Chef Sean

One of my favorite shows streaming these days is “The Bear.” It’s the story of a young chef from the fine dining world who comes home to Chicago to run his family sandwich shop after a heartbreaking death in his family.

I like to cook, and read recipes, and learn from chefs, so “The Bear” was a no-brainer when it came to picking my new Hulu series.

It was this interest in cooking, recipes, and chefs that caused me to notice Chef Sean Sherman.

Reading Chef Sean’s story from his website started me to think about what our lives might become if each of us ended up with a webpage that told our personal story, including our challenges, our defeats, and our victories.

According to Chef Sean’s website,

“[Sean Sherman] was born and raised on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, as were his parents, and grandparents, before him.”

“After his mother moved his family to Spearfish, South Dakota, he began working in local restaurants, and cooked all through high school and college. He also worked as a field surveyor for the forest service, a job that provided him an extensive knowledge of native plants, which would prove invaluable later in his career. He moved to Minneapolis, and continued working in restaurants, becoming an executive chef while still in his mid-20s, where he was immersed in the farm-to-table philosophy during a time when few restaurants were purchasing directly from local vendors.”

“A few years into his career, Sherman had an epiphany, one that led him to his mission. He realized as a chef in a vibrant food scene that celebrated exotic flavors and far-flung cooking styles, nothing represented the land they were currently on, or what the people indigenous to this area ate. After some research, he found this was true throughout the country: there were no Native American restaurants anywhere throughout most of North America. Traditional foodways had been almost entirely wiped off the map.”

“This set him on a journey to discover what his direct ancestors were eating, storing, growing, harvesting, foraging, trading, and sharing just a few generations earlier. While spending time in Mexico, he observed how many Indigenous groups had retained traditional cooking techniques – using clay grills and fire, growing corn and drying and pounding it into meal, and gathering ingredients from the surrounding desert, forest or plains. He was inspired to research and reclaim the traditional cooking methods of his own ancestors, as well as the ‘lost’ knowledge of other dispossessed Indigenous people across North America.”

“It was also clear the colonial diets fed to his ancestors after they were relegated to reservations were the direct cause of detrimental health impacts that disproportionately affect Native people today: type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer, obesity, even tooth decay. After several years of researching Native foods, he started “The Sioux Chef,” a company focused on creating regional Indigenous foods utilizing products from tribal producers, Native heirloom agricultural products, regionally foraged wild food, and protein alternatives to beef, pork, and chicken. He challenged himself to cut out colonial ingredients, particularly dairy, wheat flour, and cane sugar. He also came to believe that in addition to providing comprehensive nutrition, native plants can also be powerful medicines.”

“’Our ancestors understood how to live in balance with the natural world. Indigenous foods are the original foods of this continent. It’s important we recognize that and start celebrating those foods.’”

“He aims to tackle the root causes of deep, persistent problems – not just apply Band-Aids to the symptoms of health disparities and economic and environmental exploitation. By reconnecting Native Americans with traditional foodways to improve health, promoting economic development, establishing food sovereignty, and preserving tribal history and culture across artificial colonial boundaries, and through development of a new food system based around cultivation and incorporation of healthy, wild, culturally appropriate, traditional ingredients and agriculture, Chef Sherman is empowering Native people to use the power of their history and culture to counter the multigenerational impacts of colonialism and dispossession, and to combat systematic cultural genocide.”

“Through his travels, Chef Sherman has had the opportunity to build deep connections with tribal communities, academic institutions, culinary leaders, and thought leaders from local to international. He’s witnessed the varying degrees of Indigenous food knowledge across many communities and has seen the need to change apparent everywhere.”

“Through speaking engagements, community dinners, and culinary classes, along with social media and his James Bear Award-winning cookbook – The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen – he’s been able to influence many of these communities directly to affect change. Along with co-founding a restaurant in Minneapolis, Owamni, that focuses on Indigenous foods, Chef Sherman has seen the need for infrastructure to support indigenous foodways across the United States, North America and the globe. His non-profit, NATIFS, and its Indigenous Food Lab, a professional Indigenous Kitchen and Training Center are working to build and support an Indigenous infrastructure, create a center for Indigenous Education, and promote the creation and maintenance of healthy food access throughout Indigenous communities.”

What if, before a learning plan was produced for every young learner in this country, we were able to ask that young learner what they thought their website “About” might sound like? What if a personalized learning plan followed the vision laid out by every young learner in this country, in this world?

It’s clear Chef Sean arrived to his destination in life by an alternative pathway. How many more of our young learners could benefit from breaking away from traditional school and jumping on their own path toward creating their own website story?

Til tomorrow. SVB