(mystical music)
- [Sean] The land the animals, the plants, within Lakota
philosophy we're kind of all apart of everything.
I think you can feel it when you're out in these regions
and when we're out gathering some of these foods and
flavors that people have been utilizing for millennia.
Indigenous foods it's just the knowledge of our landscape.
Nobody had any sense of what Native American food was
and it was something that I had to figure out.
My name is Sean Sherman I am the
CEO and founder of the Sioux Chef.
Dan Thompson and I have been running
the company since the beginning.
Our mission is not only revitalizing Native American
cuisine but it's also re-identifying what
North American cuisine is to people.
I was barely 13 when I started working restaurants.
Kind of ridiculous to think about how I could
walk around the city, find foods from all over the world
and nothing to represent the indigenous culture
that were right there and have
been making food there for millennia.
I had kind of this epiphany moment
where I just realize like I should be focused
on the background of my own heritage.
I'm an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe.
Where Pine Ridge and the Badlands are all kinda
merged together, you know, the land is not ideal
for growing things, it is a tough landscape.
And that is the lands that was
given to the Lakota to be their home place.
There were no restaurants on the whole reservation,
it's a large area, you know those despairities you see
and just health problems in general and we lost a lot
of our food knowledge and a lot of
our traditional ways around food.
(mystical music)
One of the best parts about the
indigenous foods is the health aspect.
It's this awesome low glycemic,
lots of plant diversity, low salt,
it's almost the perfect diet and
we can, you know, really work on a lot of
these health problems just through our traditional foods.
Part of the reason for having this dinner party is
to announce our nonprofit, to the North American
traditional indigenous food systems.
Part of our business model is to utilize
indigenous food producers first for example Thunder Valley.
How's it going?
[Native American Man] Great Sean.
How are you?
Good, good how about yourself?
Good, well, I'm excited to see what you guys
have been going on, I haven't been
out here for a couple of years.
[Native American Man] Our garden here is
actually our art classroom and we host workshops
and trainings on every aspect of this garden.
- [Sean] We try to incorporate as much as we can
from foraging, whatever's in season at
that moment to be apart of our dinner.
And I'm fortunate that I could call my uncle Richard
who happens to be an expert botanist,
he's an expert on the plants from the Badlands and was able
to take us out to Sheep Mountain Table to do some foraging.
What we're looking for is just anything we can add to the
dinner tonight so any of the wild flavors that are out here
I imagine we can pick up some sage and
probably some juniper but what do you
thinks out and about right now at this time of year?
- [Richard] Well, it's kinda late in the season now but we
might look for some chump cherries if there's some left.
Well, we have one called bush morning glory is a plant that
grows back here, seems to be a profusion in this area.
And we just enjoy cooking foods
that really taste like a place.
I just submitted our paperwork
for a nonprofit called Natives.Org.
Natives.Org is focused on food education and
business food access so the restaurant we've been working
on is actually gonna be housed under the nonprofit.
It's been a wild, fast, furious four years.
- [Sean] We're trying to make foods with only
indigenous ingredients, so we've cut out anything
that wasn't here before, so we're not using any dairy,
any wheat flour, any processed sugar.
We're not even using beef, pork or chicken.
And we spent the last couple of days out
in the Black Hills and Badlands gathering seasonings and
herbs and flowers and things to use on the plates.
It was a huge inspiration to us
as we're launching this nonprofit.
- [Sean] We're kinda at the spot after
many, many years of being kept down to having
this potential to do something new by utilizing the
knowledge of the past and the tools that we have today
to evolve this food into something
new and beautiful for the future.
Understanding other people's food is a great way
to really understanding who they are.
Food is the one thing that we all have in common,
food is something that we can all share together.
It's important to have that sense of community.
We should be the answer to our ancestor's prayers.
It's about this next generation of youth coming out and
the knowledge that they'll carry.
(mystical music)