The Cheyenne River Youth Project® has announced that it will welcome “The Sioux Chef” Sean Sherman to its Eagle Butte campus on Friday, June 10. The chef is spending the day at CRYP courtesy of the nonprofit, grassroots youth project’s “Learning to Eat Like Our Ancestors” initiative.
In the morning, Sherman will lead an entrepreneurism workshop, which will be open to CRYP’s teen interns as well as to members of the local community. In the afternoon, he will host a cooking class for up to 20 people with sampling for attendees. Once again, the offering will be available to teen interns and community members.
In the entrepreneurism workshop, Sherman will discuss how to start a restaurant or catering company. Topics include developing a business plan, menu testing, hiring essential help, creating a marketing plan, generating startup capital, writing employee materials, keeping an eye on labor and food costs, and how to address the inevitable bumps in the road.
In the cooking class, the chef will talk about applying traditional Native American techniques and knowledge, and participants will gain hands-on experience with traditional foods—including bison—and practice recipes. Topics for discussion include Sherman’s ethnobotanical and anthropological research and how to use traditional techniques in modern cooking.
“We’re thrilled to have an experienced chef and food educator of Sean Sherman’s caliber here on the Cheyenne River reservation,” said Julie Garreau, CRYP’s executive director. “we seek to strengthen the connection our youth have with their Lakota heritage, and a big piece of that puzzle is food—traditional native foods, healthful preparation techniques, and food sovereignty and security for our native communities. We’re deeply grateful to the NB3 Foundation and the Promising Program Grant, because this simply wouldn’t have been possible without their support.”
Chef Sean Sherman was born in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, to an Oglala Lakota family. He has been cooking in Minnesota, South Dakota and Montana for nearly three decades, focusing most recently on revitalizing indigenous food systems in a modern culinary context. His expertise encompasses Native American farming techniques, wild food usage and harvesting, land stewardship, salt and sugar making, hunting and fishing, food preservation, Native American migrational histories, elemental cooking techniques, and native culture and history.
He opened The Sioux Chef in 2014, serving as a caterer and food educator to the Twin Cities area. Last year, in partnership with the Little Earth Community of United Tribes in Minneapolis, he and business partner Dana Thompson designed and opened the Tatanka Truck, which features pre-contact foods of the Dakota and Minnesota territories.
Sherman’s vision has been featured in dinners at the prestigious James Beard Foundation in Milan, and also at the Slow Foods Indigenous Terra Madre in India. His team is dedicated to education and to making indigenous foods more accessible.
According to Garreau, Sherman’s workshop and cooking class at CRYP are very much in keeping with CRYP’s own mission—to provide Cheyenne River Lakota youth with access to a vibrant and more secure future.
“Addressing our young people’s holistic wellness is vital, especially in a community that’s been ravaged by the effects of historical trauma,” she said. “It’s not just about physical fitness and good nutrition. It’s also about strengthening that connection to cultural identity—through traditional foods, fresh ingredients and deepening our relationships with the earth.”
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The Cheyenne River Youth Project, founded in 1988, is a grassroots, not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing the youth of the Cheyenne River reservation with access to a vibrant and secure future through a wide variety of culturally sensitive and enduring programs, projects and facilities that ensure strong, self-sufficient families and communities.