When I moved to Los Angeles, I was at the grocery store buying a lemon when my neighbor saw me and he said, "Why are you buying a lemon?"

There is a giant lemon tree on the street in front of both of our homes. Now, until he said that, I had never really thought about where food comes from.

In fact, if you'd asked me, "Where does food come from?" I would have said the supermarket.

But of course, that's not true, right? Like food is grown. It comes from nature.

And no one has changed the way that I think about the world around me and the food that comes from it more than today's guest, Chef Shawn Sherman.

So today, we're in Minneapolis, Minnesota to talk to Shawn about where food comes from, how it is cultivated, how it's grown, how it's served, and what that means for the culture and history of the place that we're in.

Sean Sherman is an Oglala Lakota chef who opened his restaurant Awami in 2021.

The restaurant overlooks the Mississippi River where there used to be a huge waterfall.

And in fact, Sean tells me that Oamni is short for Oamni Yamni, place of the falling swirling water.

And the food here, well, there is a reason why this place is almost always fully booked.

>> You started this restaurant and it's won a bunch of awards. It's It's gotten a bunch of acclaim. What makes this different than other restaurants in the Twin Cities?

>> The philosophy was basically in order to showcase what are 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.

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

right? It's true. I mean because the western diets 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.

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

>> 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.

When Shawn says there's food all around us, he really means it because right outside of there's a public park filled with plants native to the area.

>> How many plants do you want me to talk about? Cuz I can do this all day.

>> Hi, I'm Linda Black Elk and I'm an ethnobbotonist.

>> For people who aren't familiar, what is an ethnobbotonist? An ethnobbatonist is someone who teaches about the relationship between people and plants.

An ethnobbatonist is someone who teaches about the relationship between people and plants.

Linda Black Elk works with Shawn at the organization North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems, which helps create access to indigenous foods and education.

And today, I'm going foraging with her right here in this park, smack in the middle of a busy city.

So this is an incredible plant and you can tell that it's a resilient plant because this particular one is growing out of this stone wall.

Um this is yo if you can tell by the scientific name Achilia nilofolium. Who's it named after?

>> Achilles.

>> Exactly. And that's because

>> easy question. It's actually mentioned in the Iliad.

Um even Achilles used this plant to treat the wounds of the soldiers who were fighting alongside him.

And in fact it is an important medicinal plant all over the world on almost every populated continent.

Uh the Dakota refer to this plant as topi pesuta which means wound medicine.

I love the Ojiway name which I think is a lot more um sort of poetic maybe.

So if you look at this leaf the Ojiway name ajituizo means squirrel tail.

>> Oh.

>> And so it looks like a bushy little squirrel's tail.

>> That's so fun. bushy little squirrel tail.

>> So, this is juniper. And we use these beautiful little blueberries, which are actually cones botanically um in all kinds of dishes.

They're really yummy and medicinal.

>> Oh, yeah. That's that classic juniper smell.

>> Strong flavor. Yeah, absolutely.

>> Wait, no, just kidding.

>> Oh, wow. I wouldn't I say that'd be a great prank if you're like this interview's over.

>> So, the next plant that I wanted to show you is pineapple weed. And um this is basically our native chamomile.

It is fantastic. Here, take this, crush it, and smell it.

>> Ooh.

>> Isn't that fantastic?

>> Smells like pineapple.

>> It does. And so, you can make a beautiful tea out of this that is relaxing.

Um, it will help you sleep, although it's very gentle.

>> One of the things that I love about the plants in the chamomile family is that you see them like growing between the cracks in the concrete. They really are everywhere.

>> I always say that I walk on the land differently than a lot of people because I never really feel alone.

So, even if there aren't other people around, um, I have my plant friends and relatives and allies there with me.

Now, I I've heard you say that sometimes you hesitate to tell people about which plants are edible because there's this tendency to then like grab all of it, to take it all and to not leave in a sustainable way.

>> We do find that some people get a little overzealous. So, we always make sure to talk about sustainability and how we can be respectful to the plant nations.

Um, and so that requires us to harvest it by maybe not taking too much.

I think something that's so important for people to know is that native people weren't even allowed to harvest their plants until like within my lifetime.

In 1978, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act was enacted and that finally allowed native people to harvest their traditional foods and medicines.

Before that, it was literally illegal.

And so um for non-native people to come onto native lands, extract knowledge and then take that back with them without that context, without that knowledge, um you know, is is is very frowned upon.

So instead, we try to teach about relationship history.

Getting people to stop and only harvest plants with intention and respect by helping them understand what's edible, what's not edible, what's medicinal, and not. um they will look at the world around them in a different way.

>> You know, one thing that foraging with Linda has made me realize is that I had never tasted some of these flavors before.

>> It has a a real bitterness at the end.

>> It does.

My palette was used to something very different. And it's strange to realize that these flavors were always here all along.

Flavors that I am lucky to be learning about right now and to learn about even more in Sean's kitchen.

>> So Sean, what are we going to make here?

Um, well, we just have a bunch of stuff that's very seasonal. So, we gathered a whole bunch of ingredients that are out right now, right around us.

We're going to cook a little bit of a bison steak that's been marinated with some sumac and some maple sugar and some chili.

And we're going to use some true handh harvested rice that's here from Minnesota.

This stuff's all, you know, harvested on canoes and it's just really cool stuff.

>> Amazing. Can you walk me through what we have up here?

>> Yeah, I have no idea. I just found all the stuff on the sidewalk.

>> That's how it goes mostly, too.

So, um, yeah, we have a bunch of different things cuz we have some bergamont, some hisop, some plantains, some fresh junberries cuz we have a couple of those trees out there.

This is the wild rice we're going to be cooking.

Um, some fresh nettles, and these are stinging nettles. You have to be careful with them.

Uh, the milkweed flowers, fireweed, and we're just going to keep going from there.

>> And this bison comes from a a local provider or where

>> So, we get this bison um from Cheyenne River Sue Tribe out of South Dakota.

Um, so they're just a Lakota tribe right in the very center of the state, right along the Missouri River Valley.

Um, and yeah, so we just try to support indigenous producers. We try to utilize obviously a lot of wild flavors.

Um, and it's just a lot of plant diversity on one plate.

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.

>> No, it was a very conscious program to try and erase indigenous history, to try and erase Native American culture.

>> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the eraser of indigenous peoples in the Americas has been something that's been ongoing for quite a while.

And growing up Lakota on Pine Ridge, like, you know, it's only a couple generations ago, cuz my greatgrandfather, for example, was at Battle of Little Bigghorn when he was 18.

And like my greatgrandfather, for example, was at Battle of Little Bigghorn when he was 18.

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.

And so, I just have a little bit of seasoned oil. This is with a little bit of sumac inside of it.

Um, and we're just going to heat that up a moment. We're trying to imagine what does this look like for the future generations, you know, because I'm just trying to change what I grew up with,

which growing up on Pine Ridge Reservation, like we didn't have a lot of nutritional access. We didn't have a lot of food access in general.

So, we had one grocery store that serviced an area the size of Connecticut.

So, I just want to change the way that access happens cuz there's no reason why we shouldn't have healthy and culturally relevant foods in places like where I grew up on Pine Ridge Reservation and elsewhere.

And then I'm just going to pop this rice in. Just let it heat up a little bit.

It's already going to have a lot of flavor, but I'm just going to add a couple of leaves of this bergamont cuz this is kind of like almost like a wild oregano flavorish.

>> Can I take a bite of that?

>> Uhhuh.

>> Oh, wow. That is such a beautiful flavor.

>> And this is going to taste like where we are in time right now, which is basically, you know, kind of early summer still.

>> I mean, you can't smell this, but it smells so good.

>> Yeah. And then um we're just going to kill that for now. That's pretty much that piece.

Oops. Right behind.

All right, we're just going to let these rest for a moment. Then we're going to plate up.

>> And what's this sauce?

>> This is just a basic wo japi, which is just a basic mixed berry sauce.

And it kind of came from the choked cherry sauce that we used to make when I was a kid on Pine Ridge out of just choked cherries and water.

Wow, look at that.

Oh, that's beautiful.

And then I just want to use some of these really beautiful little fireweed flowers

and delicate.

Just a little bit of these really beautiful hissop leaves because they're just so pretty.

So basically that's it. just something really simple with all these dishes, but you know, it's just going to tell a story on a plate and it's just about right now.

It's about culture because our tribes have been utilizing a lot of these flavors in this region for a long, long time.

Um, and this is just really healthy, you know.

>> Well, this smells and looks amazing. I'm really excited to actually taste it.

>> All right. Well, let's give it a go.

So, just take a little piece of the steak um and get try to get a little bit of all the pieces, even a little bit of the leaf in there.

Just try to get all of those things mingling together just to like experience like all that flavor all at once.

>> All right, let me try and get a little bit of everything here.

>> Yeah.

M.

>> That is so good.

And these flavors have been utilized for so long.

And these flavors have been utilized for so long.

cities like New York or Chicago or LA, like you can find food from all over the world, but can you really find food from the land that you're standing on?

And it's so rare, you know? So, we want to normalize that because we want the next generation of especially indigenous kids when they're out and about and trying to decide what they want for dinner.

Do they want pizza? Do they want Chinese? Do they want Native American? like we just want to be on that list, bro.

After spending the day with Linda and Sean, something I've been thinking about a lot is how what we put into our body, it's not just food, it's not just nutrition, it's also information.

Information that can change the way that we think about history, that can change the way that we think about the culture of the place where we live.

And that can change our connection to the land, to the plants, and to the people around us.

If we can get tribes to really consider um 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 um more than enough food for their entire community with the spaces that they have.

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 um 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 1491 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 our ancestors.

Apply that to what we know today and how do we think about the future cuz we have every every single day we're alive. We can think about changing the future.

Hey, thank you so much for watching this video. If you liked what you saw, you should check out our podcast, How to Be a Better Human.

We have an extended conversation with Shan Sherman that is out now that features a lot more of his ideas.

And every week we put out a new episode with all sorts of interesting and intelligent people sharing new perspectives.

You can check out How to be a better human wherever you get your podcasts.