With his first buzzy cookbook, The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen—a collection of innovative recipes built around clean, locally-sourced ingredients—Oglala Lakota Sioux chef Sean Sherman won a 2018 James Beard Award. At the time, Sherman wanted to eliminate colonial influences from Indigenous cuisine—including elements such as dairy, chicken, pork, wheat flour, and even black pepper—and go back to basics with wild or foraged ingredients. “I wanted to see what it would taste like, to have purely Indigenous ingredients in those recipes,” says Sherman. “And to show that we can still make a lot—even with that challenge.”
Today, Sherman is now following up the critically acclaimed cookbook with his second highly anticipated release. The book, titled Turtle Island: Foods and Traditions of the Indigenous Peoples of North America, goes across the continent region by region, and highlights different local flavors and cuisines. Once again, Sherman does so by focusing on decolonized ingredients, utilizing the fresh game, fish, or fruits and vegetables that were used pre-colonization. “There is a vast diversity of Indigeneity across North America,” Sherman says. “I wanted to tell the story of what food looks like when you take out colonial lines completely. Some places are extremely distinct—and some places have a little more commonality with others.”
Geographically, the book centers around the traditional Indigenous story of Turtle Island—a term used by many Indigenous nations across North America, which tells the story of how the continent’s landmass was formed on the back of a giant turtle. “[In the book,] I thought it would be cool to break North America up into 13 regions, because there are 13 segments on the back of turtle shells,” says Sherman. With that focus in mind, Sherman brings readers across the continent—from Northern Alaska to the Great Plains to southern Mexico—and examines different dishes that are popular in each region, then takes them to a new, contemporary level. “The book wasn’t meant to be a report on what traditional foods were,” says Sherman. “This is a book for the future: I wanted to showcase the possibilities of what we still have, and what we can create.”
The foods from each region offer a historical glimpse into what many Indigenous communities ate centuries ago. In the Great Plains section, for one, Sherman cooks up recipes like braised bison oxtail or rabbit stew that the Lakota and other tribes in the area often enjoyed. In the Northern Alaska and Canadian Arctic chapter, the seal tartar and kelp-wrapped arctic char reflect the fresh fish that the Inupiat or Yupik communities typically served (and still do). While he wanted to showcase a wide variety of different cuisines and approaches, Sherman says he was surprised to find a commonality between the various regions—that being a shared spirit of sustainability and mindfulness for the ingredients used. “As Indigenous peoples, we are the original blueprint of how to live sustainably in whatever land space we might be living on,” says Sherman.
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