This Indigenous Restaurateur Knows All Too Well That Women Need More Credit For Their Work

Dana Thompson was known for partnering with Sean Sherman, aka The Sioux Chef, but now she's branching out on her own.

In 2014, restaurateur Dana Thompson formed both a romantic and business partnership with chef Sean Sherman, aka The Sioux Chef. She became co-owner and COO of the brand, and in 2021, she and Sherman opened a decolonized Indigenous restaurant in Minneapolis called Owamni, which won a James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant in the U.S. Along with Sherman, she also co-founded the nonprofit NĀTIFS (North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems) and Indigenous Food Lab. However, in the past year, Thompson and Sherman have parted ways, both in their personal and business lives. Thompson continues to do the work she started with Sioux Chef. She’s also writing a memoir about her traumatic childhood and developing a THC beverage line. In the latest edition of Voices in Food, Thompson talked to Garin Pirnia about the split, how she struggles with being biracial (her father is Scandinavian and her mother is part Dakota), and why women need more credit.

With the work I’m passionate about, there’s really two lines. One of them is supporting women entrepreneurship, especially Indigenous female entrepreneurship. There’s been so much damage done. Historically, the matriarchy with Indigenous communities has been sort of the core of the community. Secondly, I’m really passionate about studying ancestral trauma, especially with regards to how it can be healed. I’ve been working with epigenetic scientists to understand the evidence that trauma can be passed through generations, and there’s clear evidence that it’s passed through at least three generations. But this is only 25-year-old research, and the scientists that I’ve talked to are pretty sure it’s more like seven generations. One way to block the transfer of trauma through generations is by getting culturally relevant foods into the mouths of pregnant women through their pregnancies. And so creating food access for women during the gestational period is something I want to continue to work on through my life.