on the go and meet tonight, i'll just there is only mobile apps. is that the, this is where we just fix allies from out is there is a mobile app available in your favorites apps to just set for it and typed on a new app from alpha 0 new at using. is it the the, the state of minnesota is home to 11 native american tribes whose connection to the land, including the mississippi river, pre date, european migraines by thousands of years. the twin cities that developed here in the 1800s altered the landscape as well as the diets of native americans. but one restaurant on the river's banks remains dedicated to a pre colonial quiz. that's where we meet sean sherman.

a proud member of the obama and the code to try to begin working in the food industry as a dishwasher at age 13. quickly climbing the racks to executive chef twenty's. his time in the kitchen lead the groundwork for his non profit founded in 2017 native short for north american traditional indigenous food systems. natives digit is food lab is a facility for making, selling and teaching about native cuisine. use traditional ingredients like corn, as well as traditional methods with products for more than 30 indigenous purveyors featured in the market. the mission is to address health and economic disparities indigenous communities. and it is a mission with global residence. according to the world health organization ation,

unhealthy diet contribute to nearly $11000000.00 decimal wide every year. stay tuned as we explore sherman's culinary philosophy and the healthier way forward by looking back. shep sean sherman talks to al jazeera the san sherman. thank you for talking to alison sierra. you grew up on the pirates reservation. what kind of food did you grow beating? um you know, so growing up on pine ridge, i was pretty young. obviously it was in the seventies and early eighties. i spent a lot of my time just outdoors and you know, we were kind of federal kids cuz i think parenting was fairly loose back in the seventies and eighties and you know, as far as food goes like we hunted a lot, but primarily we grew up with commodity food program goods. so a lot of government subsidies a lot of can to goods like vegetables and sodium and fruits and corns are ups. and

literally gallons of cards for government, cheese like, and all these kinds of staples that were a part of the food relief program. so you know, so that was a lot what i grew up with. so winter you into the restaurant world. we started working in restaurants fairly young, i understand. so my mom moved us off the reservation at a pretty young age. and um, so i was junior high is so like a pre teen, i suppose. and i started working in restaurants as soon as i turned 13, so we moved to a small town and south dakota called spearfish, which was kind of on the western edge of south dakota towards wyoming and lots of touristy restaurants in the black hills. and so i just kind of started working in that kind of industry. when did you become interested in native food? was that part of the upbringing with all the government? commodities? i didn't really think about it until a little bit later in life. and i had been a shift for a while and here in minneapolis, minnesota. and after a few years and that shift career at one point i moved down to mexico just to kind of get away from the us for

a little while. as i was living in this little beach town on the pacific, i became very interested in the southern and indigenous group called the withdrawal or withdrawal is and started researching them. and in something just connected with me. and i just kind of realize the connection that we had as indigenous peoples. and we, even though we're so far away, we spoke different languages. we had so much commonality. and that's what identify it with them because i saw so much commonality and they're beautiful artwork. and they're the rich stories that they had and, and they started thinking about their food and then something kind of clicked and then just realized that i didn't know anything about my food, even though as a chef it saved through from all over the world. and i was like, i could count hundreds of european recipes at the top of my head in european languages and new maybe 5 le code or recipes that weren't influenced by something else. and that just kinda shot me on a pallet to one to understand. so how did you go about learning more about the low code of recipes and food gathering? tell me about that process. i didn't know really know where to start, but i started looking around and i realized that there were

a really any native cookbooks out there. there wasn't a lot of information, so i started, i had always loved history, so i always had a pretty good base of history and kind of things. but it also gave me a focus to really try to understand what happened to us as indigenous peoples too. and so i started looking through a lot of historical texts looking for anything that had food. so basically it's just digging through everything with the lens of call and they're trying to understand like, what were my look, what ancestors eating, what were they harvesting? what were they using for medicine? how, what did we use for facts, insults, and sugars and just all these questions and like what were the preservation methods and cooking methods and what kind of utensils and tools and that, oh it, i just wanted to know everything. so i just started researching and i started like really kind of connecting with the knowledge of plants. i'm so certainly it's starting to look through a lot of f, no botanical books about how which plants are being utilized and then going outdoors and starting to search for some of these plants and finding them and trying to figure out how to use them. again, real time, you know,

a lot of those texts are very dry and they didn't have a lot of information, but they sent me on a path to try to find out more. and i do want to ask you about those plans and those ingredients. but 1st big picture, we're sitting here in a restaurant called a one day. tell me about that name and where that came from. well we're, we're sitting right outside the window, is what used to be a really beautiful waterfall space here on the mississippi, and was the only giant waterfall on the mississippi in the dakota language. the name for the waterfall was called a warm the omni, which kind of translates loosely to the place of the following swirling water. and it's a restaurant. but with a mission. yeah, i understand the space is owned by your non profit need is. tell me about your mission. so the restaurant is a part of the non profit family. everything we do is really through the non profit because we're trying to showcase a way to help preserve indigenous knowledge bases to start to see more indigenous

food operations out there. and to really become a support center or to guiding principles that native switches the name of the non profit or north american traditional indigenous boot systems. because the last name is that we're trying to create something that brings helps us spring. we're access to indigenous foods and brings access to indigenous education. and we've tied those hand in hand because it's one thing to give people some healthy food. but if they don't know what to do with it, and that doesn't really mean much. so we wanted to really lay on a lot of indigenous focused education around our food ways to and so we have a space in south minneapolis called in business food lab that has a market space where we have over 50 indigenous with producers and growing to sell products and to really feature a lot of this amazing food product that's coming out of indigenous producers. and then we have a classroom studio where we're just recording tons of videos for the educational purposes to show people how to cook with these foods. stories about these foods and we can do anything that's kind of in a focus on indigenous education, language, medicine, craft or anything. but a lot of commentary. we have

a production kitchen that makes a lot of products and it's a place for us to train and develop and it's also a place for us to research and develop. and so we created this model to be a regional center point to work with all the travel communities around us to help them to develop more healthy food operations. and then the restaurant access kind of a machine because restaurants don't create food access or food relief. but what restaurants do is become a really large voice for us and a place for people who come and learn physically. but it's also a place for job creation happens because we have over a 100 and place here in the middle of winter, for example, at a why me and plus are able to just move so much of a food product. because of our intention about who we purchased from so a lot of money is going directly to indigenous producers that were utilizing and we're just really raising the demand there. that's been a long time of finding more and more of these producers and getting to this point to the one the where we have an extremely diversified, you know, list of people that we purchase from for all sorts of products. whether it's 2 wild rice that's hand harvested by native tribes or maple syrup that skipped over fire

or bison coming from like some of the tribes and the dakotas or fish coming from some of the tribes up in the northern parts here and around the great lakes. and there's all these products that we've been bringing in slowly, little by little and, you know, getting torn from different nations across the us because we have like potawatomi in michigan and man down a river a, that's a north dakota and demand down in the southwest area. or pima down in arizona and like all these groups that were able to purchase from you know, and so there's a lot out there and we're just trying to showcase like all of this. we're trying to push attention towards these indigenous producers to this indigenous diversity and to a lot of the stories that indigenous peoples carry about their own foods. people might be surprised to know that the native population in the united states still has a shorter life expectancy, higher read of, uh, chronic diseases. what is the health benefits of this kind of food? yeah, so our full as

a v was basically to showcase and highlight what are indigenous woods of north america. we basically just took away colonial ingredients and things that were introduced especially um, from european situation. so we remove things like derry, wheat, flour cane sugar beef, pork chicken, and really focused on a lot of obviously native american producers. but lots of corns being squash agricultural products like that. lots of wild foods, you know? so we're just looking at the, there's the button, the around us and like all the state versity, that's how this just file diversity that's around us that the western diet is completely ignored here. and especially in places like america, you know. and so there's so many plants around us with so many flavors and we try to utilize a lot of that. you know, like our entire tea list is just, well, botanical is a minnesota basically. and so like, we're just really trying to showcase what's possible and opening up a whole bunch of new flavors but you know, added from a house point. it's like really healthy cuz everything here is gluten free, dairy, free, sugar, free soy, free pork, free. like all these things that all these bad diets try to get to and it just

happens to be the indigenous state of north america. the environmental benefits of course, are also huge because you're sourcing locally. is that correct? yeah, we source a lot, so we are are probably our tier is trying to purchase from indigenous producers locally and nationally. but obviously a lot of indigenous producers have a lot of deep respect to the earth, to the plants, and there's a lot of biodiversity going on that they protect. and um, you know, so it's just good for everybody. you know. so we're keeping a lot of the food dollars really close and lovely and, but it's going directly to these producers that really need this boost in economy that we're growing so quickly with even just to kitchens. what are you trying to teach there in order to spread these ideas nationally and internationally? well, versus just kind of like a dentist buying some of these pieces. a part of it is uh, identifying what is indigenous education, which is basically a non euro centric view point of education. and it's like all this knowledge that should have been passed down to us as indigenous community members. and so we just think about like boost carlos generations of things that of how to identify plants,

how do they know where to find out is to find and produce food and medicine and all these stories that go along with it and all this cultural relevancy, you know, and there's so much to showcase there from an indigenous lens through education, but we're also just trying to showcase a way forward looking at the world different lane. so when we're talking about like the colonizing or diets and pieces like that, it's really kind of educating people on what that means and our philosophy around the colonization wasn't pretending colonization didn't happen. but it's looking at the effects that colonization is normalized in our lives that we take for granted. and then comparing that to how indigenous peoples where it goes from a colonize sense, like colonization brings, and a lot of destruction of environment. a lot of focus on, you know, ownership of land spaces, a lot of privilege, a lot of racism, a lot of dehumanization, of people of color. and there's all these things that just are so normal because of what colonization is brought to the whole world. and then from a indigenous perspective, we're looking at how people were surviving. so we're looking at

a more diversified way of utilizing the world around us and utilizing a lot more plants, species and their diets, and a bigger focus on community rather than individual ality and supporting each other as community. and there's a so much stories to tell. there's so much amazing diversity to explore when it comes to understanding and indigenous perspective of everything, instead of kind of imagine ization that colonization brought. right? so we just feel like there's a lot to educate people on not only here about native americans in the us, but really the plates of indigenous peoples on a global scale, there's like we should have native restaurants in every single region. but obviously if you go to a city like new york, you can find food from all over the world. but good luck finding food from made by people who were actually from there originally, you know, and that just doesn't exist. and so it's, it's unfortunate that this is rare, but it's also very necessary and that's why we're trying to help other people do the same internationally. are there certain countries, certain areas that have responded or related to what you're trying to do? yeah, i would say a lot of places um, cuz we've met up with

a lot of indigenous peoples from everywhere, of course, south america and mexico but, and places and central america in general. but obviously, many different parts of africa saw me in northern europe, in the southeast asia, australia, new zealand, hawaii. like there's all of these indigenous peoples on a global scale that share a lot of the same place that we did here. because it's just colonization over and over again. everywhere and colonization hasn't died. you know, it's still active like we're still indigenous peoples in places like brazil that are being murdered for the land spaces that they're living on for example. or we just the colonization in many different forms, like what's going on in the ukraine or the middle east or, you know, africa. and so there's a certain parts that condo like you name it, like it's still active out there. so it's just naming it for what it is. so you can even touch on what you want, sir, but are there certain seasoning certain flavors that you see as the neatly native american? i mean, as just showcasing what's the true food of north america because it's not

hamburgers and coca cola, you know, like, there's so much to explore and it's so regional like everything is different. so like here in the great lakes is completely different from the great plains, completely different from the southwest or various parts of california or the northeast like so we're just looking at the north american land space and looking at all of this amazing beautiful diversity cuz there's $574.00 tribes in the us that are federally recognized more that are out there that aren't fairly recognized . $620.00 to recognize in canada, and about 20 percent of mexico identifies as indigenous. so there's so much and did, and 80 across north america alone, and so much diversity in hundreds of different languages and you know, there's a so much to learn and then so that's a big part of it, is to opening us up to a better understanding of where we're standing, the history of the land space is that we're on and you know, the struggles that indigenous peoples had to go through. and people of color in general, in american history. but it just looks at the world from a completely different lens. how do traditional foods fit in what the modern idea

of sustainability? i mean, i think we're on a great past for having better understanding of how to work with the earth in general because indigenous peoples have such deep respect to not only a lot of the airline seed rivals that we're utilizing. but also just to all of this amazing plant life around us, you know, i have to ask eating things like bice in or out in the modern day. can that still be considered sustainable? i believe so because you know, there's a lot of bison coming more and more especially into travel communities. we're seeing a lot more traveler communities bringing by some background to their land spaces. and we've been purchasing bison from the shy and rivers to a tribe which is in the middle of south dakota. and, you know, that's just part of our tiers trying to purchase from indigenous producers. but, you know, there's just a lot more sustainable device and they're part of this land space where cattle reform and you know, when they hit the wrong plants and it kind of destroyed a lot of soil spaces or bi, since a part of this eco system. you know, and by returning the bison, like it's starting to help flourish, a lot of the natural plants that are from that area to and my understanding of

native culture is that you would use every bit of that animal in some way. yeah. and that's more of a kind of a less than in resourcefulness because as indigenous peoples, we didn't have the privilege to be wasteful, you know, and we had countless generations giving us the knowledge to know what to do with everything. so it's just a matter of being extremely resourceful, and we didn't only do that with animals, but with plants because we had, you know, again countless generations of knowledge being handed down to give us the power to know what to do with all these parts. and how to not waste anything because we live in such a wasteful world. today we're literally buy something and throw it away moments later. and all we do is create trash. you know. so there's a lot of really important lessons about resourcefulness across there. well, on that note, i think we need to move into the kitchen and start seeing some of these practices close up. all right, let's do that. all right, so we have a lot of stuff here. so what are we going to cover today? we're make it to you. this is some things that are on this menu right now. it's

kind of like a spring menu. and so, um, but this video kind of reflects, you know, some of this easy in the flavors, but mostly we're just like showcasing off a lot of indigenous ingredients. you know, so these are just some of the reason plots of the pieces that we use and we're gonna be making different things. you know, some of these ingredients are as flavors of north america. again, you know, and just having fun with them, just playing with them and putting them together in different ways. and this is a maple chilly, chris, that we make with a bunch of native chillies and some tier maple syrup. and the not just we have to make all this fun stuff out of everything. are there any seasonings that you consider very native, very much a part of this food culture. i know you've got a lot of maple here here like we're in an area where maples a big part of the food system help here. people who've been processing maple and make turning the all the way into sugar. wild rice isn't that also just to such an amazing things that can do so many things with it. and this is puffed wild rice and, and 10 harvested rice. and you might have seen wild rice and grocery stores like

the big black lawn, rice. but that stuff's different because it was grown to be combine and these machinery were this stuff. so a hand harvested people go out in the canoes on the lakes here in minnesota and they gather this every year year usually in september. you can just like toasted dried you make this puffed rice. you can just taste it to assist this cook's dry and pop it and the system nice crunch of different texture. kind of the trees out there like the white cedar tree, the balsam for all these kind of kind of hers that are around us. we use a lot of those flavors, a lot of wild herbs and things as things that taste like licorice. there's things that are now making like such one pepper, you know, there's all sorts of flavors around us. so these are just really cool again, like the small they take forever to code. so they're completely different than most beans. but again, they're just an airline variety. oh, they're really wonderful and they have so much potential as being such an important crop to us, right? so we're just going to make a very simple salad. yeah. so we're gonna take the top ratings, so in fact about all that and then totally. so

yeah, and again this is a very simple salad. so this is just a little bit of fresh stuff as just to share the table with all the other pieces that you're getting. but this, this is meant to kind of accentuate this unique flavor that the temporary being tab, which is some simple ingredients using a little bit of that pure maple vinegar. and then a little bit up here to mac, which is very similar to middle eastern, see mac controls, which is a little slower. and this has to normalizing health, receive fresh fluid, you know, not everything. now, they're all plant based food city is like a hamburger. you know, again is live, which is like what it wants to be, which is itself. just especially for plants, you know, because like i try to apply based a lot and it's hard when you're out there and restaurants to find anything to their business, trying to make something, tastes like everything's just like buffalo,

cauliflower, or, you know, the, all of the, the process burgers and things like that, and it's not that they're bad. it's just that we can, we just have a vegetable, you know, and, and those things that have so much salt and so you know, there's so much sauce or use and then this is just pure sustain, it has so many food groups, you know, you're getting protein yeah, okay, this is real simple. beautiful release. easy. so yeah. you know, taste. yeah. thank you. the, a real simple, real life. very fresh staff, very fresh. okay. all right, so i'm just going to throw this on the grill, give it a little bit of heat and a little bit of flavor cuz you get a little chart on this. um the smiles are those regular potatoes. yeah. these are just regular sweet potatoes, read the table and we're just letting them basically we cut them hall, let them stand. yeah, i think of a sweet potatoes is orange are. yeah,

they have different bridles under everything. so, you know, as to we use a lot of these and we buy a lot of locally grown soup potatoes just because of support in your local farms. most color on there. nice. when you talk about pre colonial food, what does that mean? exactly. so we're just looking at what was here before, which is obviously is a lot of native agricultural products like corns, beans, squash, chili, peppers, sunflower seeds, things like that. and then we also look at all the wild foods around us because as well that ends well garlic. so ginger is all sorts available greens. a lot of the trees we utilize for food, mushrooms, of course berries, fruits just naturally so much around us, you know, and again, like the western diets almost completely ignored. most of what's around us all over the us. you know, so it's just really focused on like to showcase indigenous fluids or just looking at things that have a long history of here in the america. and so many foods that are so normal around the world came from the america as you know. so we should be very proud of

a lot of these products that are now taking for granted everywhere else in the world. yeah. and it's a healthy or focus, so yeah, it's all about health and that's really the biggest piece to. so we're just going to do got some color and these are heated up and you just bring them back over. all right, so let's just make this really simple this. so obviously you have these girls up to this. and then we're just using a little bit of this maple chilly, chris, which is gets poured over that like spicy just a tiny bed. it's got a lot more seasoning and flavor than we would think. but does have a little bit of a kit, the magazine, and then just now just really simple. so these are just some green audience but and then like i said this, this has been on the menu since we open. so people just really love this, this. you know, so, but this is really just so you can get some of these flavors. thank you. so

very to see and where the expert jump, the texture is what really makes you get that little bit of smoke. you notice from the grill and just the simplicity of that chilly, crisp, you know, and that's a little bit of sweetness to it. so that little space a little sweet. oh, it's nice to all of this. a wonderful texture and mouth bill. so yeah, the letter, a beautiful simple, this is kind of warm these up also in the grill. there are these on there or let them get a little bit of mark. and this is kind of like, you know, other things are saying like to mom. obviously it's myess. yeah. thing that's pre dates. european contact obviously. and if you said you've been in the southwest, maybe you've seen the kneel down road where they make this other fresh corn and it's just something really wonderful that is a lot it uses. so this is, or this is actually a desert we make, we made a sweet tamale with a maple and some native corns from these regions. and we're just warming this up a little bit. and this is just a really simple uh, deserts you know, tamales is one thing that you would associated with the south west for sure,

but not as a desert. so much as, as like twist, cuz think of that core and culture like spread so far. and the america's cuz like corn culture starts at the bottom of mexico, believe central america in that region. and shoots both directions north and south in the americas over time. but core and culture calls all the way up into these regions. way up here in northern minnesota right when even past us into parts of canada, but basically all the way across the mississippi, missouri river, valleys, all the way to the east coast and everywhere in between. throughout most and mexico and the entire caribbean, there was a so much corn that came out of it and every record went specially northward. the next most ation process followed it. so a lot of people washing their corn was what ash before serving it, turning it into what you might know as harmony or, but solely depending which part of the country or from wonder how they learned that i mean, did it taste better? they did it to make it easier to digest, you know. ok. i think that it does is

a digression situation because when you maximize it, it makes it more soluble for your body. like i said, because otherwise, if you just the plane corn like it just kind of shoots through, you get like a lot of fibre and sometimes some sugars, but not a lot else. but when you next analyze it, you get all those amazing minerals, you know, like i said, magnesium, iron, kelsey ends in potassium. nice and like really important building box for bodies. and they feel like people have been cooking with plant ashes for a long time and realize that by cooking things and alkaline waters that it changes the food a little bit. you know, and of course, some people see that people are very in tune with what they're putting in the body . so when you're eating something that's more solubility, you feel better because of that process because you can make some of those other things like we and externalize other grandson pieces too. and so there's all sorts, but i feel like that's kind of where it comes from, because a lot of people you're able of when you cook anything down into ash for him, all that's left or minerals, which is why you get this explosion of mineral side soluble it's stuff that comes out of a now. yeah. so we're just going to bring this over and i just love the,

you know, the, the courthouse gives it, warms it up. it also just gives it a nice little aroma and flavor. and then this is just a really simple just maple syrup. it's really clear and clean. but so when people are eating this, of course, you don't need the car in husky. in this peel this back. let me get this wonderful little sweet tomorrow. hidden inside the treasure, this steam so fast, you know, so just gonna take a little tiny bit of this and just kind of dip it just a little bit and getting this as a desert. so it's gonna be a little bit warm. so just be careful. there oh wow. so got it so simple. sweet and try making desserts without very flower sugar, but that's what we do. you know? yeah. so little send a bidding. yeah. just a little a little bit of space in there and just very simple. thank you so much. that's so

good. absolutely. and sean sherman, thank you for talking to al jazeera. absolutely. thank you for having a, it's been a pleasure. thank you, the, the full hales the planet, interrogates while i was thinking about climate change, the way we do this, the global issue is abstract. so whatever i do, it doesn't seem to make a dent. alley re reveals how with being and it collated into distancing also from the climate crisis and delaying meaningful action. as faculty reactions have been both intentionally and unintentionally quite a few ideas to create confusions. if we're confused with the power of psychology is looking climate action on l g 0. the

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