To better understand the indigenous food systems of North America prior to European colonization, Sean Sherman had to first unlearn a part of what he had learned as a chef.
Sherman is Oglala Lakota and grew up in the Pine Ridge Reserve, South Dakota, where an important part of daily nutrition came from government programs.
Years later, becoming a professional chef, he realized he knew techniques and kitchens from many countries of the world, but he knew surprisingly little about the food heritage of his people.
From that question was born a research that would change his career.
Sherman began studying wild plants, traditional seeds, conservation methods and ingredients used by indigenous peoples long before the arrival of Europeans.
The result is not simply a new way of cooking.
In its projects are put aside ingredients introduced after colonization, such as wheat flour, dairy products and processed cane sugar. In their place they return to the center food deeply linked to the territory: corn, beans, pumpkins, wild rice, bison, deer, fish, berries, seeds, mushrooms and native plants.
But the point is not to rebuild a menu of the past.
Through The Sioux Chef and NĀTIFS, Sherman works to recover knowledge that is likely to disappear, support indigenous producers, enhance traditional agricultural varieties and contribute to their conservation, and form new generations capable of building new food systems connected to the earth.
Here the kitchen becomes something more than a gastronomic question.
It becomes memory, autonomy and cultural transmission.
For centuries, in fact, the relationship between indigenous communities and their foods has been weakened together with the loss of territories, traditions and production systems. To recover those knowledge means to return value not only to the ingredients, but to a whole way of knowing the territory.
This is the heart of Sherman's work.
Do not bring North America back in time, but recover what has survived long enough to still indicate a way for the future.
Sometimes innovating does not mean inventing something new.
It means remembering what had already been understood long ago.