Revitalizing Native American Cuisine with The Sioux Chef
17–18 November 2023
Dinner, Performances, Readings, Screening
Sherman says he had a vision of creating ‘a support system for future generations to help steward Indigenous knowledge bases and really focus on developing access to Indigenous foods and developing education around peoples.’ Courtesy Kanon Verlag
Born in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, Sean Sherman, also known as The Sioux Chef, has dedicated his three-decades-long cooking practice to revitalizing Indigenous culinary traditions of the Americas and beyond. His work has greatly contributed to the preservation of cooking methods of Sioux communities but also to a greater understanding of the food systems developed on ancestral lands prior to colonial conquest and erasure. Shermann has studied on his own extensively to determine the foundations of these food systems which include the knowledge of Native American farming techniques, wild food usage and harvesting, land stewardship, salt and sugar making, hunting and fishing, food preservation, Native American migration histories, and elemental cooking techniques to gain a full understanding of bringing back a sense of Native American cuisine to today’s world.
The Tongue and Throat Memories series is activated in the frame of a conversation on Indigenous culinary knowledge, food justice, and food sovereignty with Chef Sherman, Gunnar Cynybulk, and Marie Helene Pereira. The next evening, a curated dinner hosted by Chef Sherman is followed by tea and poetry readings by Chef Sean Sherman, Hinemoana Baker, Atabey Carlos Maria Romero, Leyla Rossbach, and Sara Morais dos Santos Bruss.
Believing in the need for collective knowledge and struggles to be shared widely in order to enable future generations to keep their legacies alive, this event is also an occasion to screen Gather (2020) directed by Sanjay Rawal, an intimate portrait of the growing movement amongst Native Americans to reclaim their spiritual, political, and cultural identities through food sovereignty, while battling the trauma of centuries of genocide.
Organized in collaboration with Berlin-based publishing house Kanon Verlag, Sean Sherman’s residency at HKW also is an occasion to launch the German version of the renowned cookbook, written together with Beth Dooley, The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen (German title: Der Sioux Chef. Indigen kochen).
Programme
Fri., 17.11.2023
18:00
Book Launch & Conversation on Indigenous culinary knowledges, food justice, and sovereignty
With Chef Sean Sherman, Gunnar Cynybulk, Marie Helene Pereira
Safi Faye Hall
Sat., 18.11.2023
17:00
Gather, a film by Sanjay Rawal
Safi Faye Hall
19:00
The (R)evolution of Indigenous Foodways
Curated dinner with Chef Sean Sherman
Followed by tea and poetry reading by Chef Sean Sherman, Hinemoana Baker, Atabey Carlos Maria Romero, Layla Rossbach, Sara Morais dos Santos Bruss
With contributions from:
Hinemoana Baker, Gunnar Cynybulk, Chef Sean Sherman, Sanjay Rawal
