"As a child growing up on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in the 1970s and 80s, Sean Sherman, an Oglala Lakota member and a James Beard award-winning chef, recalls pounding dried bison and mixing it with chokeberry to create a snack called wasna. He and his cousins would often hunt for pheasants and grouse, or harvest wild berries and Thipsila, a wild prairie turnip that's a staple Lakota food."
"Sherman's earliest memories of food were full of history, culture and spiritualism. His idealistic experiences of harvesting and hunting for food on the reservation were juxtaposed with the legacy of colonialism. Most of the time, Sherman and his family ate government-issued food such as canned beef, or blocks of cow cheese, which diverged from their traditional diet. It's a tale that Sherman, co-founder of the Minneapolis-based Indigenous restaurant Owamni, shares along with other stories in a new cookbook that highlights Indigenous cuisines throughout North America."
"There was a time when the Great Plains, which ranges from the Alberta and Saskatchewan provinces in Canada to Texas, was teeming with bison. Tatanka, which means bison in the Lakota language, shaped the Native people's religion and mythology. But much of the grasslands were decimated by farmland and overgrazing upon the arrival of European settlers, and the bison nearly became extinct from overhunting in the late 1800s."
Sean Sherman grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation in the 1970s and 80s, learning to prepare traditional foods like wasna and harvesting pheasants, grouse, wild berries, and Thipsila. Those food practices carried history, culture and spiritual meaning alongside the harsh reality of colonial-era food dependence. Sherman and his family frequently relied on government-issued canned beef and blocks of cow cheese, diverging from ancestral diets. Sherman co-founded the Minneapolis restaurant Owamni and published Turtle Island to highlight Indigenous cuisines. Tatanka (bison) once defined Great Plains life and spirituality, suffered near extinction from settler-driven land change and overhunting, and is now being restored to enable renewed traditional food practices.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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