Chef Sean Sherman reflects on Owamni’s name and vision for the future
Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2025 4:55 am
When Owamni opened in 2021, it was one of just a small handful of restaurants that, as Sherman has put it, “represent the food and people that were there before.” A lot has changed in four years. Today, Sherman regularly fields requests for advice and support from up-and-coming Indigenous chefs and food groups. And while Indigenous restaurants in the US are far from fully representative of the vast range of Native North American food traditions, the volume has increased exponentially (even if not in New York) to the point that one can now find listicles on the best places to try Native American food in the US. The movement is just getting started.
Moving from “normalization” to access and change
There’s no doubt the success of restaurants like Owamni should be celebrated. But Sherman and NATIFS also recognize that going to a restaurant is a financial privilege—and that people should be able to eat the food and benefit from Native knowledge regardless of their economic circumstances.
It’s precisely this ethic of access that motivates an expansive c level contact list array of public-facing programming offered by NATIFS in Minneapolis and (increasingly) beyond.
In addition to owning Owamni, NATIFS runs an Indigenous Food Lab that offers classes on everything from Native American cooking and farming techniques to Indigenous medicines and languages. It also operates a market within Minneapolis’s Midtown Global Market that serves affordable grab-and-go Indigenous meals, while carrying the products of over 50 Indigenous vendors and authors. It even maintains a YouTube page with over 100 videos that bring bite-sized bits of the organization (think recipe walk-throughs and explainer videos) to almost 20,000 subscribers.
As these activities work together to disrupt fundamentally structural problems—centuries of land dispossession, forced relocation of Native people, and the ongoing imposition of non-Native foods—it’s fair to ask how the organization is able to advance change at any kind of scale.
NATIFS’s answer: Become (at least part of) the food system. Indeed, because it has honed its food procurement and production know-how through its restaurant and market, NATIFS has a distinct opportunity to partner not only with local Indigenous reservations to meet food needs, but also with large food-serving institutions like schools and hospitals.
Moving from “normalization” to access and change
There’s no doubt the success of restaurants like Owamni should be celebrated. But Sherman and NATIFS also recognize that going to a restaurant is a financial privilege—and that people should be able to eat the food and benefit from Native knowledge regardless of their economic circumstances.
It’s precisely this ethic of access that motivates an expansive c level contact list array of public-facing programming offered by NATIFS in Minneapolis and (increasingly) beyond.
In addition to owning Owamni, NATIFS runs an Indigenous Food Lab that offers classes on everything from Native American cooking and farming techniques to Indigenous medicines and languages. It also operates a market within Minneapolis’s Midtown Global Market that serves affordable grab-and-go Indigenous meals, while carrying the products of over 50 Indigenous vendors and authors. It even maintains a YouTube page with over 100 videos that bring bite-sized bits of the organization (think recipe walk-throughs and explainer videos) to almost 20,000 subscribers.
As these activities work together to disrupt fundamentally structural problems—centuries of land dispossession, forced relocation of Native people, and the ongoing imposition of non-Native foods—it’s fair to ask how the organization is able to advance change at any kind of scale.
NATIFS’s answer: Become (at least part of) the food system. Indeed, because it has honed its food procurement and production know-how through its restaurant and market, NATIFS has a distinct opportunity to partner not only with local Indigenous reservations to meet food needs, but also with large food-serving institutions like schools and hospitals.