June 14, 2022

A Minneapolis restaurant co-owned by an Oglala Sioux chef has won the national James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant.

Sean Sherman, who was born in Pine Ridge, and Dana Thompson, a descendant of the Wahpeton-Sisseton and Mdewakanton Dakota tribes, opened Owamni in summer 2021.

The restaurant features indigenous cuisine.

An Eater Twin Cities article included an excerpt of Sherman’s acceptance speech Monday night at the Chicago ceremony: “People of color everywhere have been affected by colonialism, and we just went through centuries of racist bullsh*t. This is showing that we can get through that, that we’re still here. Our people are here; our ancestors are proud tonight. We’re doing something different. We’re putting health on the table, we’re putting culture on the table, and we’re putting our stories on the table. We hope that one day we can find Native American restaurants in every single city.”

Sherman also was nominated in the Best Chef: Midwest category but lost to Dane Baldwin of The Diplomat in Milwaukee. Michael Haskett of M.B. Haskett Delicatessen in downtown Sioux Falls was a semifinalist for the award.

Sherman won the Beard Foundation’s award for best American cookbook in 2018 for “The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen” and did a demonstration class in Sioux Falls at Plum’s Cooking Co. that same month. He also received a James Beard leadership award in 2019.

In 2020, he was a TedXSiouxFalls speaker and talked about the revitalization of indigenous foods.