The Sioux Chef Wants To Make The World A Better Place And…

… a $50,000 grant from the Julia Child Foundation will certainly help Sean Sherman fulfill his longtime mission to revive and celebrate indigenous culinary traditions.

During a recent interview, the celebrity chef talked about plans for the grant money, his new project at a global marketplace in Minneapolis and the call to action he heeded while living in Mexico.

Thank you, PBS

While growing up on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, Sherman watched a lot of public television. “We only got like two-and-a-half channels,” he said. That’s where the legendary Julia Child’s French Chef first popped onto his radar: “I watched a lot of cooking shows.”

When he was 13, the family left the reservation and moved to burgeoning tourist towns including Deadwood. He felt like he hit the jackpot when he landed a job cooking at a casino: “It was warm and there was food and I liked it way better than the paper route job I had.”

By 16, he was routinely prepping protein for the popular restaurant where everything was cooked from scratch. He was in charge of breaking down steaks, wrapping them in bacon: “They ran a $4.95 filet mignon special and I’d prep 350 steaks for the night and then cook them on the line. I worked hard and learned a lot.”

He landed his first executive chef job when he was 27. “I didn’t go to culinary school but I read everything and absorbed it. Textbooks from the Culinary Institute of America, Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking. I found Julia Child cookbooks at thrift stores.”

Later, while he was living in Mexico, he experienced an epiphany: “I was living among the Huichol people and noticed a lot of commonalities between our people, especially the beadwork. It was like we were long distance cousins, we had so much in common. That helped me realize how little I knew about my heritage. I could cook hundreds of European recipes off the top of my head, but I knew very little about Lakota food.”

Decolonizing food

At Owamni, Sherman’s groundbreaking restaurant in Minneapolis, the menu is laser focused on ingredients that thrived before white settlers brought cattle, pigs and soybeans. There are elk tacos and cured salmon with trout roe for starters, bison, scallops and crawfish as shareable mains. Mushrooms, wild rice, corn and sweet potato are given star treatment by the kitchen. On the drink side, there’s an extensive selection of tea from native owned Anahata Herbals.

The beautifully plated dishes aren’t just a meal, they tell a compelling story.

“We’re rebuilding knowledge by reconnecting with our ancestry,” Sherman said. “We’re not trying to recreate the past. We’re trying to evolve, to improve access to indigenous food, to educate and be there for the next generation to help steward indigenous culture.”

By the way, the menu and website have an option to read it in the native Dakota.

The North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NĀTIFS) he founded recently launched an Indigenous Food Lab in the Midtown Global Market in a historic Minneapolis neighborhood. This nonprofit restaurant offers training for aspiring food industry professionals, does research and development, Indigenous food identification, gathering, cultivation, and preparation and covers all components of starting and running a successful culinary business based around Native traditions and Indigenous foods, according to its website.

Julia Child’s spotlight

The foundation Child created in 1995 — formally known as the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts — became operational in 2004 and began bestowing grants in 2015. Previous recipients include Jacques Pepin, Toni Tipton Martin, Grace Young and José Andrés.

Each winner selects a nonprofit to which they donate the grant. Sherman’s grant will go to the nonprofits he founded with the goal of making Indigenous foods more accessible to as many communities as possible.

Sherman is no newbie when it comes to this kind of well-deserved attention. He has won three James Beard Awards including Best American Cookbook for his first book, The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen, the Leadership Award, and Best New Restaurant in America in 2022 for Owamni. He was also most recently named Time 100 Most Influential People of 2023.

In the news release announcing the 2023 grant, the Julia Child Foundation detailed the Sioux Chef’s considerable chops: “Sean is helping reclaim and celebrate the rich culinary heritage of Indigenous communities around the world. Sean has dedicated his career to supporting and promoting Indigenous food systems and Native food sovereignty.”

Watch this 2021 Ted Talk from chef Sean Sherman:

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