Lyric Aquino, Underscore Native News + Report for America and Photos by Jarrette Werk
Sean Sherman knows you can’t cook every recipe in his new cookbook. In fact, some of the recipes in “Turtle Island: Food and Traditions of the Indigenous Peoples of North America,” co-authored alongside Kate Nelson and Kristin Donnell, are simply meant to be appreciated, according to the renowned author and chef.
“Some of this stuff will just be things that we celebrate culturally and regionally and ceremonially and that’s fine,” Sherman said. “Because there’s some recipes in this book that you’ll never find at your local Whole Foods. We have everything from iguana to whale in that book.”
But that didn’t stop the crowd that formed in Portland’s Barbie’s Village Native community space on Nov. 24. As guests piled in, staff put out extra chairs while the sun brightly shone through the windows of the former chapel, illuminating a red Land Back flag that hung above the crowd. Children’s laughter and murmurs echoed as people of all ages crowded together to listen to chef Sherman, Oglala Lakota, and co-author Nelson, Tlinglit, speak about their new book.
Published on Nov. 11, with Clarkson Potter Publishers New York, the cookbook features 13 regional sections that make up Turtle Island. The title and chapter count of the book is a nod to the turtle, which in many Native cultures has 13 scales on its shell to represent the 13 moon cycles. Each section is introduced with illuminating essays written by Nelson that dive into the spiritual and cultural historical roles of Indigenous foodways throughout Turtle Island.
Nelson and Sherman intentionally broke up sections in ways that challenge traditional lenses of colonial borders. In some cases, like in the Northwest Coast regional section, modern-day borders are ignored by bridging together areas that are separated in maps of the present day North America. From Washington to Oregon, Canada, and Alaska, the Northwest Coast section of the book encapsulates a broader interpretation of the definition of the Pacific Northwest, according to Nelson.
“With our colonial borders, there’s a tendency to separate the Pacific Northwest and we usually think of Washington and Oregon,” Nelson said. “But we tend to separate that from Southeast Alaska, whereas, in reality the climate, the foods, the ingredients, and the techniques have a lot more similarities between Southeast Alaska, Washington and Oregon.”
Throughout the creation and design of the book, Sherman wanted to make sure he used ingredients various regions had deep connections to. His goal was to create recipes that weren’t necessarily traditional but to incorporate traditional ingredients to showcase the possibilities of new ideas.
“I tried my best to pay respect and honor to the region. It’s a big task to try and write recipes for other regions,” Sherman said. “Obviously, the dishes in the Pacific Northwest, we want them to feel like they’re from the Pacific Northwest because we’re using those ingredients that are natural to there.”
As Sherman and Nelson have toured the country, they’ve said that food is more than just sustenance to them, it’s a tie to culture, to history, and to the future.
Food is political
In his work, Sherman makes use of his fame and platform by highlighting injustices found throughout global Indigenous communities, and ties them back to food sovereignty. He warns his audiences that colonization is ongoing in the United States, Ukraine, Palestine, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and throughout South America.
“Colonization is actively happening right now and people who work on those lands are being demonized and [face] violence,” said Sherman. “It’s just the same history that we went through here in the United States. So it’s important to identify that colonization still exists.”
After traveling the world and studying foods globally, Sherman said Indigenous people have the most success living sustainably which is tied back to eating and producing their own culturally relevant foods.
“We all have the original blueprint to live sustainably in the world around us and we all need to work back towards taking the power of our own food back towards us — which is really what food sovereignty is about,” said Sherman. “It’s reclaiming that power of our own food,” he added.
Oftentimes Indigenous people are limited to mostly colonial foods found within grocery stores. For Sherman, a big step towards food sovereignty is normalizing traditional ingredients and making new recipes with those foods.
“We don’t have to be stuck with just making a handful of recipes in the past. Traditional recipes are amazing, but we need to envision a future where we’re evolving, where we’re creating all sorts of amazing new foods for the future generations,” Sherman said.
Another large component of food sovereignty for Indigenous communities is stimulating the Native economy by making sure people are pushing food dollars towards Indigenous producers.
While in some cases using foods from Native producers is prioritized by restaurants or food assistance programs, like The Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), colonial models are used to incorporate these products into mainstream food production, which in turn cause negative impacts for the Indigenous communities they are meant to serve.
In America, there’s a very specific view of success which is tied to ideas of growing fast and on a big scale, according to Sherman. But he argues that this perspective ignores the many Indigenous producers and entrepreneurs that want to make an impact in their communities by bringing forward ancestral seeds and plants to make sure they’re feeding their communities and regions with traditional foods.
“When we look at that level of mass scale, unfortunately there’s often a cost associated with that, and the cost is to our land and to our communities,” Sherman said. “We also have to look at what we are doing in order to achieve that idea of American success.”
In 2015, Sherman said wholesale wild rice from tribes he sourced from was just $4 a pound. Now, wholesale wild rice is costing him $16 at minimum per pound. The jump in prices comes from inflation that stems from the USDA’s decision to include wild rice into its FDPIR program.
Although the USDA worked with a tribe in Minnesota to secure the rice, the demand became too high resulting in the government seeking out wild rice from other tribes in the area, causing prices to surge for wild rice, a traditional food for Great Lakes region Native peoples.
“It’s important to identify that colonization still exists.”
Throughout “Turtle Island,” Sherman weaves resources together to inform and inspire. This is with the intent for the book to be a tool to bring Indigenous people together and to highlight that not all Native people in North America eat the same foods nor do they need to.
“We’re all in this together across the board, even though we have massive differences. Not every tribe eats the same stuff out there, and that’s okay,” Sherman said. “We can celebrate differences and we can understand them. We don’t have to be homogenized, we don’t have to be sanitized and whitewashed.”
Recording histories
Each of the 13 essays opening each chapter were reported in depth and researched by Nelson primarily. As she traveled across the country to learn about the histories of traditional dishes, ingredients and cultural significance to certain meals, Nelson felt a deep responsibility to balance sharing ancestral wisdom and keeping some things sacred.
“A really big part of writing this book was understanding when we knew what information was just for us to know and then what information we were actually going to put into the pages of this book to be shared,” Nelson said.
In her reporting, Nelson found there were times where knowledge bearers were vulnerable with her and shared entire ceremonies step by step and what they mean for their communities. Although those moments didn’t make it into the book, for Nelson it was important for her to paint Indigenous communities as ongoing and thriving.
In a time where Native people are able to tell their own stories for their own communities and broader audiences, Nelson said the movement, which she calls the Native American Renaissance, has led to the success of the book.
“A lot of this information only exists within the community, and that’s probably why we’re seeing it resonating so much with Native audiences,” she said. “It’s because they can see themselves, and hear themselves, and feel themselves in it.”
Although Sherman created recipes for the book with co-author Kristin Donnelly, research included getting input from culture bearers and knowledge keepers that helped direct the authors to make sure they were showcasing foods that were representative of regional communities.
“It’s because they can see themselves, and hear themselves, and feel themselves in it.”
When writing the Northwest Coast chapter, both Sherman and Nelson said they wished it, like most of the book, could have been longer. They strongly believe that each chapter could be turned into its own book. After nearly sending in a manuscript that would have been double the book’s final length, the three co-authors knew it had to be shortened.
In turn, they whittled down recipes until each section was left with around 10, give or take a few. This was one of the most challenging aspects of putting the book together for Nelson, because it posed a challenge of not generalizing tribes by region, including the Coast Salish community.
The Northwest Coast chapter features 10 recipes that include a stew, salads, venison, elk, salmon, plant-based dishes and dessert. This encapsulates as much of the Pacific Northwest as space allowed. For Nelson, it gave her a chance to look into recipes found in her own culture and learn more about the recipes of other Northwest tribes.
“Coast Salish people are not just one single group of people,” Nelson said. “Even though there’s this larger term that we use, there are so many unique identities within that and the shared values and shared traditions are not the same as having a single identity.”
Food is for families
After listening to Sherman and Nelson speak about their book, guests enjoyed a lunch at Barbie’s Village Native community space prepared by Portland based family catering business Wota Kitchen on Nov. 24.
The scent of salmon chowder wafted through the air as elders sat at a table enjoying their lunch. During her meal, Kay Eagle Staff, Lakota Cheyenne, reflected on listening to Sherman and Nelson speak and she was filled with pride. Throughout her life, Eagle Staff cooked with both traditional and non-traditional recipes which went on to inspire her family to create Wota Kitchen.
The night before the event she and her family spent time running through the menu and giving her a sneak peek of the salmon chowder, gabubu bread, berry salad with wasna topping, and blue corn cookies with wild plum glaze. After trying the meal, Eagle Staff was confident in the rise of Indigenous cuisine throughout the country.
“This means a lot,” Eagle Staff said. “I always thought we’d get here. I saw the lines of people wanting [on] our stew at Powwows. I think there’s going to be a lot more Native restaurants and more chefs.”
Kathy Peltier, Navajo, and daughter of Indigenous activist and former political prisoner Leonard Peltier, recently moved to Oregon with her mother Anne Begay, Navajo. When she heard about Sherman speaking at Barbie’s VIllage, the duo rushed to the event and greeted Sherman, their old friend, with open arms.
For Peltier, Sherman and his food are a representation of family and freedom. When her father was released from prison in February of 2025, Sherman catered a celebratory meal for her father and about several hundred others.
“For him [Sherman] to cook this traditional meal for my father was very emotional. He [Leonard Peltier] had only been eating slop food,” Peltier said.
After following him for years, Begay said eating Sherman’s food brought her joy and health. At nearly 80 years old, Begay has turned to Sherman’s recipes to help manage her diabetes — a tactic that has changed her life.
Through using Sherman’s cookbook and her own traditional foods, Begay has managed to lower her blood pressure, digest foods better and reduce her neuropathy at nighttime.
“I’m hoping the more I follow him, the more I’ll be able to eliminate those foods and eat healthier,” Begay said. “We need to get back to a place where we understand the value of our own foods that we grew up with and that our ancestors had.”
Re-Indigenizing the future of food
With the power and acclaim of being a three-time James Beard Award-winning chef, one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2023 and a Julia Child award-winner, Sherman intends to break down boundaries and “kick through doors” that might limit aspiring Indigenous chefs.
He wants to see a world where restaurants that showcase the diversity of Indigenous cuisines exist, while making contemporary meals that remind people of home.
“There’s so much opportunity for creativity out there, and so I’m hoping it will come about where we’ll just inspire a whole new generation, more Native chefs to really push the boundaries of creativity,” Sherman said.
Part of the boundaries that Sherman says are holding back Indigenous cuisine in the restaurant space is education. According to Sherman, for years, schools have taught about food and health without recognizing Indigenous diets, food production and sovereignty.
“We need to really push back against that notion and take the power of education, because our government should not be dictating what we should be teaching our youth,” Shermain added. “Educational sovereignty is a huge part of it.”
With his cookbook pushing forward ideas of creativity and experimentation, Sherman said he hopes new recipes will come about and evolve.
“I just see such a vibrant future for us with Indigenous foods. I see such a beautiful and wonderful evolution of our foods,” he said. “We have so much opportunity to create whatever we want to moving forward.”