In other words, by reintroducing Native food,

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Not only do Indigenous ingredients such as these tend to be healthier and more sustainable, but they also hold real educational potential. Sherman asks, “What were our food sources? How did we gather salts, fats, and sugars?” Answering questions like these informs menu development and also uncovers historical insights about Indigenous communities that have been forgotten or ignored. They are also prompts to be shared with the visitors who eat at Owamni, as care is taken by servers to educate about the ingredients on the plates. In Sherman’s view, “the more we normalize seeing Indigenous foods out there, the more people understand that it’s not just lost or decimated cultures, but thriving cultures that are creating solutions for our food system.”

Owamni is creating an occasion for a new conversation—about ingredients that are rooted in the past and offer a way forward for the future.

When Owamni opened in 2021, it was one of just a small phone number list handful of restaurants that, as Sherman has put it, “represent the food and people that were there before.” A lot has changed in four years. Today, Sherman regularly fields requests for advice and support from up-and-coming Indigenous chefs and food groups. And while Indigenous restaurants in the US are far from fully representative of the vast range of Native North American food traditions, the volume has increased exponentially (even if not in New York) to the point that one can now find listicles on the best places to try Native American food in the US. The movement is just getting started.


Chef Sean Sherman reflects on Owamni’s name and vision for the future.
Moving from “normalization” to access and change
There’s no doubt the success of restaurants like Owamni should be celebrated. But Sherman and NATIFS also recognize that going to a restaurant is a financial privilege—and that people should be able to eat the food and benefit from Native knowledge regardless of their economic circumstances.

It’s precisely this ethic of access that motivates an expansive array of public-facing programming offered by NATIFS in Minneapolis and (increasingly) beyond.

In addition to owning Owamni, NATIFS runs an Indigenous Food Lab that offers classes on everything from Native American cooking and farming techniques to Indigenous medicines and languages. It also operates a market within Minneapolis’s Midtown Global Market that serves affordable grab-and-go Indigenous meals, while carrying the products of over 50 Indigenous vendors and authors. It even maintains a YouTube page with over 100 videos that bring bite-sized bits of the organization (think recipe walk-throughs and explainer videos) to almost 20,000 subscribers.