Sean Sherman was born and raised in Pine Ridge, South Dakota where he is a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe. Cooking in kitchens across the United States and Mexico for more than 30 years, Chef Sean is renowned in the culinary movement of Indigenous foods. His primary focus is the revitalization and evolution of Indigenous foods systems throughout North America.
In 2014, Chef Sean opened The Sioux Chef, designed to provide catering and food education in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area. He and his business partner, Dana Thompson, also designed and opened the Tatanka Truck, which featured 100% pre-contact foods of the Dakota and Minnesota territories, and recently opened Owamni by The Sioux Chef, Minnesota’s first full service Indigenous restaurant.
Chef Sean and his team presented the first decolonized dinner at the prestigious James Beard House in Manhattan. His first book, The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen, received the James Beard Award for Best American Cookbook for 2018 and was chosen one of the top 10 cookbooks of 2017 by the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Smithsonian magazine. In 2023, he received the Julia Child Award, recognizing those who have had an impact on the American culinary scene. Chef Sean serves on the leadership committee of the James Beard Foundation Investment Fund for Black and Indigenous Americans and was recently awarded The Ashoka Fellowship.
The Sioux Chef team continues their mission to educate and make Indigenous foods more accessible to as many communities as possible through their nonprofit arm, North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NĀTIFS) and the accompanying Indigenous Food Lab professional Indigenous kitchen and training center. Working to address the economic and health crises affecting Native communities, NĀTIFS imagines a new North American food system that generates wealth and improves health in Native communities.