Dana Thompson

Thompson was born in Sandstone, Minnesota.[1] Her father was a police officer.[2][3]

She is a descendant of Wahpeton-Sisseton and Mdewakanton Dakota through a grandfather, Clem Felix, who worked with Paul Durand to record place names.[3][4][5] After a scandal involving her father, her family relocated to Hibbing, Minnesota.[2] She started working in restaurants as a teenager.[6] She left home at age 15 and moved to Duluth and eventually Minneapolis, where she worked in the music industry and in a variety of retail organizations as a marketing and branding specialist.[2][7][8]

Thompson is co-owner with Sean Sherman of The Sioux Chef, which started as a catering business,[9] and is its chief operating officer.[6][7] She and Sherman co-own two of its projects, Owamni,[6] a Minneapolis restaurant serving indigenous cuisine; and NATIFS, an indigenous food educational nonprofit organization for which Thompson is executive director.[2][7]

In 2014 Thompson and Sherman met at a dinner where he was preparing and speaking about indigenous foods, and she offered to become his manager.[2] They became romantically involved soon after and created a formal business partnership in 2015.[2] According to The New Yorker and MplsStPaul Magazine, Thompson's work helped Sherman gain wide recognition.[2][3]

In 2017 Thompson and Sherman founded North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems, or NATIFS, a nonprofit which promotes indigenous cuisine and food sovereignty.[2][7] The organization operates the Midtown Global Market and the Indigenous Food Lab.[3][10]

In 2021 Thompson and Sherman opened Owamni in Minneapolis.[2] The restaurant was funded by a 2016 Kickstarter campaign and through a partnership with the Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board, which had around the same time announced a request for proposals for a venue then being planned at Mill Ruins Park.[11] In 2022 Owamni was named Best New Restaurant by the James Beard Foundation.[6][2] Later the same year, the Indigenous Food Lab was named one of Bon Appetit's Heads of the Table.[10]

Thompson's romantic relationship with Sherman ended shortly after Owamni opened; they retain shared control of the businesses and nonprofits.[2] She has a daughter.[2] Thompson is also a singer and songwriter; she is a jazz and Americana vocalist and plays multiple instruments.[7][12]