Rebuilding an Indigenous Food Economy
By: Nani Ferreira-Mathews
Aronia berries, beans, wild rice, corn, maple syrup, duck, turkey, bison, elk, walleye and even beaver are some of the pre-colonial ingredients you’ll find at the James Beard award-winning restaurant Owamni in downtown Minneapolis. Pre-colonial ingredients are foods that were cultivated, gathered, and consumed by Indigenous peoples before European colonization. Since 2021, the native-led indigenous-ingredients-only concept has been expanding its brand and purchasing power across Minnesota and beyond. In 2022, Owamni was named the Best New Restaurant in the nation by the James Beard Foundation. “Owamni alone is pushing between half a million to a million dollars a year directly towards Indigenous producers…and that’s just with one kitchen,” says founder Sean Sherman.
In 2022, the Indigenous Food Lab, or IFL, opened in Midtown Global Market, expanding the mission even further and driving more volume by providing a commissary kitchen for Owamni. “Every three months, when I’m making the new menu, we’ll make all the recipes in-house and we’ll scale them. Indigenous Food Lab has a full prep team and commissary team in that big kitchen. We’re just having them do it on a larger scale,” says Chef Lee Garmin, Owamni’s executive chef and recent California transplant. The commissary kitchen at IFL preps items like bison chili, three-sisters stew and bean dip before sending them to Owamni for service. This allows the small kitchen in Owamni to serve over 300 guests daily, a number that Chef Garmin says doubles in the summer when the patio is open.
In a forthcoming development, the Indigenous food revolution that started at Owamni will expand into its third location in Minneapolis with the acquisition of the Seward Co-op Creamery Building along the American Indian Cultural Corridor. The 20,000-square-foot facility will house Sean Sherman’s nonprofit NATIFS, North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems, a native barbeque restaurant called ŠHOTÁ, and an even larger commissary kitchen for food manufacturing and large-format foods, or bulk prepared meals for hospital or school food programs.
Ismael Poputa Aguilar, Culinary Leader at IFL, says the larger kitchen will generate an even greater impact on their vendor partners. “We’re planning to do some large batch production of wild rice casserole that we can then package, freeze, and then sell to hospitals, industrial kitchens. That’s another way to start introducing Indigenous products to American people.” Aguilar, originally from Mexico, where he studied culinary arts, sources a myriad of pre-colonial ingredients from Indigenous suppliers, including wild rice, bison and maple syrup from Native Wise located in Sawyer. Aguilar says Native Wise has expanded their offerings from wild rice to many other pre-colonial ingredients and that they are in talks about acquiring more of their wild rice for a consumer packaged goods product. “We can buy more than 2000 pounds at a time…and then use a distributor to distribute the wild rice in the grocery stores nearby,” Aguilar says. Chef Garmin estimates that Owamni is already using 1000 pounds of wild rice per month. The new channel of Indigenous food distribution to grocery stores would double their purchases from local wild rice producers like White Earth and Native Wise, but producers say they might not always be able to meet demand.
“Wild rice is a real finite resource,” says David Wise, who co-owns Native Wise, along with wife Patra. “From year to year it’s variable, depending on the weather and how the crop is for that year. So I am trying to gear up to do more,” Wise says. With help from family and friends, Wise harvests wild rice on wild rice lakes on or near the Fond Du Lac Reservation. Wise harvests what he can and buys the rest from other Native harvesters around the area and state, sometimes even buying from Canada to supplement his harvests for clients like Owamni.
Within the new NATIFS building, the native barbeque restaurant ŠHOTÁ plans to broaden and expand access to the region’s pre-colonial proteins. “We use a lot of elk and venison and bison, rabbit, turkey, geese, ducks, all sorts of different lake fish, especially from Minnesota,” Sherman shares. “It’s gonna increase our purchasing power,” he says of the future barbecue concept. He muses that they might occasionally source beef from tribal producers, but for now, he remains committed to eliminating that protein from his menus. “The largest use of land in the United States is cattle ranching,” he says. “Bison is such an important piece to Indigenous foods, especially because of how intentional the destruction of the bison was in the mid-1800s at the expense of the Indigenous communities,” Sherman says.
The bison population of North America was estimated at 30 million before the colonization of the continent by European settlers decimated the species through unregulated hunting, railway expansion and the US Army’s eradication of Northern herds in an effort to forcibly move the Indigenous population onto reservations. At their lowest number, bison dwindled to under 325 by 1814, according to the National Parks System.
In a 2023 study, published by economists from Emory University, the University of Toronto and the University of Victoria, data showed that the income of formerly bison-reliant nations remained 25% lower than those of other Indigenous nations through 2019.
“We are just happy to see a lot of bison programs starting on more tribal communities and having access to that protein through them. We just want to continue to grow and provide awareness,” Sherman says of the once-endangered species. The Intertribal Buffalo Council, an organization of 80 tribes across 20 states, provides 1.3 million dollars annually in herd development grants for support, training and the expansion of bison herds to tribal producers. The Tanka Fund, a native-led nonprofit, provides similar education and funding for independent Native American family and community-owned ranches.
Roughly 85% of public land in the western United States is used for domestic cattle grazing. Non-native cattle, compared to bison, travel less when grazing, defoliate native plants and species, and can transform carbon sinks into sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Wise works with the Tanka Fund to support his growing bison ranch. “We keep our bison grazing on rotational grazing here on the ranch, so we’re really trying to keep our forages healthy and productive and have the right amount of animals so that we have a really good quality product,” he says.
ŠHOTÁ envisions expanding beyond counter service as Chef Garmin and the team explore plans on scaling up production to include butchery and sausage making. “We have a walk-in cooler specifically designed and made for protein and sausage making,” he says. “We can order in whole primals or quarters of bison, or we can order whole animals then prep it in that cooler,” he explains of the new space’s capabilities.
“We definitely upped our game because of Owamni. We’re trying to accommodate with our butchering facility to make sure that we get the type of cuts that they want and making sure it’s high quality,” Wise comments on how the NATIFS ecosystem has already impacted his business.
The restaurant will also source Minnesota oak for its smoker and native fish like walleye, perch and northern pike from Red Lakes Nation Fishery and Red Cliff Fish Co. on Lake Superior. “We’re going to be smoking those and making a smoked fish dip out of that,” Chef Garmin says, sharing a sneak peek of the new restaurant’s menu.
“We still have some fundraising in front of us, because we’re a nonprofit and we’re just building out this plan,” Sherman says. “I’ve just been on a massive fundraising tour for the past year,” he adds with an exhausted laugh. NATIFS purchased their new building in early 2025 and continues to seek funding ahead of their expansion plans. “I see the impact that this vision has for the future of the tribal communities…it’s a model I hope we can mimic in other regions. I’d love to get it back into my home area on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota,” Sherman says.
Behind the scenes, NATIFS and the Indigenous Food Lab plan to expand into institutional large-format foods with their new kitchen. “We’ve been working with Minneapolis Public Schools and their Commissary Kitchen, and kind of mimicking some of the styles that they utilize to create large format foods,” Sherman explains of their research and development stages. “They package them into food service bags and then they ship them around the city to the different school systems for them to heat and serve ready-to-eat products for school lunch programs.”
He and his team are in contract discussions with Minneapolis Public Schools, Augsburg College and tribal communities to provide large-format Indigenous foods to schools in the state. “There could be things like wild rice dishes and native bean dishes and hominy or corn dishes. We can utilize some of what we’ve done with a lot of our native recipes and keep things interesting and Indigenous-focused,” Sheman says.
According to Chef Garmin, Owamni currently sources 1000 pounds of wild rice, 200 pounds of beans, 200 pounds of cornmeal, and uses over 5000 tortillas every month. The large-format food expansion will increase the impact on local farmers, including Callejas Farms, a BIPOC farm based in Madelia. Callejas Farms provides native red beans, similar to kidney beans but with a more buttery texture. Aguilar says they make purchase commitments to their vendor partners to ensure producers have a buyer for their harvests.”We committed to buy $5,000 worth of beans for production [from Callejas Farms] …it turned out to be a bad year because it was very rainy here, so they didn’t produce as many beans as they wanted to sell me. But you know, that’s a risk that we both take,” he says. Beans are the second most used ingredient on their menus and while they purchase from local vendors as much as possible, Aguilar says they source the majority of their beans from Ramona Farms in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. The tepary heirloom bean, a native bean to Mexico, grows better in the southern part of the United States with hot climates and very little water. “It’s very tough and very resistant,” he says. “They take a little more time to cook than other beans and it has this peppery flavor that is unique and different,” he explains.
On the horizon, the Indigenous Food Lab will open a second location in Bozeman, Montana. “We’ll be able to be firing off healthy Indigenous foods in two regions almost simultaneously by the end of the year, as long as everything in our timeline works out,” Sherman says with optimism.
“Indigenous Food Labs are designed to be regional center points to push more money towards Indigenous producers in this region, to make these items more accessible to tribal communities, and figuring out ways to create more food access,” Sherman says of his overall vision toward Indigenous food sovereignty.
“Food sovereignty” is a term first coined in 1996 by Via Campesina, an international group of peasants and small-scale farmers organized to defend peasant agriculture for food sovereignty. They defined food sovereignty as “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.”
The impact of Owamni, NATIFS, Indigenous Food Lab and their expansion plans are working toward the goal of food sovereignty of the American Indian by highlighting and economically empowering the Indigenous food producers of North America. The projects have increased visibility for Indigenous growers and producers while increasing the economic impact on these producers, their families and communities.
“It’s been an honor to work with such a unique entity that highlights our native food and really brings an awareness to the contributions that American Indians have made to our food here in America,” Wise says of Sean Sherman’s team and Owamni. “It’s been amazing for us here at our small ranch. We’re just getting started in being a producer of bison meat. We’ve sold wild rice for many generations, and maple syrup, but we’re expanding and it’s been really inspirational to work with such a high-quality group of people.”
Nani Ferreira-Mathews is an author, freelance journalist, community organizer, musician, and entrepreneur currently living in Baltimore, Maryland. Nani is Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian), born in Oregon and raised in Georgia. Her writing focuses on race, indigeneity, decolonization, agriculture, and gender and sexuality. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Georgia State University.
