6 voices decolonising Indigenous American cuisine

One of the most interesting, exciting and empowering movements in the food system in the US in the last few years has been the rise of Native American food activists. Not only have America’s Indigenous communities worked over the last decades to research and preserve their ancient foodways and reclaim their cultural heritage, but the current broken food system in the Western world is now primed for these experts in sustainable and environmentally respectful methods of food production and consumption to be heard.

For those who believe in the power of food to bring people together, to heal and to nourish, then a movement born of an oppressed and marginalised community’s attempts to heal itself from centuries of trauma, stands as a resounding confirmation of the power of food to move beyond that community and benefit the world at large. Here are six food activists working to decolonise Indigenous cuisine.

Sean Sherman

_{Photo by Dana Thompson}

The standout voice for Indigenous food culture, Sherman, with the moniker The Sioux Chef since 2014, has a national profile that has been steadily growing over the years. A multi award-winning chef, Sherman’s Minneapolis restaurant Owamni is a haven for Native American culture and community. Focusing on pre-European recipes and ingredients, the restaurant employs majority Native staff and takes every opportunity to remind diners of the plight of Indigenous communities. Owamni was named the James Beard Awards’ Best New Restaurant of 2022 and the accolades continue to pour in. Coming from the Native name for the site on which the restaurant sits, ‘Owamni’ translates to ‘place of the swirling waters,’ in reference to the sacred waterfalls that were dismantled for industry. The restaurant houses Sherman’s and long-term business partner Dana Thompson’s non-profit activities the Native Food Lab and the North American Native Indigenous Food Systems.

Lois Ellen Frank

A trailblazer of the Native American food movement, Frank has toiled for over 30 years in her home city of Sante Fe, New Mexico to preserve and nurture Native American ingredients and foodways of the southwest. A James Beard Award-winner for her seminal book, Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations, in 2003, Frank is recognised as an important culinary ambassador of Native American cuisine, which she has represented at events all over the world. A culinary anthropologist, Frank works as an educator at the Santa Fe School of Cooking and runs her own catering business Red Mesa Cuisine with Diné chef Walter Whitewater.

Crystal Wahpepah

_{Photo by Anthony Two Moons}

Oakland, California, where she was born and raised in a community made up of a variety of Indigenous backgrounds, is where Wahpepah founded her restaurant Wahpepah's Kitchen, where she showcases the diversity of tribal food. Wahpepah has received multiple awards for her activism in promoting Indigenous foodways, through her business entities in restaurants, catering, and nutrition bars. Nominated for the James Beard Emerging Chef Award 2022, Wahpepah is a driven chef with real creative chops, sourcing her food and products from Native American suppliers.

Freddie J. Bitsoie

_{Photo by Mark Woodward}

With an academic background in Anthropology, Bitsoie pursued his passion for Native American heritage, culture and identity by training in classic French cuisine. He then applied his skills and knowledge to Indigenous food and preserving the ancient heritage and knowledge of Native communities. Past kitchen roles include a turn as Executive Chef at the Mitsitam Café, found at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. Bitsoie is a passionate, award-winning chef with a bright future ahead of him. His 2021 book, New Native Kitchen: Celebrating Modern Recipes of the American Indian, showcases his extensive knowledge, passion and talent for writing.

Elena Terry

Chef Elena Terry is the founder of Wild Bearies, a community outreach programme in Wisconsin that helps people overcome alcohol and drug addiction or emotional trauma and find healing through cooking and sharing meals. As a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, Terry works to decolonise Indigenous foods and empower people with ancestral knowledge about harvesting wild foods that proliferate in nature. Terry believes that the acts of foraging and cooking are just as vital to the soul and psychology as eating is to our physical nutrition. Terry is the Food and Culinary Program Coordinator for the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance.

Linda Black Elk

_{Photo courtesy of NATIFS}

An ethnobotanist and sovereignty activist, Linda Black Elk writes and educates about edible and medicinal plants and their uses to promote and preserve Indigenous practices, and the environment, and to fight against extractive industries both locally and nationally. A strong and media-savvy voice, Black Elk reaches the public through her Instagram account, speaking engagements, through her published works, including Watoto Unyutapi, a field guide to edible wild plants of the Dakota people and through her work as the Food Sovereignty Coordinator at United Tribes Technical College in Bismarck, North Dakota.