the white population doesn't, too, of course, or I think the third most
0:36.6	obese nation in the world all around.
0:40.0	But Native Americans have had a particularly hard time of it because of colonialist patterns.
0:45.1	And so one of them was that the USDA, the Department of Agriculture in the farm program would take commodities that were surplus commodities, equivalent of Velveeta cheese,
0:57.4	for example, or macaroni and cheese or hamburger helper or noodles or white bread, white flour, and so on.
1:05.8	They would take these surplus commodities and put them in trucks and take them to reservations and then hand
1:12.1	them out like rations of the 19th century to poor indigenous people.
1:18.5	So this was meant to be help for native people, but it actually further addicted them to
1:25.9	an unsustainable diet,
1:28.0	which you and I are also engaged in ourselves, as we know.
1:32.5	And so there's been a movement over the past 30 or 40 years to adjust that, to change that.
1:37.3	And here's Sean Sherman doing amazing work.
1:39.9	He has a restaurant in Minneapolis, Minnesota, right at the Falls of the Mississippi River, St. Anthony Falls, that he has opened, Oamne, which is the native name for St. Anthony Falls.
1:53.6	He said that they've been open for three and a half years, and they have been full up.
1:58.0	I mean, every single night, it's almost impossible to get into this restaurant,
2:03.4	and they're thinking of opening another one in Bozeman
2:07.0	and maybe a third in Rapid City and others,
2:10.1	and of course they don't want to own all of this.
	...

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