I was born in Ohio and am the daughter of Maurice Sharp and Helen Booker. My mother is Cherokee and African American. Her father (Harry Booker) is from the North Carolina band of Cherokee and her mother is the descendant of slaves. My father is Cherokee and I believe Sioux. His mother (Mattie Curtley Sharp is full blood Cherokee from the Northern band and her mother was a survivor of the “Trail of Tears”. My grandfather on my father’s side is Maurice Sharp and his people are believed to be from the Sioux Tribe.

I come from a long line of cooks and we have recipes that have come from both the native community and the black community. Both ethnicities are entrenched with traditional wholesome cooking, prior to the removal and poverty. Commodities were not always the basis for our cooking. We believed in natural foods, fruits, whole grains, lean meats, dried foods and meats, herbs and plants, fresh vegetables from our own garden and no chemical substitutes. This is the way my sisters and brothers were taught to cook. We were taught the methods of preserving foods without the chemical processing we eat today. Many plants and herbs were a part of our everyday diet and we were very healthy and strong. I have gone back to plants and herbs which have helped me to heal from years of ulcerative colitis. My mother used traditional and natural cooking for my stepfather, who was taking insulin shots twice a day, and the blood sugar became normal and he was taken off all forms of insulin, just from diet. I now utilize those same ingredients in my recipes at Little Jewels.

I am the last daughter of my family and I want to revive these traditional foods before the recipes are lost forever. My mother had the dream to open a restaurant and told me that was one of her biggest regrets that she had, not opening that eatery. It was one of the final statements shared with me before she passed in March 2007. I believe I am fulfilling her dream. I am an accountant for the past 25+ years and so this is very different venture for me. Sometimes I feel my mother is guiding me to complete her dream. 

Many ask about how Little Jewels evolved and what is in the name and the logo. I had a dream about jewels in a box buried in the ground. I started having this dream as a small child and I would have this dream at least once a month. Every year it would change and have more detail, but it continued through my teen years. 2 years ago I had a vision of these jewels, but they were not in a box but they were covering an area that spelled out Sioux Tribe. I still did not understand until last March before my mother passed away, we talked and it came to me where I should go and what I needed to do. My mother reminded me of the song and sang it to me. She said, “don’t you remember that song?” As I heard her sing it the tune became familiar. 

Little Jewels is the name of a song. This is a song my mother sang to me and it speaks of the Little Children being the jewels that make up the Savior’s crown. The children are Jewels that shine like the stars in the sky. We are God’s creation and we are His children. We are special and He wants us well in our body, our mind and our spirit. We are a part of His Creation and we should care for ourselves, by eating right, caring for the earth and appreciating its beauty. God created special plants and herbs for our healing, but we have taken short cuts, eating fast food, eating processed products, that are now killing us just as fast. 

We must come back to healthy eating as the Creator designed. We must come back to healthy minds, thinking thoughts that reinforce how special we really are. It is not what others think, but what the Creator of all things thinks about us. He thinks we are very special. We should think that about ourselves too. Our importance is not based on economic stature, but how much we contribute to life. We must come back to healthy spirit and that is achieved by establishing that relationship with the Creator. 

These are our traditional ways and though many things have come to destroy those values in us, we can choose to go back to the time when we were living wholesome lives. This is when we truly had happiness, because we had a spiritual walk with God, respected the earth, respected ourselves and honored one another.

Little Jewels is about coming back to traditions that bring life, better quality of life and healing from sickness not death.