Be The Answer To Your Ancestor's Prayers
notes: label: Description
content: Painting, “Be the Answer to Your Ancestor’s Prayers” is the second of chef Sean Sherman’s pandemic paintings, which he created while confined at home in 2020 during the COVID-19 global pandemic. The scene is reminiscent of works by Edward S. Curtis, who between 1900 and 1930 photographed individuals in more than seventy North American Indigenous tribes. This oil painting features two figures, one holding the limp body of a large bird. The other appears younger and is walking toward the elder. The words, “Be the Answer to Your Ancestor’s Prayers” are written at the bottom of the painting, a phrase that has guided Sherman’s work as an Indigenouse chef, educator, and community leader based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Sherman’s advocacy for Indigenous food security, access, and sovereignty have inspired tribal members across the United States.
label: Description
content: Over many generations, the use of plants native to North America as well as tribal customs for food preparation and hospitality were largely dismissed and even destroyed as tribal lands were lost to European homesteaders and the forces of national settlement. Despite multiple attempts to remove Indigenous people from their ancestral lands, the traditional knowledge of seeds, plants, and seasonal cycles have been maintained through community stories and secret gardens. For many Indigenous people the 20th century was a long fight for recognition and empowerment amidst the ravages of poverty exacerbated by government-issued commodities and highly-processed foods. Since the 1990s, movements organized by Indigenous communities to regain the nutritional and health benefits from native foods and culinary knowledge have been making a major difference in the lives of tribal members.
label: Description
content: Sherman (b. 1974), a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, has worked to reclaim and honor the deep culinary heritage of Indigenous communities and to share his knowledge. His award-winning 2017 cookbook The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen reveals the regional ingredients, culinary techniques, and dishes that have been and remain central to the survival and identities of Indigenous peoples in the Dakota and Minnesota territories.
label: Description
content: Growing up in South Dakota on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Sherman discovered an interest in cooking and was inspired by watching Julia Child on PBS’s The French Chef. He moved to Minneapolis and worked in various restaurants before heading to Mexico, where he spent a year exploring the systems of knowledge that guided Indigenous food practices. Upon returning to Minnesota, he applied that approach to researching and reclaiming Indigenous knowledge of ingredients in the surrounding environment.
label: Description
content: Sherman’s commitment to engaging tribal communities, culinary leaders, and organizations in acknowledging traditional foodways and their value to the health and sustainability of people and the earth has been widely recognized. He has researched and mapped Indigenous foods in diiferent regions of the United States and has consulted with Maori leaders in New Zealand, Aboriginal communities in Australia, and Indigenous groups in Central America, who are interested in reclaiming their essential food resources. Owamni, the Minneapolis restaurant he co-founded, is Minnesota’s first full-service Indigenous restaurant, receiving the “Best New Restaurant in America” award from the James Beard Foundation in 2022. Sherman was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2023. His non-profit organization NATIFS, and its Indigenous Food Lab, are devoted to youth and community education and empowerment through food. He received the Julia Child Award from the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts in 2023.
topic: label: maker's community
content: Native Americans
label: associated subject
content: COVID-19 (Disease)
label: associated subject
content: 2019 novel coronavirus disease
label: associated subject
content: Infectious diseases
label: associated subject
content: Public Health
label: associated subject
content: 2019-nCoV disease
label: associated subject
content: Disease prevention
label: related event
content: COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020-2023
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Food Technology
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Sean Sherman
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2023.0155.5
label: accession number
content: 2023.0155
label: catalog number
content: 2023.0155.5
objectType: label: Object Name
content: painting
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 18 in x 23 3/4 in; 45.72 cm x 60.325 cm