On the banks of the Mississippi River, sits the first restaurant of its kind. Owamni, derived from the Dakota name Owámniyomni, meaning “place of the falling, swirling water” for the nearby St. Anthony Falls, is a 2022 James Beard Award-winning Native American restaurant in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
It boats serving “decolonized” food, meaning no wheat, butter, dairy, cane sugar, black pepper, chicken, beef, or pork—ingredients introduced during European arrival to the Americas. Instead, the menu is curated to include indigenous ingredients such as game meats, corn, and wild plants sourced from local and national indigenous food producers.
The drink menu does deviate from the decolonized model a bit in that it serves coffee and alcohol from women-owned, black, indigenous, people of color producers, with primarily Indigenous-produced wine from California, Mexico, and Māori wines from New Zealand.
The restaurant’s staff is comprised of a majority of people from Native nations such as Anishinaabe, Mdewakanton and Wahpeton Sisseton Dakota, Navajo, Northern Cheyenne, and Oglala Lakota and is now owned by the non-profit North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NATIFS), also founded by the head chef and original co-owner of Owamni, the Sioux Chef, Sean Sherman.
Having attended a presentation of his, Sherman’s vision is one where Indigenous people reconnect with their original food traditions, ways of cooking, and thus revive a part of their culture stripped away by colonization.
While the Owamni does accept walk-ins to be seated at the bar, it is recommended to book reservations weeks in advance for a place in the dining room. The experience and the view of course does not disappoint.
In case there are issues getting a reservation, NATIFS does host another culinary endeavor in Minneapolis’s Midtown Global Market, the Indigenous Food Lab which acts as a “a professional kitchen and training center” following the vision of Sean Sherman , where you can get a delicious grain bowl or salad of decolonized food to whet your appetite for when you are able to dine at Owamni.
