Dan Pashman: Hey friends, Dan here, with another Reheat and comes at the request of one of our listeners, Judith.

CLIP (JUDITH): Hi Sporkful team. This is Judith from San Francisco. I have a Reheat suggestion for the episode with The Sioux Chef, Sean Sherman, founder of the restaurant Owanmi in Mineapolis. I was there last summer and I really, really enjoyed the food. And also, it made me realize how little know about indigenous food, indigenous cooking in the United States. As far as I know, he's one of the few people with a restaurant that really focuses on pre-colonial food and I thought that was really inspiring. So, I'm looking forward to this episode. 

Dan Pashman: Well Judith, here you go! This is our 2018 episode with Sean Sherman, also known as "The Sioux Chef". That's S-I-O-U-X, as in the Native American tribe. This one also features the writer, artist, and chef, Tunde Wey. Sean and Tunde are both using food to highlight larger political issues and they're part of a long tradition of bringing food and politics together. 

Dan Pashman: Now if there's an episode you want to pull out of the deep freezer and reheat, do what Judith did! Drop us a line. Send me an email, or voice memo to hello@sporkful.com. Include your first name, location, which episode you'd like us to reheat and why. Thank you Judith! And to everyone, enjoy. 

Dan Pashman: This episode of The Sporkful contains explicit language. 

Tunde Wey: I mean, when I was growing up, we used to watch a lot European and American television and all the ads for food were like, burgers, fries, chicken nuggets ... 

Dan Pashman: This is chef and writer, Tunde Wey. He was born and raised in Nigeria. He came to the U.S. when he was 16.

Tunde Wey: All I wanted to do as soon as I got here was have a burger.

Dan Pashman: And when you arrived, did you ...

Tunde Wey: That was the first that I ...

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Tunde Wey: After I — yeah, I was like, "Yo, take me ... [LAUGHS] Take me to your leader at McDonald's."

[LAUGHING]

Tunde Wey: That's what I said for real. I was disappointed.

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: And you were like, we need to open a Nigerian restaurant in here.

Tunde Wey: Yeah. We need to fix this ... [LAUGHING] stat.

Dan Pashman: Now Tunde’s 34. And over the past few years, he’s been trying to do just that — to introduce Americans to Nigerian food.

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: At pop up dinners across the U.S., he cooks the recipes he learned from his family in Nigeria.  

Tunde Wey: Africa, as a continent, is still regarded as a problematic place.

Dan Pashman: Tunde’s dinner events aren’t just about food. They’re also about his experience as an immigrant and a Black man in America. At each one, he leads a discussion on these issues, which he says includes respectful confrontation and challenging of ideas.

Tunde Wey: I want to create a space that speaks to issues and the concerns that happen outside of a restaurant space. The food is a tour. It's a delicious tour, but it's pointing to something bigger.

Dan Pashman: So Tunde is bringing together food and activism and that combination has a long history. Before women earned the right to vote, there were a bunch of suffrage-themed cookbooks that came out. During the Civil Rights movement, politically-minded cookbooks promoted cultural pride in the African American community.

Dan Pashman: Today this kind of food activism is thriving. Julia Turshen’s Feed The Resistance was Eater’s Cookbook of the year last year. Action Together Massachusetts published The Resistance Cookbook: Nasty Women and Bad Hombres in the Kitchen. An undocumented chef in Philly named Cristina Martinez started hosting Right 2 Work dinner events, and that's just a sampling. Well, today on The Sporkful, we’re featuring two chefs who are using food to spread their political messages.

Dan Pashman: Coming up, Tunde Wey talks about bringing his food to America. And then later in the show, Native American chef Sean Sherman talks about bringing back a food that’s been here all along. Stick around.

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: This is The Sporkful, it’s not for foodies, it’s for eaters. I’m Dan Pashman. Each week on our show we obsess about food to learn more about people. The first email I ever got from Tunde Wey came in 2014. He asked us to feature his pop-up dinners on the show and he had this big running joke in the email about how, "Why would I want to cover Nigerian food? It's so over exposed already. It's already the latest hipster fad, everybody knows about Nigerian food." It was a joke because he ends by saying, "There's still one thing folks don't know about it — everything.

Dan Pashman: So I wanted to have Tunde on the show, but I wanted to do it in person, so we could go out for Nigerian food together. I had never had. We kept in touch as he moved from Detroit to New Orleans. He kept doing his pop-up dinners and writing, often exploring the intersection between food, politics, and identity. He wrote pieces like, “The Whitewashing of Detroit’s Culinary Scene” and “Dining in the Era of Kaepernick”, referring to Colin Kaepernick, the football player who knelt during the national anthem.

Dan Pashman: A few months back we finally met up, at Buka, a Nigerian restaurant in Brooklyn. And after all that anticipation of us trying to get together, Tunde was underwhelmed by my podcasting setup …

[LAUGHING]

Tunde Wey: It's just you and two micr0phones. You're like ...

Dan Pashman: That's right. It's not as impressive ...

Tunde Wey: You're like a rapper and a DJ from, like, 1981.

Dan Pashman: Yeah.

[LAUGHING]

Tunde Wey: It's just like nothing. No ... [LAUGHS]

Dan Pashman: I haven’t been to one of Tunde’s dinners, but I think the meal we shared together gave me some idea of what they’re like. At each one, he picks a theme — immigration, race, inequality — and sends out reading material a few days in advance. He puts conversation prompts at each table and then he leads a group discussion. And as you’ll hear, Tunde is funny and charming and not afraid of respectful confrontation, to use his term.

Dan Pashman: As we sat down, Tunde laid out the basics of Nigerian food to me. But, he says, when he cooks for people who’ve never had it before, he tries not to explain too much.

Tunde Wey: I don't want to prejudice them and have them grope or reach for references that they've had and then limit the potential experience of eating something totally different. Like before I ever had seaweed or sushi, there was nothing you would tell me — you couldn't explain sushi to me. I had to eat it. We have like a couple of flavor profiles that we hit, like smoky flavor, fermented flavor, and fatty oily — from frying stuff.

Dan Pashman: That sounds really good.

Tunde Wey: Yeah! It's like — yeah, it's good. Okay, so I'm gonna do this oha soup. I've never had that before but I've heard ...

Dan Pashman: Okay, goat cooked in a thick sauce made from oha leaves ...

Tunde Wey: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: Smoked fish and stock fish ...

Tunde Wey: Yeah, so the smoked fish is the smoky flavor. The stock fish is the fermented flavor.

Dan Pashman: Right. And what about up here too? We got to make sure we get some egusi going ...

Tunde Wey: Yeah, but that's not a — you said entree. That's a sauce.

Dan Pashman: Oh well — I think the way this works is you pick, like ...

Tunde Wey: Oh, you're gonna tell me how this works in a Nigerian restaurant?

[LAUGHING]

Tunde Wey: You're gonna stand up here and tell me ... [LAUGHS] the way this works? I think I know how this works.

Dan Pashman: Yeah.

[LAUGHING]

Tunde Wey: But go ahead.

Dan Pashman: Well, the way I think it works, Tunde ...

Tunde Wey: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: I'll defer to you, of course ...

Tunde Wey: Okay.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] But is that you pick one of these meats ...

Tunde Wey: Mm-hmm.

Dan Pashman: And then you pair it with any one of these sauces.

Tunde Wey: Word ... I think you're right.

[LAUGHING]

Tunde Wey: Okay.

Dan Pashman: Pretty soon it was time to order …

Tunde Wey: Okay, so we are going to do the goat with the egusi and amala. Then we're gonna do the edikaikong — you have that, right? Do edikaikong and …

Dan Pashman: With apologies for my pronunciation, edikaikong is goat and tripe — tripe is stomach — cooked in spinach with crayfish, dried shrimp, and periwinkle. Tunde ordered it with eba, which is fermented ground cassava, or yuca root. Then he got us the egusi, that's a soup made with ground melon seeds and dried fish. And of course, jollof rice, a west African staple. It’s made with a blend of tomatoes, hot and sweet peppers, and other spices.

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: While we waited for our food, we kept talking. Tunde came to the U.S. in 2000, to go to college. As I said, he was 16 when he first set foot here in the land of burgers and chicken nuggets. And there are many things about America that he loves. In particular what he calls “the density of experiences”, so many different people with different backgrounds. But his time here has been like that first bite of McDonald’s — not quite as great as it looked in the commercials.

Dan Pashman: His political awakening began during the rise of Black Lives Matter, in response to police killings of unarmed Black men. Then there’s his experience as an immigrant. Tunde came here legally, but after he left school and his student visa expired, he was officially undocumented. In 2014, while he was on one of his pop-up dinner tours, he was detained by immigration authorities in Texas. He was sent to a detention center for 20 days. He lost 12 pounds before getting bailed out by family. One year later he married an American, which does help, but it doesn’t automatically get him out of the woods.

Dan Pashman: I know that you had an issue a while back with your immigration status.

Tunde Wey: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: How's that doing now?

Tunde Wey: It's doing okay. I'm still ... like, I guess, I'm still technically undocumented. I have a hearing that is as a result of being detained two years ago. At that court date, I ... You know, I'm going to be asked sort of, like, why I shouldn't be asked to leave the country and if my response isn't satisfactory, then there's gonna be another court day where a decision will be made about what happens if get to leave or stay. So, protracted situation.

Dan Pashman: Right.

Tunde Wey: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: Is it something that you're stressed about?

Tunde Wey: Only when I get interviewed about it.

[LAUGHING]

Tunde Wey: I mean, if you're undocumented, you're pretty vulnerable. And so you can't drive, you can't own property, you can't rent property, you can't go to school, you can't get a job. It's a pervasive and chronic life condition. At least for me, it's just further confirmation of how tenuous everything is. And it's even more tenuous because it's such a specific pain for a very small group of people and it's largely neglected and ignored by the larger group. So first of all, people don't even — people don't understand that you are suffering and people don't haven't and can never experience that suffering and so they can't relate to you. So that's a very dangerous place to be in when the people who's close to you are under — have none because they just can't fathom what it means to be you. And so that has made me want to more and try to me more vocal.

[SILVERWARE CLATTERING]

Dan Pashman: Pretty soon, the food arrived. 

Tunde Wey: This is the goat head stew. It's spicy. This is real. This is real life, right here.

Dan Pashman: That's so tender. I can't just tell by forking.

Tunde Wey: Hmm.

Dan Pashman: And what's this one over here?

Tunde Wey: This is eba. This is just fermented cassava. It's a sort of vehicle that you use to scoop up the stews. So you want to get some stew and scoop up.

Dan Pashman: Okay, so you want to get a little bit of the cassava and then scoop the ...

Tunde Wey: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: Got it. I'm smelling, like, the — that you said that there's ...

Tunde Wey: Fermented locust beans?

Dan Pashman: Yeah, fermented ...

Tunde Wey: Yeah, that's fermented locust beans ..

Dan Pashman: Okay.

Tunde Wey: In the egusi.

Dan Pashman: Egusi.

Tunde Wey: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: The goat was so soft and tender with a great kick, the jollof rice was excellent, but the part of the meal that left the most lasting impression on me was that fermented flavor in several of the dishes. Tunde’s right, it’s hard to describe. I can’t really tell you what it tastes like, but I can give you an analogy. You know when you eat really strong, funky cheese? We all have that point where the funk is just too intense and it overwhelms the experience, right? But if you can find a cheese that’s just before that point, it’s sort of magical. It hits you down deep. Of course, that point is different for everyone depending on your palate. I’ll be honest. At first, the fermented funk was too intense for me. But after a few bites, I started warming up to it. I could imagine getting to the point where it hit me down deep, like it does Tunde. That being said, I did wonder how quick most Americans would be to embrace these unfamiliar flavors and how far Tunde was willing to go to win them over.

Dan Pashman: And I know you've talked in the past about wanting to open your own brick and mortar restaurants. I know you had the stand in New Orleans.

Tunde Wey: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: Is opening ...

Tunde Wey: You're just gonna call it a stand? It was a stall ...

Dan Pashman: A stall.

Tunde Wey: In a food hall.

Dan Pashman: Okay.

Tunde Wey: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: Is that .. I guess, that's a little bit different.

Tunde Wey: Yeah, it's a little different, you know?

Dan Pashman: But that was a — I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but from my understanding, it was a pretty — sort of one of these kind of upscale food halls.

Tunde Wey: Yeah, it was pretty upscale. So, you know, the folks who were around me were serving buttermilk fried chicken sandwiches with aoili. This guy made, like, a pimento cheeseburger ... That was good. Yeah, so it was all — and you know, and then there was a bar that just served cocktails and that kind of stuff.

Dan Pashman: And how did you feel having your food situated in that kind of environment?

Tunde Wey: That wasn't necessarily, I think, the best thing for me to do.

Dan Pashman: Why?

Tunde Wey: I served eba — so that's like a starch ball and egusi, which is the stew — the leafy stew. It's not a burger. It is not a taco. It is not, like, convenient in the conventional sense. I mean, it's convenient for me because it's delicious, you know?

[LAUGHS]

Tunde Wey: And so ... Yeah, and then, you know, the people would come and they would come to my stand and they wanted to be adventurous and like, "Give me this ..", and I would give it to them and they would bring it back and like, " Uh, the consistency is off west in here." And I'm like, "It's a goat head stew." And they're like, "Oh, I don't want that anymore ...". And so ... And then I just stopped giving people food. I'm like, they would come and ask for something. If it wasn't chicken, I'll be like, "Taste it first," so you know what you're getting.

Dan Pashman: In terms of trying to get your food to break through to a larger audience, trying to introduce Nigerian food to people who would be largely unfamiliar with it, what did you learn from that experience?

Tunde Wey: I learned that I didn't want to do that. I wasn't trying to break through to anybody. You know, that's what I learned. My business ... It wasn't doing well and I was asked to — by the management of the venue — to change up my menu, to make it more — to do sandwiches and to do some other stuff. Not just them, but friends too, also, told me to do that. And I had come into that space with a very particular idea, which is I'm cooking traditional Nigerian food. That was it. And I made, like, a sandwich, chicken sandwich, that was delicious, that people loved, but I didn't want to be selling chicken sandwiches. You know, that's not what I wanted my life to be about. I didn't want people to come to Nigerian food through a backdoor. Like, let me give you a thing, so you can get to that thing. I'm like, no. Helping you understand Nigerian food through this anglo-sized chicken sandwich doesn't do anything but reinforce your national privilege, you know, that you, as an American, can mold and meld the world to your taste buds.

Dan Pashman: Right. I certainly understand what you're saying when you say that, you know, you didn't want to have to make certain compromises to appeal to certain groups of people and that's — I respect that. But if I can just play devil's advocate a little bit, I think usually what happens is when a new cuisine gets introduced, you're right, the cuisine gets changed in a way in America to be more "marketable". Typically, that means made more sweet, or maybe it's made more fatty or maybe it's stuck in the middle of a sandwich, like you say. [LAUGHS] Like, oh, look, now it's egsui-ritto — now, it's inside a burrito. Look at this!

Tunde Wey: [LAUGHS]

Dan Pashman: You know, this is familiar to you now, you dummies. You can eat this. But I think that over time, while you're right, that's a compromise that has to be made in order to kind of like get a foot in the door and take the first step, American food and culture and American palettes are also changed. I get what you're saying that there's kind of an underlying arrogance to the way that Americans view food, but I do think that what Americans eat now, that many Americans eat now is very different to what we were eating 20 or 30 years ago.

Tunde Wey: Yeah, of course.

Dan Pashman: The idea that siracha is everywhere, you know ...

Tunde Wey: But what are the consequences of the arrogance? That's what I'm saying. And so it's not just — so if American food has changed over time because immigrants, for example, had to make compromises, have those changes added to the advancement of the immigrants? Or have they added to the idea of the grandeur of America? So that is what I'm trying to say. Like, yeah, Americans have benefited from more expansive palettes but at what expense?

Dan Pashman: I do understand what you're saying and I don't disagree and maybe this is just my white American guy way of looking at things ...

Tunde Wey: It is, but go ahead.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] I totally understand that there's a problematic aspect to the fact that when a immigrant cuisine comes to America, it sort of has to bend to ...

Tunde Wey: It doesn't have to bend, but it bends.

Dan Pashman: Right, or ... Well, if it wants to sell a bunch of whatever things that they're making ...

Tunde Wey: I don't think it has to bend. I think the example is where it doesn't bend. 

Dan Pashman: And still becomes very successful and crosses into mainstream?

Tunde Wey: I think so, yeah. I just came back from Philly and I cooked a dinner at my friend’s restaurant — South Philly Barbacoa, and he cooked traditional barbacoa. My friend and his wife could have made tacos with beans and ketchup or whatever people do to be more marketable. She makes what she makes, which is in a traditional — her parents and her grandparents, cause that's — that was the choice that she decided on.

Dan Pashman: I hear that but I also kind of feel like that place may be able to succeed in part because, like, people know barbacoa from seeing it on the menu at Chipotle.

Tunde Wey: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: You know, not that your friend's place is doing it that way, but that that was an entry point for white Americanas and so when they go to a more authentic place, they're like, "Oh, I know barbacoa. That's the stuff I have at Chipotle ... "

Tunde Wey: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: And now it doesn't feel so "foreign" to them.

Tunde Wey: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: I do feel like there's some positive that comes from that.

Tunde Wey: Yeah, there's positives to everything. Maybe there are one or two or three things in the universe that are exclusively bad.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Tunde Wey: You know, or exclusively good. So, yes, there are some positives, but again, at what cost? There was a story about an immigrant in a small town and he owned a restaurant and he was loved by everybody in the town. I think it was Mexican. And after the new president came in, there was a crackdown and then he was arrested. And when the folks in the town found out that he was undocumented and he had been detained, everybody sent a letter to the judge. And you know, I think the end of the story is — like, the judge was overwhelmed with all of the support that he had and he was — I think he's been let out. 

Tunde Wey: People hear that story, they're like, that's an amazing story. This is the power of American generosity and love. But what that story is is that one person had to be detained, dehumanized, so that America can learn a lesson? You know? And that is, like, fundamentally imbalanced, you know, that other people have to bend to privilege and power  so that the people without privilege and power can survive. And the people with privilege and power can be entertained, either by a lesson or by a meal.

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: Coming up, while Tunde is trying to introduce a cuisine, chef Sean Sherman is trying to bring back a cuisine that was here for centuries. It’s the indigenous foods of his Native American ancestors:

CLIP (SEAN SHERMAN): Just really trying to, right now, right this wrong and reclaim this native food that was systematically taken away from a huge amount of people across the continent.

Dan Pashman: Stick around.

MUSIC

 

+++BREAK+++

 

Dan Pashman: And now a moment from our partner, American Express. 

Dan Pashman: I don't have enough time to get into full detail about all the things I love about my AmEx Gold Cards. And yes, it is cards, plural. I have a personal AmEx Gold Card and a Business AmEx Gold Card. But today, I'm gonna talk to you about my personal AmEx Gold Card. What I love about my personal Gold Card is that I get 4 times points at restaurants globally on up to $50,000 annually. When I travel, I rack up more membership rewards points that I can then use to take my family on a trip. Also, I love AmEx customer service. When I need support with my card, they're there to help. And look, if you're an eater like me, the AmEx Gold Card is the way to go. Cardholders can enroll and earn up to $120 back in statement credits after paying at participating partners up to 10 bucks each month. And you can get up to $100 back annually after you pay with the American Express Gold Card to dine at U.S. Resy restaurants, or make other eligible Resy purchases. Honestly, with my AmEx Gold card, I just feel like a V.I.P. and I always feel like I'm racking up points. AmEx Gold can help elevate your dining experiences, allowing you to check out new restaurants, connect with your family and friends, and explore exciting flavors all while earning rewards points. That is the powerful backing of American Express. For terms and to learn more, visit AmericanExpress.com/withAmEx. 

 

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: Welcome back to The Sporkful, I'm Dan Pashman. And hey, if you're looking for great Black Friday, Cyber Monday type deals, I got some for you! And they involve pasta at a sweet, sweet price. Yes, all my Sfoglini pastas, cascatelli, quattrotini, and vesuvio, will be on sale starting Wednesday November 27th and continuing right through the following Tuesday, December 3rd. You can also pick up a special gift set, one box of each of those three pastas, plus my cookbook, Anything's Pastable, which makes for a great gift for the eater in your life. There's no code needed. There's no minimum. The discount will be automatically applied at checkout, so go get your shopping done at Sfoglini.com. That's S-F-O-G-L-I-N-I .com

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: Now back to the show.

Dan Pashman: Hey Sean, can you hear me?

Sean Sherman: I can hear you, yes.

Dan Pashman: Hey, this is Dan in New York. How are you?

Sean Sherman: I'm doing well, thanks. How are you?

Dan Pashman: Good. Thanks so much for making time for us today.

Sean Sherman: Yeah, of course.

Dan Pashman: Sean Sherman is a member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe of Native Americans. He was born on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. His family moved to a nearby town when he was in elementary school. He got his first restaurant job when he was 13. Now he’s 43 and a trained chef. These days he’s based in the Twin Cities, which is where he was when we spoke a few weeks ago …

Dan Pashman: So you're in — you're back in Minneapolis now?

Sean Sherman: Yeah, we're in St. Paul right now. 

Dan Pashman: All right. Cool. Do you know where Lake Josephine is?

Sean Sherman: I don't.

Dan Pashman: I know there's more than one lake ...

Sean Sherman: [LAUGHS] Yeah.

Dan Pashman: In the area.

Sean Sherman: There's like 16,000, I think.

Dan Pashman: Yeah. [LAUGHS]

Sean Sherman: [LAUGHS]

Dan Pashman: Well, my friends live by Lake Josephine in St. Paul.

Sean Sherman: Okay, do you know where that's at?

Dan Pashman: No.

Sean Sherman: Oh, okay.

Dan Pashman: I just assumed — it's one of the lakes, Sean.

Sean Sherman: It's one of the lakes.

Dan Pashman: Yeah.

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: Growing up, my parents bought Land O’Lakes cheese. Now that I think about it, was there a problematic Native American image on that label? I think so?

Sean Sherman: There was a little bit, a little cultural appropriation going on there.

Dan Pashman: Yeah. Oh wait, I'm googling Land O’Lakes and I was looking at their logo, which has this sort of, like, female Native American character holding a box of cheese.

Sean Sherman: Right. [LAUGHS] There's a few issues with that.

Dan Pashman: On the Pine Ridge Reservation where Sean was born, life expectancy is among the lowest in the country. And part of the reason is that when Sean’s ancestors were forced onto reservations, they lost access to their native foods. They were stuck on land nobody wanted, with bad soil, little vegetation, not many animals to hunt. So now they have to rely on U.S. government food rations.

Dan Pashman: Over the past few years, Sean’s made it his mission to bring back the indigenous foods of his ancestors, and to help other Native Americans do the same. He started a project called The Sioux Chef – S-I-O-U-X. Get it? He does catering and dinner events, and he’s working on opening a restaurant and education center. He recently published his first cookbook. It features dishes like cedar braised beans, and smoked whitefish with white bean spread. Then there’s one ingredient he uses a lot that I didn’t recognize — chokecherries.

Sean Sherman: Chokecherries is something that's just so unique and it just has this huge, but they're super tannic, and they're not very pleasant to eat fresh right off the tree. But when you cook them down and all the pits fall out of them and it just creates this amazing aroma and this really deep sauce and it just something for me that just whisks me back to being a young kid every single time cause of that, you know, food memory of just that smell in the kitchens and things like that.

Dan Pashman: And what are some of your early food memories?

Sean Sherman: Well, you know, we grew up with a lot of the commodity foods that were out there. So if you look at the U.S. government commodity foods, you'll see it's just a lot of canned goods. And it's unfortunate because it's not a very healthy program. And these foods have caused a lot of issues, you know, with Type 2 diabetes and obesity and just a lot of ... you know, becuase they're high saturated fats, lots of bad sugars, and lots of salt. So we have a lot of that growing up. We did have things like fried bread ... But you know, on the traditional side, we did have some more traditional pieces that were still — that had survived and are still there. So we had really simple dried meats. We had chokecherries and we had lots of game. I started hunting at a really age and we were gather things that were still around but largely the food systems has been pretty much destroyed and people were reliant upon a lot of the government handouts by the time I was born and growing up in the '70s and '80s.

Dan Pashman: I know that early in your life you lived on the reservation. I know that you left with your mom in middle school. But when you would have those more traditional meals, are there specific ones that stand out in your mind? Is there a story that you can tell me about one of those times? Was there an understanding that it was special?

Sean Sherman: Yeah, you know, for a lot of the big family gatherings that we'd have, my grandmother would make a soup called taniga. A lot of times when I was growing up, it was made with beef intestine, but obviously, it has traditional roots of using the bison intestine and probably any of the other large animals that were out there too. And it was really strong smelling [LAUGHS] and probably not for the faint of heart, but we knew when that was cooking that, you know, it was a special day and people would just be busy bustling around in the kitchen, and just family was getting ready to gather.

Dan Pashman: Tell me a little bit about your grandparents and the food memories that you have with them.

Sean Sherman: Well, when I was growing up, my mom was the youngest out of her family. So her parents were ranching on Pine Ridge and we grew up on their land ranching. And I think my grandfather had about, I want to say, 11,000 acres or something like that at that time. So there was just a lot of land. There was a lot of cattle to be pushed around, a lot of ranch jobs for us kids that were around. I had a bunch of cousins running around the landscape too. My grandfather was in WWII in the Pacific. He was in the battle of Midway. His father fought with the Lakota at the battle of Little Big Horn. We still have a cavalry saddle at the ranch from that battle.

MUSIC

Sean Sherman: You know, they treat Native American history like it's something that happened so long ago. It's like ancient history. Why worry about it? But everything happens basically between the years of 1800 and 1900. Cause at the beginning of 1800, still, like, over 80% of the entire, what is, the U.S. is still under indigenous control at that point in that time. By 1900, 1% of the land is under indigenous control. There's a lot of death that happened.

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Dan Pashman: So a big part of Sean’s mission is to help Native Americans reclaim the food culture they’ve lost. But it’s also to educate the rest of us about that history. Sean hosts dinners that begin with a prayer, and, like Tunde’s dinners, often include uncomfortable conversations.

Sean Sherman: It's people being curious but not knowing anything about it. But at least they're curious and they want to know. You know, I had one lady telling me she has this big mansion out on Lake Minnetonka, which is a huge lake, very expensive area and there's big houses. And she's like, "We have all these Native mounds in our backyard and I think it's so cool," You know, but that's such a weird thing to say, cause it'd be like if I set up camp in one of the graveyards in Minneapolis and be like, hey, I think some of your ancestors might be buried in my backyard. Right? So it's just a lot of cultural insensitivities that people are used to and not thinking about.

Dan Pashman: Earlier you heard Sean mention fry bread. That’s one of the more controversial foods among Native Americans. It’s a flat bread usually fried in lard or shortening. Imagine like a whole pita except fried, crispy on the outside and doughy in the middle. Sometimes it’s topped with meat and cheese and shredded lettuce and tomato, like the same stuff you would put in a hard shell taco. When it’s on fry bread, it’s called an Indian taco. And yes, that’s what Native Americans typically call it too, in a tongue in cheek sort of way.

Dan Pashman: Most people who grew up on reservations grew up with fry bread. So to some, it’s the comfort food of their childhood. But to others, it’s a symbol of oppression. After all, Native Americans didn’t eat anything like fry bread before they were forced onto reservations. Sean admits fry bread tastes pretty great, but he doesn’t serve it.

Dan Pashman: I was looking at fry bread recipes online ...

Sean Sherman: [LAUGHS]

Dan Pashman: And there's one that was submitted to site by a woman names Mildred but Hartselle Alabama, and she included a note with the recipe that reads, "While taking a trip to the Grand Canyon, my family drove through the Navajo Reservation and stopped at a little cafe for dinner. I complimented the young waiter on the delicious Indian fry bread and he gave the recipe. It's very easy to make.

Sean Sherman: [LAUGHS]

Dan Pashman: What do you make of a comment like that?

Sean Sherman: People are just really not aware of the culture. You know, even today, we're still having a lot of conversations. There's still a lot of chefs promoting fry bread and we really just feel that it's important to not promote that piece and to move away from it and to really to promote what is important, which is the knowledge that was taken away. I've had people as me: How did Native Americans get to Minnesota? You know? Like, how did they get there?

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Sean Sherman: [LAUGHS] So, it's just a result ...

Dan Pashman: Minnesota? They didn't get to Minnesota. Minnesota got to them.

Sean Sherman: A little bit.

Dan Pashman: Right. [LAUGHS]

Sean Sherman: And it's just a result of that education that's out there, you know?

Dan Pashman: I understand what you're saying about fry bread in particular. But just in general, I wonder when a woman named Mildred from Alabama [SEAN SHERMAN LAUGHS] travels to the Grand Canyon and eats Indian food, to use her term, and says, this is delicious, I want the recipe, you know, it's like, I hear what you're saying that it's problematic on certain levels and it's not the traditional food of the Navajo people, but I do wonder if something positive happens in that exchange? Mildred has eaten a food that she never ate before and she associates it with people that she hasn't met before, and those people start to feel less foreign to her as a result. Is there something positive there?

Sean Sherman: Yeah. I mean, I get that, but there's absolutely no reason that fry bread should represent every single one of those tribes out there. It's going to be better if we can reclaim a lot of these indigenous foods systems from within our own tribes to really showcase the true culture through the food with the food that's really been there for a long time. Cause this food is kind of like ... A lot of these plants that have been around that haven't been utilized, they're kind of like our ancestors too because they've been alongside us most of this whole time. Fry bread is really a symbol of that oppression. It's a symbol of that forced reliance on government commodities utilizing wheat flours and lards and salts and sugars and things that weren't there before, but things that have caused an immense amount of problems with health. You know, it's not fun to see families members pass away with Type 2 diabetes. And we have communities with upwards of 60% Type 2 diabetes because of the reliance on some of these foods. We feel like it's — you know, we have to be strong with the mission we're standing on.

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Dan Pashman: That’s chef Sean Sherman, he and his partner Dana Thompson are co founders of a non profit called NATIFS – that’s North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems. They’re working to educate native people across the continent about their food culture, and they’re planning to open a culinary training center and restaurant in Minneapolis in the next year. They’re also working on a for-profit restaurant on the Mississippi River in Minneapolis that they hope to open in 2019.

Dan Pashman: Sean’s cookbook is The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen, that’s S-I-O-U-X, it’s out now. If you want to learn more about their work go to sioux-chef.com.

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