Turtle Island (Sean Sherman)

Turtle Island is a beautiful exploration of the delicious foods that have for millennia linked the environments, traditions, history, and cultures of the Native communities of the North American continent, with ancestral and modern Indigenous recipes from three-time James Beard Award winner Sean Sherman, Oglala Lakota, founder of The Sioux Chef.

Growing up on Pine Ridge Reservation, Sean Sherman always knew that the food of the Oglala Lakota tribe was rich in flavor and deeply connected to the natural environment. But as a chef, it took a mid-career revelation to recognize the absence of Native American cuisine in the modern culinary scene. Since then, he’s been on a mission to understand and highlight these beautiful and diverse foods and traditions that have continued to thrive through the centuries.

Now a leading figure in the Indigenous food movement, he guides readers through the unique and varied Native foods of North America—sharing both traditional and modern recipes inspired by dishes that have nourished Native peoples physically, spiritually, and culturally for generations. Organized by region, this book delves into the bountiful culinary landscapes of Turtle Island—as the continent is called by multiple Indigenous cultures—that are as diverse as the many terrains from which they arise.

Alongside delicious recipes like Smoked Bison Ribeye, Wild-Rice Crusted Walleye Cakes, Sunflower Seed “Risotto,” and Corn-Four-Ways Tacos (and so much more), Turtle Island features expansive narrative histories and spotlights the people and communities producing, gathering, and cooking these foods, including remarkable stories of ingenuity and adaptation that capture the resilience of tribal communities.