Food From Here
Why do we know so little about Indigneous food?
BY NITHYA VENKAT WITH ART BY NATALIE WILLIAMS
In July 2021, Sean Sherman and Dana Thompson (better known as the Sioux Chef) opened up their restaurant Owanmi in downtown Minneapolis– on Dakota lands. This restaurant was a feat, gaining the attention of food critics nationwide for its authentic Indigenous menu. According to their website, they say that their food has no dairy, wheat flour, cane sugar, or pork, beef, and chicken. It is, what they call, a decolonized approach– sourcing directly from Indigenous farmers. A restaurant like this is inspiring, especially in a time where social media has homogenized our diets into avocado toast and “Gigi Hadid’s vodka pasta.” There is a freshness and a boldness in the work of the Sioux Chef, but the question is why has it taken so long? Why don’t any of us eat ‘food from here’? And bigger yet, why don’t any of us know what food from here is?
The answers to these questions are not so simple and must be discovered delicately. The core of Indigneous knowledge is a commitment against consumption for the sake of consumption– so encouraging the spread of Indigenous food might just relapse into dangerous cycles of mass production that is so antithetical to Indigenous wisdom. That sort of thinking has destroyed Indigneous lifestyles. Perhaps, this is the primary reason Indigenous food hasn’t taken hold in our meals or in our minds; that the legacies of colonization, capitalism, and agribusiness have decimated local food systems. From the first Europeans hunting bison to almost extinction to the cultivation of cash crops that are not local to the regions they grow in, the US has almost no biodiversity in its food– and no evidence of the food that existed before. A report from the Chatham House in 2021 notes that global food systems are the primary drivers of biodiversity loss, with agriculture alone being the primary threat to endangered species. Take corn, for example. Before the time of mass production and business farms, corn grew in a variety of colors. Blues, reds, and oranges. But then came the streamlining of crops and in came the era of yellow corn. When we lower biodiversity, we restrict the productivity of ecosystems– rendering it unable to support the life that relies on it. In her book “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer, she writes that in some Native languages, the word for plants translates to “those who take care of us”. While yellow corn might sound like a rather dull consequence, it represents the greater struggle. That the lack of Indigneous food consumption and knowledge lies in the intentional action to destroy Indigenous ways of being.
The second reason is perhaps more nuanced– that Western food standards don't play to Indigenous food. Western food is rigid and compartmentalized, appetizer, entree, dessert, with a starch or a carb, some veggies, some acid. This is what a ‘plate’ consists of. But other cultures, especially Indigenous ones, don’t operate in this same way. Food is made to be shared, served to each other, eaten together. One person doesn’t eat one thing, but rather we all as a community eat our food. These ideas and this way of looking at food isn’t easy to sell. It’s not easy to put into a restaurant. It would require a distortion of culture to fit a consumable mold. Not to say that the people of the Sioux Chef have desecrated tradition, but rather they represent a masterful connection between consumption and creativity. They (literally) brought to the table a new picture of what food can be.
The line this walks is tricky. Things don’t find validity when people can buy them, and I stand by that ideal firmly. We should avoid a popularization of Indigneous food to avoid a capitalist take that convolutes the core of what it is– decolonization. But there is also another side, that people learn through seeing. It is undeniable that Owanmi has brought Indigenous food front and center. That the sheer existence of this restaurant motivated this very article. Visibility is important, but it is up to us to walk that thin line of seeing and learning versus taking and buying. That is how we learn, grow, eat and enjoy food from here.