New initiatives have been launched to elevate Indigenous cooking and preserve a rich culture in the process.The culinary industry makes a conscious effort in order to support Indigenous and minority chefs.The James Beard Foundation announced in January 2021 a new grant program for Black and Indigenous-owned food and beverage businesses.The grant initiative is part of the Open For Good campaign launched by the organization in April 2020 to rebuild an independent food and drink industry that is more sustainable, resilient, and equitable post-pandemic.Indigenous chefs bring their generations-old family recipes to new audiences and are receiving increasing recognition on the global stage.Mariah Gladstone, who hosts the Indigenous cooking show Indigikitchen, was featured on The Today Show in January 2021; the BBC featured Algonquin First Nation Chef Marie-Cecile Nottaway in the same month.Gladstone told Wunderman Thompson Intelligence that Indigenous cuisine was important for reasons other than physical health. It demonstrates the wisdom and resilience of our ancestors.Sean Sherman teaches Indigenous food traditions to preserve culture.The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen by the Minneapolis-based Oglala Lakota Sioux Chef won the James Beard Award in 2018 for the Best American Cookbook. He was also awarded the James Beard Leadership Award in 2019 for his efforts around the “revitalization and awareness of Indigenous foods systems in a contemporary culinary context.”Sherman and his team will open The Indigenous Food Lab in Minneapolis in 2020.The space features a production kitchen and training studio, an education center, and an Indigenous Market.In the spring of 2020, he will also open an Indigenous restaurant called Owamni.Sherman’s focus is to “showcase the amazing bounty of diversity we have in North America, both culturally as well as culinarily.” He works with local farmers, foragers, and Native agriculture techniques and takes inspiration from them to promote a seasonally-based, community-based food model.Sherman, who spoke to WBUR on October 30, said that the Western culinary diet had never taken time to study all of these plants and their botany.If you view the world from an Indigenous perspective, you will see that the plants around you provide food, medicine, shelter, and craftwork.The added benefit of indigenous cooking is that it strengthens local food systems, which improves food sustainability and security.Sherman, in an interview with Eater, said that COVID has revealed our vulnerability and the over-reliance we have on commercial and processed foods.“And it strengthens our case: the understanding of Indigenous foods systems is the understanding how regional food systems function, and I believe that’s what we should be moving towards in the future.”
