You're listening to How to Be a Better Human.

I'm your host, Chris Duffy.

If you were to ask me to give you a list of things that immediately make me feel like home,

things that make me know I'm with my family, a very large part of my list would be food-based,

a fresh everything bagel with thin sliced Nova and cream cheese.

My mom's brisket.

A glass of Vernor's ginger ale.

Food has this powerful way of connecting us to our memories and our emotional histories.

It can also be a way to explore and to learn.

I don't think I know anyone who hasn't delighted in tasting

something new for the very first time, whether it's delicious homemade Korean kimchi or West African

mafei stew or just a fresh baked slice of bread. But it can be rarer for us to learn about the

context and the history that surrounds that food, the systems

that enable ingredients to make their way to our plates, and the culture and choices that

determine what it is we taste. But we, even just as individuals, we have the power to change

that. We can get curious about what we're eating and learn about where it's coming from and the

history of those flavors. Today's guest, Chef Sean Sherman, is helping us to do that. He's inviting

us all to think about our dinner plates differently. Sean uses his critically acclaimed food as a

vehicle to talk about his Native American culture, to talk about indigenous lives and values, and to highlight the past, present, and future of what it means to be native in the United States and across the globe. Here's a clip from Sean's TED Talk. People in the media are always like, you're native, like what kind of foods you grew up with? Because I want to hear a cool story, like, oh, I'd get up in the morning,

take down an elk with a slingshot I made, and have a big family feast, you know? But that wasn't the reality, you know, because I grew up with the commodity food program because we were poor, like a lot of people on the reservation, and it's just the way it was. And we didn't even have the pretty cans when I was growing up.

We just had these black and white cans,

just beef and juices, and that's dinner, you know, and that sucks. So, and Indian tacos, you know, like, even when as a kid, is like, why does our Lakota food taste like Mexican food? You know, it didn't even make sense to me at the time. But we could do better than this. There's so much more to learn and more to offer with indigenous foods. But first you have to understand just like how diverse our nation is.

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