How to Eat with Awareness and Purpose (w/ Sean Sherman)

If you remove ingredients like dairy, wheat, flour, cane sugar, beef, pork, and chicken from your diet—then what do you eat? For Sioux chef Sean Sherman, excluding colonial ingredients from his cuisines gives him the opportunity to spotlight indigenous produce and uplift local communities. Sean is the owner of the James Beard Award-winning restaurant Owamni in Minneapolis. Sean joins Chris to discuss the philosophy behind his indigenous restaurant, where he thinks the American education system falls short, and how he is using food to reclaim indigenous history. This episode is part of a series of bonus videos from "How to Be a Better Human." You can watch the extended video companion on the TED YouTube Channel and the extended interview on the TED Audio Collective YouTube Channel. Watch Sean cooking Indigenous foods: https://youtu.be/p0IpMqUZKbs Chris extended interview: https://youtu.be/n6_bat26dmQ Follow Host: Chris Duffy (Instagram: @chrisiduffy https://www.instagram.com/chrisiduffy/?hl=en |https://chrisduffycomedy.com/) Guests: Sean Sherman (Instagram: @the_sioux_chef https://www.instagram.com/the_sioux_chef/ and @siouxchef https://www.instagram.com/siouxchef/?hl=en| https://seansherman.com/) Linda Black Elk (Instagram:@linda.black.elk https://www.instagram.com/linda.black.elk/?hl=en) Links Humor Me by Chris Duffy (https://t.ted.com/ZGuYfcL) Instagram: @owamni https://www.instagram.com/owamni/ | Facebook: @Owamni - By The Sioux Chef https://www.facebook.com/owamni/ | https://owamni.com/ Instagram: @natifs_org https://www.instagram.com/natifs_org/?hl=en | Facebook: @NATIFSorg https://www.facebook.com/NATIFSorg/ | https://natifs.org/ Follow TED! X:https://www.twitter.com/TEDTalks Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/ted Facebook:https://facebook.com/TED LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/company/ted-conferences TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@tedtoks https://www.tiktok.com/@tedtoks Podcasts:https://www.ted.com/podcasts For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts https://go.ted.com/BHTranscripts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Duffy?

  With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One Bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends. It's pretty much all he talks about, in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com/bank. Capital One, N.A., Member FDIC.

• 0:34Chris Duffy?

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• 1:25Chris Duffy?

  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 Werner'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 mafé stew, or just a fresh baked slice of bread. But it can be

• 2:10Chris Duffy?

  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

• 2:54Chris Duffy?

  in the United States and across the globe. Here's a clip from Sean's TED Talk.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  People in the media are always like, "You're native? Like, what kind of foods you grew up with?" Because they 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 like, 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 like, 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 I was a kid, it's 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. Like, we're so diverse.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  There's all sorts of plants and animals out there. And when you layer indigenous peoples on it, you can see so much amazing diversity. Still today, we have 634 tribes in Canada, 573 in the US, and 20% of Mexico identifies as indigenous. So there's an immense amount of indigeneity out there today. And we should be celebrating that diversity because it's awesome. We are the stewards of what's left of this diversity. And a lot of it got wiped off the map in the 1800s with all that colonialism that was going on. So we have to be understanding so we can protect these for the next generation because these could disappear if we don't do anything about it, you know? So it's really important to understand that. We need to be celebrating diversity instead of trying to build stupid walls to keep people out, right? We need to be better connected to our nature around us

• 4:28Speaker 01

  and really, truly understand it's a symbiotic relationship. If we can control our Food, we can control our future. And for us, it's an exciting time to be indigenous because we are taking all of these lessons from our ancestors that should have been passed down to us, relearning them and utilizing the world today with everything it has to offer and becoming something different. This is an indigenous evolution and revolution at the same time.

• 4:56Chris Duffy?

  We're going to be talking with Sean in person at his restaurant Owamene about this evolution and this revolution in just a moment, so don't go anywhere. But first, a quick break.

• 5:16Chris Duffy?

  This episode is brought to you by Planet Visionaries, a podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. What connects a hidden laboratory in the Amazon, giant pandas in China's mountain forests, research relating to the ocean, and communities living alongside wildlife in India? That's what you'll hear on season six of Planet Visionaries. Stories from the explorers, scientists, and conservation leaders whose work addresses research, biodiversity, and conservation issues in specific locations. Planet Visionaries, hosted by environmental advocate and professional climber Alex Honnold, brings you real stories of discovery, determination, and research and initiatives relating to environmental change.

• 6:00Chris Duffy?

  In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.

• 6:09Speaker 02

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• 7:08Chris Duffy?

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• 8:08Chris Duffy?

  Today, we are talking with chef Sean Sherman about food, culture, and context.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Hi, my name is Sean Sherman. I am here in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at our restaurant Awamni. I am the executive director and founder of our nonprofit Natifs, which is North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems, and my brand, The Sushi Chef.

• 8:26Chris Duffy?

  So Sean, where are we today?

• 8:27Speaker 01

  So we're here in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and we're right outside of the Mississippi River. And it's a really special location. In the Ducoata language, it was called Awamni Amni because there used to be this massive waterfall right outside this window. And it used to be about 300 feet across and about 40-foot drop. And you can kind of see the water levels when you're looking out at the river from here to there. But here at the restaurant, when we named it Awamni, we just took the short name of the original name space of What is around this waterfall area? And the original waterfall is no longer here because during the colonial history, a lot of mills popped up in this area and a lot of tunnels and things were drawn and it ruined the natural features of the waterfall. So we see a lock and dam and some concrete skirting. But this is still a really special place and that's where we are.

• 9:11Chris Duffy?

  And what does Awamni Awamni mean?

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Place of the falling swirling water.

• 9:16Chris Duffy?

  So this is your restaurant here and it's won a bunch of awards, it's gotten a bunch of acclaim. What makes this different than other restaurants in the Twin Cities?

• 9:26Speaker 01

  Well, we wanted to feature kind of our vision of modern indigenous food and we leaned into the philosophy that I'd been utilizing for quite some time. So the philosophy was basically in order to showcase what our indigenous foods to North America, we took away colonial ingredients. So we removed things like dairy, wheat flour, cane sugar, beef, pork, chicken, and just really focused on what was here first and built entire menus around that. On top of that, just featuring indigenous products from indigenous producers first because we want to make sure our food dollars are intentionally going to who we want to support. So it's just a unique and different restaurant, you know, and we believe that there should be Native American indigenous restaurants all over, everywhere. But unfortunately, this is something super unique, but we're very proud of what we built.

• 10:08Chris Duffy?

  I've heard you sometimes refer to the food that you serve as ironically foreign.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Right. It's true. I mean, because a lot of people are very unaware of like so much, especially the botany around us, you know, I feel like proteins are easy because like any animal you could eat, don't recommend all of them, but it's possible because that's protein. But as far as like the vegetation and botanicals go, like the Western diet's kind of ignored so much of what is just this amazing bounty of what is in North America. And indigenous diets are really focused on a lot of that plant diversity and we really highlight and showcase a lot of that in our menus today.

• 10:41Chris Duffy?

  So it's foreign because? It's foreign to many people who haven't grown up eating it.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Absolutely, and because our Western diets are really obviously industrialized and you know, it's a part of the, you know, just what's in the grocery store, that's where food comes from. But you know, from an indigenous perspective, when you look outside, there's just food all around us constantly, if you know what to look for, you know. And I think that's part of the education that we're attempting to highlight through the food, is just showing that there's so much plant, so much diversity, so much health and nutrition that's all around us, and that we could really be looking at the regional and cultural differences all over what is the United States and North America and beyond.

• 11:18Chris Duffy?

  So that's, that's one of the reasons why I'm really excited to talk to you is because it's not just about serving a delicious meal. I mean, that is a part of it, but that's really a way to get people in and thinking about some of these much bigger issues.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's food with story, you know, so I think when you have food with story, it's really powerful, and that's what we attempt to do, because we change the menu quite consistently, and we usually change them around the solstices and equinoxes, because those are very definitive, like seasonal changes, you know. But we just want to showcase like what's seasonal, what's local, what's regional, what's coming from indigenous producers, what's wild, and just like telling all that story through the plant, because again, there should be Native American restaurants everywhere, especially in the US, because no matter where you are, American history starts with Native American peoples, and we're typically completely left out of that whole situation, you know. And food is such an important storyteller, food is something that people can connect with, and you know, we just see it as an amazing tool.

• 12:14Chris Duffy?

  The fact that there aren't Native American restaurants, and the fact that there is not a lot of knowledge of indigenous cuisine, it's not accidental.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  No.

• 12:24Chris Duffy?

  It was a very conscious program to try and erase indigenous history, to try and erase Native American culture.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Absolutely, I mean, the erasure of indigenous peoples in the Americas has been something that's been ongoing for quite a while, you know, so you can date that back to, you know, the, the beginning of colonization, you know, back in the late 1400s, and with Christopher Columbus, you know, who never actually stepped foot in what is the United States today, but is still like. Highly revered, right? But again, you know, I focus mainly on just the United States government because that's where we live today and it's a it's a short history of the United States government, you know, because they don't form until the very late seventeen hundreds and even in the eighteen hundreds and the early eighteen hundreds, like, the majority of what is North America is still under indigenous stewardship, as it always had been, and during that time period, many indigenous communities hadn't even seen European people yet.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  And so I look at that one century of eighteen hundred to nineteen hundred, which is extremely aggressive, extremely violent, extremely racist, and so many really awful things happened to indigenous peoples during this push from the American government to push westward and to take over a lot of that land space. And growing up Lakota on Pine Ridge, like, you know, it's only a couple generations ago because my great grandfather, for example, was at Battle of Little Big Horn when he was eighteen. And like, my grandparents were the first generation of kids to have to go through assimilation processes through boarding schools to cut their hair, to learn English, to learn Christianity, and to basically be stripped of culture completely. You know, so a lot of those pieces are a part of the story of why we don't see Native American restaurants everywhere.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  And, you know, when you look at the nineteen hundreds onwards, they're still living in segregation, living in oppression, living in poverty, and all these things are manufactured, you know, because we were just basically put onto reservation systems, which are still segregated communities today. And there's just been a lot of issues there and very little work, you know?

• 14:20Chris Duffy?

  And why food as a way to push back against that whole history?

• 14:23Speaker 01

  I just feel like food is something really powerful and food sovereignty is what we really push towards because if we can get tribes to really consider that there is a path to control their own food, to be able to grow their own food, to harvest their own food, to preserve their own food, to make more than enough food for their entire community with the spaces that they have, and even in all the different environments all over the United States, there's plenty of ways to work towards that. And I think that if we can control our food, we can really control the power that we have for our future, you know? And so I just really hope people can see that we can learn so much from our ancestors because we're not trying to create food that's a museum piece and trying to go backwards to fourteen ninety-one of what were we eating long before European settlers showed up. We're looking at the future of like, how can we adopt a lot of the knowledge base from

• 15:08Speaker 01

  our ancestors, apply that to what we know today, and how do we think about the future? Because we have every every single day we're alive, we can think about changing the future.

• 15:18Chris Duffy?

  Something that I think is really inspiring to me about your work, and also really interesting, like intellectually too, is that a lot of people have this interest in the kind of food that you make, right? Like, food that is more connected to a healthier past, to less processed, to not including all these dangerous additives. But a lot of the people who are most interested in that also don't have a curiosity about the context and the history of it.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:50Chris Duffy?

  And the thing that I love about you is that you are both making this really delicious, important, nutritious food, but you're insisting on the history and the context of where it came from and what it means.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  I just think, you know, history is so important. And unfortunately, if we grew up in America, we don't learn about American history. You know, we were taught a very colonial approach to that story. And there's nothing that really addresses a lot of the hardships that other people go through if you don't happen to be a white Christian male particularly. And so there's a lot of issues in American history that get blown over. And, you know, we're living in a time period where it's very political, where there's a lot of political figures trying to erase further people of color and the histories that we have gone through just to be alive today. So especially when we're looking at Black and Indigenous in American history, you know, like, our histories are in danger of being erased all the time, as they always have been. So I think it's really important to talk about history

• 16:45Speaker 01

  because we can really learn so much. And it's not trying to make people feel bad for what happened in history, because history can be really painful. It's just addressing it for what it is, naming it for what it is, and identifying the trauma that's been created from a lot of these histories.

• 16:59Chris Duffy?

  I'm talking to you right now in a moment in the United States when one of the central political issues right now is the question of who is allowed to be here.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:11Chris Duffy?

  And who is supposed to be here.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 17:13Chris Duffy?

  And that obviously is something that you have been thinking about for a long time, of who is allowed to be on this land and who is supposed to be on this land.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  You know, when you understand history, like colonial borders are these made-up lines. And, you know, and governments are, you know, holding On to colonial powers because colonization is just the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying with settlers and just exploiting it economically, right? And so when you look at colonization, it's happened all over the place. And you know, our governmental systems all over the world, but especially in the Americas are built to support that colonial mindset of continuously just like ruining the environment, moving around people of color, dividing people by race, dividing people by religion and all these principles that really have no values when it comes to what does it mean to be a human, you know?

• 18:03Speaker 01

  Because as humans, like we should all understand how connected we are because we all live on this planet. We all should understand how the environment affects us and is a part of everything that we do. And if we look at indigenous values of things like it, it kind of understands a lot of those pieces of that close relationship to plants, to environment, to the protection of clean water. Things like that are just basic human rights, you know? But you know, the colonization and the capitalization that's out there, like the people in charge want to keep that power. But we just see like America, the Americas is a beautiful space with so much amazing, beautiful indigenous diversity. And we should really embrace that diversity and learn how to try and protect it instead of trying to homogenize it constantly. That's been going on for a few hundred years now.

• 18:48Chris Duffy?

  So there are hundreds of Native American tribes?

• 18:52Speaker 01

  574 in the United States, 622 in Canada, and 20% of Mexico identifies as indigenous. But there's obviously way more indigeneity down there because you could just see it in the DNA.

• 19:02Chris Duffy?

  And so when you think about what it means to have a Native American cuisine or a Native American dish, is that even possible? Or is it a specific like Lakota dish?

• 19:13Speaker 01

  You can have very specific tribal dishes because a lot of tribes come from very specific regions, obviously. You know, so when we look at that beautiful diversity of not only what were people eating, but how did their culture affect that a little bit? Because there could be different groups from different tribes, speaking different languages, utilizing the same region with some of the same ingredients, but they have different cultural, you know, intentions with how their food is and meanings behind certain things too. So it's important just to understand the beauty of all of that diversity because like North America, which has been our main focus of basically looking at Mexico through Alaska and just looking at all that beautiful diversity.

• 19:49Chris Duffy?

  And what's a colonial ingredient?

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Ranch dressing?

• 19:54Chris Duffy?

  Okay.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Hard to argue with that, even the name. You know, when we're identifying what's colonial, we're talking about things that were introduced to the Americas that didn't exist here before, which is again, like why we removed things like wheat flour, which wasn't from here, dairy products, because dairy in the Americas was for child rearing. So like, and most people lose the enzyme to break down lactose by the time you're like 11 or 12 anyways, because we just didn't like in our DNA just didn't have the ability to keep producing those enzymes. And you know, things like cane sugar and just things that were introduced to the Americas. And so we look for what's here, like we look at the proteins that were here, which is all the animals, like wild animals, fish, birds, insects, anything that people were eating for protein. But then we're also

• 20:38Speaker 01

  looking at vegetation of all the wild knowledge of plants, because there's so much cool stuff out there all around us. Because just like where we are in the Great Lakes, we have all sorts of edible parts of trees and roots and flowers and herbs and moss and lichens and all mushrooms and all sorts of things that are out there. And then we also look at the agricultural aspect, because there's a vast area of North America that was really highly advanced in agriculture so long. And we do learn the story of how indigenous peoples here taught the colonizers how to farm with their agricultural practices, you know, which becomes a global situation eventually. And people take that for granted of a lot of the foods that came from the Americas have been normalized all across the globe, you know, because like what is Italy without polenta or chocolate or vanilla or any of

• 21:23Speaker 01

  those kinds of or tomatoes or chili peppers, you know, in many parts of the world. So it's just exploring for us, like what is indigenous and how do we want this to be perceived for the future? Like, how do we want future generations? And for us, we're holding on to the health aspect, because by removing those colonial ingredients, the food, like everything at this restaurant is gluten free, dairy free, sugar free, soy free, pork free. And it's like what every fad diet's trying to get to, and it just happens to be the indigenous diet of North America.

• 21:53Chris Duffy?

  We're going to take a quick break and then we will be back with more from Sean in just a moment.

• 22:12Chris Duffy?

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• 22:56Chris Duffy?

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• 23:40Chris Duffy?

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• 23:58Chris Duffy?

  And we are back with chef Sean Sherman. Growing up on Pine Ridge Reservation, what was the kind of food that you were starting with? And how did you use that start to get to where you are now?

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, we grew up in a very segregated and colonial state, you know? And like, we were separated from a lot of the rest of the US because we're so rural, you know? And I grew up out in the middle of the country, so we spent most of our time outside. And I was mostly a product of a lot of commodity food and EFTPIR program coming out of the USDA. So we just had a lot of cans of government foods, like canned vegetables that are packed in sodium, canned fruits that are packed in corn syrups, literally just gallons of corn syrup to utilize as a sweetener. And just like all of the, and just a lot of empty carbs, powdered milks and just, you know, just a lot of stuff that's just not great for us, a lot of over-processed foods. And it's led directly to a lot of these health issues that we talk about.

• 24:53Chris Duffy?

  We've been talking about how this food is not historic. It's not a museum piece. It's very much at the present. And part of that is, I'm interviewing you right now in a working restaurant, right? There's a working kitchen right over there. We can hear and see people working.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I mean, we've been very lucky that this vision has really worked out as well as it has. And, you know, we've basically have been sold out every single night since 2021. And we're very happy that it exists and we just hope that it has ripple effects of more influence out there in the world.

• 25:21Chris Duffy?

  So when I, when I first interviewed you for the show, you were just getting ready to open this restaurant, to open a laune. How has it been since then? What's been happening?

• 25:31Speaker 01

  I mean, we've gotten a lot of success. We've won some major awards like Best New Restaurant in the United States by James Beard, which is a huge national award to win because there's a lot of cool restaurants that open up every year. But to pull that top prize without ranch dressing, I thought was a pretty big accomplishment, you know?

• 25:47Chris Duffy?

  That's normally what James Beard is looking for.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Exactly, right? And so, and we've been really proud of the massive team that we've built and the skills that we're building, the chefs that have come out of here. And we just opened up the doors for so much creativity, you know? And, and I've been able to step away from, you know, cutting vegetables up in the back to continuing to do this larger work and just really see a super competent, amazing team grow out of this. And we just have visions of doing this more and more as we grow.

• 26:15Chris Duffy?

  You're both expanding your own personal world of indigenous food. And you're starting a new restaurant in Bozeman, Montana?

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so our, everything, even this restaurant is a part of our nonprofit, you know? So we kind of use the restaurant as a tool because the restaurants, restaurants will never create food relief or even food access for that matter because restaurants are a privilege because you need money to come to a restaurant. And not everybody has money, you know? So the purpose of this restaurant wasn't to feed people in need because we have other projects for that. But why this restaurant is part of a nonprofit is because restaurants do create a lot of jobs, which builds a lot of skills, creates a lot of future leaders. And then it also because of our intention of who we purchase from and who our food dollars are going to because we try and purchase from local and regional indigenous first and then national indigenous and then support, you know, local BIPOC, you know.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  So we have a tier of how things flow of where our money goes to. And we're just seeing a lot of good where our food dollars are happening because we're pushing over a half a million dollars a year just to indigenous producers alone with this restaurant, with this one kitchen. And so the vision was to continuously grow. So the nonprofits really focused on not only creating access to these foods and creating these projects and creating jobs, but also creating a lot of education and working towards education sovereignty also, which is really pulling the power of education, storytelling, history, crafts and all that stuff back towards ourselves. So we can really understand the cultural relevance and a non-neurocentric approach on education also. So we also do a lot of video work. So if you go to our YouTube, we have over 180 videos uploaded already

• 27:52Speaker 01

  of all sorts of topics, but largely around foodways, you know. We have a new building and we're opening up a new restaurant in town with a new native concept. And then we're slowly moving into Montana, which will create new kitchens to do more work as we're doing a lot of production work for schools and hospitals and manufacturing for large institutional culinary also. And that's how we see food access of happening more in real time. But eventually we'll open up a restaurant, which will create the jobs, move the food dollars to where we want it to, build the skills and create a place for people to have the experience of sitting in a native restaurant with so much intention and being proud of, being proud of it.

• 28:29Chris Duffy?

  And natives is the nonprofit.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Natives is a nonprofit.

• 28:32Chris Duffy?

  It's an acronym.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Yep, North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems. Because when you work in the nonprofit sector, you have to have an acronym for some reason. I think it's required.

• 28:40Chris Duffy?

  Yeah.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  But I just prefer like, you know, acronyms that say something so you can remember what they means.

• 28:45Chris Duffy?

  When I talked to you in 2021, you were getting ready to open this restaurant. But you also said that you were seeing this kind of emerging wave in the culture of native representation. And whether it is in something like literature with Tommy Orange and his book There There, whether it is in TV and film with shows like Reservation Dogs, whether it's you with food, it feels like there has been a really big.

• 29:11Chris Duffy?

  Resurgence of attention and representation in media?

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:17Chris Duffy?

  How are you feeling that that is continuing or is being pushed back on?

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, of course, there's pushback just because of the political situation that's happening in America today. But I feel like there's been so much amazing creativity and thought leaders coming out of this over the past decade and more. And I think that's really important and we're just happy to do our part to being able to work with this culinary scene and to be able to do a project like this and for it to get a lot of recognition and attention. And it is changing the way people think about food and that's what we wanted. We want people to see the beauty in the food. We want people to empathize and understand some of the hardships that a lot of indigenous communities went through and are still facing today.

• 29:57Chris Duffy?

  It seems like a lot of times the ingredients that grow locally, weirdly, people think about often as like a weed.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, because it's lazy. It's the education that we have, you know, because like if we taught kids like the names of trees and plants, like that education can go really far because there's so much to learn about. Because so much of the botanicals around us have meaning and have purpose, you know, because plants give us everything. They can be food, they can be medicine, they can be crafting, they can be tools, clothing, lodging, weapons. They're a part of our spirituality, they're a part of our religions, they're a part of our stories. It's everything to us, you know, and we have so many plant relatives that have been here with our ancestors too. And there's so much to connect to with plants especially, you know. And so I just feel like there's a better way for education because like just around this building, like we put only indigenous plants around this area.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  And then we did a project where we just put the names of the true names of the plants where they are. So you'll see the Dakota name because that's the true name of the plant in that soil. And then an English descriptor and names so people can kind of walk around and have passive education.

• 31:05Chris Duffy?

  I've been asking you a lot of questions that are kind of on the broader, you know, big meaning societal scale, but Something that's really special about food and flavor is that it often is such a tie to our own memories and to our own sense of place and home and comfort. What are some flavors that, for you, do that?

• 31:27Speaker 01

  You know, for me, I always go to choke cherries just because we had them growing around us and we harvest them and it's something that's really important and special to a lot of Lakota community. And so we would make a sauce, a simple sauce out of the choke cherries that we called wojapi. And we would have that on a lot of special occasions, you know? And that's just something that reminds me of the smell of my grandmother's kitchen growing up. But there's lots of things, just running around the plains and the smell of sage in the dirt, you know, and all that kind of stuff. Those memories are always there because I spent so much time outside. And so I just think, you know, food does trigger a lot of memory. And we want to see our own foods just normalized for these next generations. So they just grow up always having it. So it's not just a couple of pieces, but many

• 32:12Speaker 01

  pieces and on a daily occurrence and not just special occasions.

• 32:16Chris Duffy?

  Speaking of generations, you work with your family. Your son is in the kitchen right now, working?

• 32:22Speaker 01

  It's true, yep.

• 32:23Chris Duffy?

  When you were raising your son, and when you're thinking about other people raising their kids, what is it that you want them to think about when they are feeding their families, when they're choosing the ingredients and the dishes that they make?

• 32:33Speaker 01

  So I cook a lot at home. And so he grew up, I don't even think he realizes like how much like good food was around him growing up, you know? And I gave him the choice early on is like, go ahead and have fast food if you want, just think about what's in it. Like, you know, if you just look at a hamburger patty from a fast food restaurant, like, does that look like real food? You know, does that look like something that you want to really eat, you know? And so like, I let him make his own decisions by just giving him some critical thought, you know? And so he hasn't touched fast food restaurants since... Like it's his choice, like there's no rules, do what you want. Like everybody loves a In-N-Out Burger or something on occasion, but like would you want to live off of it? You know, and so it's just a matter of that.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  And but I think it's important to normalize not only healthy food, but culturally relevant food. And there's so much more that we can be doing, you know, and I feel like America did a really good job of kind of bastardizing most cultures for so long. That now is a time where we're seeing such a shift with people really starting to reclaim their own cultural foods. And and bring it from their own perspectives and that's what's going on with the indigenous communities too.

• 33:37Chris Duffy?

  What would it mean to decolonize our diets and our plates?

• 33:41Speaker 01

  So to me, it's a it's a positive motion towards the future because I just like to compare the values of like what was, what are the values of colonization? You know, and they're not great, you know, because it's a lot of division. It's a lot of dehumanization of people of color. It's a lot of blatant land theft to rip out resources to make somebody really rich and everybody else work really hard. And then you compare indigenous communities and there's so many amazing values of really being community based, really focusing and making sure that everybody has enough food to eat. Really focused on passing down traditions, understanding the respect that it takes to live with our environment and understand that we're a part of the environment. And we can find those values across the world because colonization didn't just happen to Native Americans in the United States.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  Because it's everywhere, you know, it's North America, Central America, South America, Africa, India, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand. Everywhere in the world colonization has been. And it's still happening because we're seeing colonization in places like Gaza, Ukraine, Congo, the Amazon. And it's constantly happening still, like we've never exited a period of colonization in human history yet.

• 34:46Chris Duffy?

  One of the things that you're voicing here is that there actually is a solution and it's it's a very old solution. It's a way of living that has existed that we need to think more about using those. Those techniques, those skills, that mindset in the future.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I don't think we're getting a lot smarter as humans, you know? I think we have a lot of challenges in front of us. But I feel like the more that we're able to talk to people on a like a direct basis, to have real conversations, to get away from the political theater, to get away from all of this noise coming out of, from all these manipulating media that's out there. And just to really focus like, what do we really need, you know? Like, we need clean water, you know? And we're going through water crisis. And we need to come up with solutions so we're not just wasting water or giving it all away to corporations so they can stay rich. Like, we need ways to kind of protect some pieces and natural resources. Like, you know, like, there's a lot of talk about selling off tons of public lands, which is just a continuation of colonization.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  Just selling off land to make money, just to see it destroyed for whatever resources, whether it's mining or lumber or whatever it might be. But it's just gonna leave those areas in disrepair for generations to come. You know, so we really need to focus on like, what do we really need as humans to come together? You know, and we need food, we need water. We need a better understanding of our own education system, you know? And we need to be taught things that matter. And we shouldn't be afraid of diversity, you know? We shouldn't be afraid of people if they're different from us. We should be embracing that diversity and trying to pull it together.

• 36:18Chris Duffy?

  There's often this real disconnect where people love to eat food from different cultures. They love to go to a restaurant that serves tacos or serves in authentic cuisine from another place. But then they don't love to care for the people who are making that food.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 36:40Chris Duffy?

  Or the people where the food comes from. And that feels like this really big baffling disconnect to me in this moment. And I'm just curious to hear your thoughts on it.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  It is, but you know, historically and still today, the United States is still highly segregated, you know? And communities intentionally build their own community around themselves, you know? But especially white community has historically kept out a lot of people of color. And they've had a hard time to. To understand or even find space to like really connect, you know, but like I've lived in Mexico and when you're just in Mexico, like sure, there's bad things that happen in every country. There's cartels and there's, you know, political stuff going on, but I feel like when you just learn to talk to people, learn to be with people, you see the beauty in everything, you know, and like, again, it's like touching base with people as a human. And I feel like we need more of that. And food is such a great

• 37:33Speaker 01

  way to pull us together because food is something we all have in common. Food is something we can always talk about with each other and share with each other. And so I think it's such a powerful language.

• 37:43Chris Duffy?

  Well, Sean Sherman, thank you so much for being on the show. It's an absolute pleasure.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Awesome. Well, thank you.

• 37:51Chris Duffy?

  That is it for today's episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guest, Sean Sherman. His newest cookbook is called Turtle Island: Foods and Traditions of the Indigenous Peoples of North America. You can find out more about Sean and how to support his work with traditional indigenous food systems at seansherman.com or natifs.org. That is N-A-T-I-F-S dot org. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and my book, Humor Me, which is about how to laugh more every day, is available for preorder now. It's my first book, and you can find out more about that and all my other projects at chrisduffycomedy.com. How to Be a Better Human is put together by a tasteful and educated team of audio professionals. On the TED side, we've got the healthy nuts and seeds that are Daniela Balarezzo, Banban Chang, Michelle Quint, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Valentina Bohanini, Lainey

• 38:36Chris Duffy?

  Lot, Tansukasung Manivong, and Tonya Lee and Joseph DeBryan. This episode was fact-checked by Julia Dickerson and Mateus Salas, who make sure that we are always serving up delicious truth. On the PRX side, we've got the five-star sound chefs who are Morgan Flannery, Norgil, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. Thanks again to you for listening. You make this show possible. Please share this episode with a person who you would like to share a meal with, and we will be back next week with even more How to Be a Better Human. Until then, take care.

• 39:09Chris Duffy?

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• 39:55Chris Duffy?

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• 40:43Chris Duffy?

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• 41:14Chris Duffy?

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