James Beard-winning chef Sean Sherman, an Oglala Lakota member, has released a new cookbook titled Turtle Island: Foods and Traditions of the Indigenous Peoples of North America. The book, published on 11 November, explores the spiritual, historical and cultural role of Indigenous foodways across North America, covering 13 regions including the Great Plains, the south-west US and the Pacific Northwest.
Sherman, co-founder of the Minneapolis-based Indigenous restaurant Owamni, recalls his childhood on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in the 1970s and 80s. He remembers pounding dried bison with chokeberry to make wasná, hunting pheasants and grouse, and harvesting wild prairie turnips. However, these traditional practices were often replaced by government-issued foods like canned beef and cow cheese, a legacy of colonialism.
The cookbook weaves together travelogues, history and contemporary recipes using traditional ingredients. For example, Sherman's modern wasná pairs the dish with an herb salad wrapped in anise hyssop leaves. The book's 13 chapters represent the 13 moons symbolised by the turtle's shell in some Native American lore.
Sherman hopes the cookbook will promote Indigenous food sovereignty, which he defines as Native people's ability to control food production and distribution and access healthy, culturally appropriate food. This is particularly important given that Native Americans face higher rates of diabetes complications, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis than other populations.
During a time when Indigenous histories are being suppressed by federal policies, Sherman aims to give readers a better understanding of the land they live on. 'The US has historic amnesia when it comes to understanding its own history, especially around Black and Indigenous people,' he said. 'Food is not this detached item that you just pick up at the grocery store to fill yourself up, but it’s actually something that was generations in the making with so much tradition and so much cultural aspect baked into it.'
