In 2014, restaurateurDana 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 US. Along with Sherman, she also co-founded the nonprofit organization 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 professional lives. Thompson continues to do the work she started at Sioux Chef. She is also writing a memoir about her traumatic childhood and developing a THC beverage line. In the latest edition ofVoices in foodspoke ThompsonGarin Pirnia about the split, how she struggles with being biracial (her father is Scandinavian and her mother is from Dakota), and why women need more credit.
With the work I’m passionate about, there are really two threads. One of these is supporting female entrepreneurship, especially indigenous female entrepreneurship. So much damage has been done. Historically, matriarchy with indigenous communities has been a kind of core of the community. Secondly, I am very passionate about studying ancestral trauma, especially in regards to how it can be healed. I have worked with epigenetic scientists to understand the evidence that trauma can be passed down from generation to generation, and there is clear evidence that it is passed down through at least three generations. But this is only 25 years old research, and the scientists I spoke to are pretty sure it’s closer to seven generations. One way to block the intergenerational transmission of trauma is to put culturally relevant foods in pregnant women’s mouths during their pregnancies. And so creating access to food for women during pregnancy is something I want to continue working on throughout my life.
Chefs, especially male chefs, have become the new rock stars of the world. And overall, we know they struggle with chemical dependency, insecurity, and imposter syndrome. Watch the show”The bear.” They pretty much hit the nail on the head. I don’t want to take anything away from chefs. I love them so much, but there is so much that goes into building a food business.
It really sucks when people work equally to build something and only one person is really seen or recognized for it. Throughout history, women have supported a man… and once they reach that pinnacle, the woman is left behind.
This is a common story among women. I managed Sean’s career for seven years. I explained 50, 60, 70, 80 hour weeks. I am really proud of what we have achieved together. He couldn’t have done it without me, and I couldn’t have done it without him. It was a symbiotic relationship that was very beautiful. The point was to elevate the mission. The more fame he got and the more attention we got for what we were trying to do, the more it challenged white supremacy. The more funding we could get for the nonprofit, the more jobs we could create. Everything I imagined literally happened. I meditated while he was on the cover Time magazineand then he got the Time magazine price. I’m not saying I was personally responsible for that, but I put a lot of effort into creating this amazing thing. I believe that building Owamni, working with the park board and creating a space for community healing will be part of my legacy and something that no one can ever take from me. We worked for years to get that open, and then we opened it during a pandemic and a racial uprising. I’m quite proud of that.
However, it really sucks when people work equally to build something and only one person is really seen or recognized for it. Throughout history, women have supported a man to get his degree, build a business, or get whatever he wanted, and once they reached that pinnacle, the woman was left behind. And that’s not just a story about me – that’s a story about so many women, and it can get really ugly. But I’m really focusing on the positivity of the future. I wouldn’t be able to do the things I have in the future if I hadn’t had this experience over the past 10 years. So I don’t regret it for a minute.
One of the things I want to focus on is building up other women, raising awareness and highlighting them and showing that incredible work ethic because women are also the ones who take care of the family and all doing housework, shopping and doing things. all these other things they just have to do.
There’s also the financial aspect of it. I’m really passionate about creating pipelines for the repatriation of wealth, creating ways for Indigenous women to be leaders of the economy, so that they can support their families, so that they can support their communities and their tribal communities, so that we can to bring feminine energy back into balance. and make sure women are at the table making these decisions, deciding what they want to do and how to do it through a matriarchal lens.
I’ve had a lot of time to process it, and it was very painful at first when the breakup happened. But I believe in my heart that this happened as a gift to me, that I wouldn’t have left unless it was that painful. It had to be done this way.
It’s also been a very painful issue where people question my heritage or my validity in the work that I do, but I just have to ignore that because I have very clear documentation of my indigenous lineage. If I let the haters take that away from me, they’re taking away all this great work that I think I can do in the world. And also for other people who have indigenous blood but don’t look indigenous, I don’t want to take away their identity. When I do that, I take it from other people. So I feel really passionate about fighting for my validity.It’s totally an identity crisis, and what’s more painful than having someone question your clearly documented identity? It’s bizarre that anyone would even want to do that.