Indigenous Chef Sean Sherman’s NATIFS Headlines Q2 Grants

Q2 saw more than $12 million in funding go to 40 grantee partners, including NATIFS.

It was a busy second quarter of grantmaking as we followed through on our pledge to double our funding this year in response to unprecedented crises for the communities we serve. North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NATIFS) shows how grantee partners change the systems that affect life outcomes while also helping people thrive on a daily basis.

“Feeding someone isn’t enough. Food security, meaning having enough calories, isn’t enough,” says Linda Black Elk, who heads up educational programming and community outreach at NATIFS.

The Minneapolis-based nonprofit takes aim at bigger ideas. Its goals include supporting food sovereignty (access to and control over local, healthy, and culturally appropriate food), economic empowerment at all stages of the food chain, and cultural preservation by passing along the wisdom of generations of Native people. The concept is bigger than just food.

“There’s a difference between feeding someone and nourishing them,” Black Elk continues. “Nourishment feeds you beyond just calories. Food connects you to your community, to the land, to your ancestors.”

NATIFS provides greater access to Native foods for Indigenous communities, from the production and distribution all the way to recipes and preparation.

Celebrating and preserving Native culture is inextricably tied to food.

The connection between Native culture and food is enduring. However, many Native people and those outside of Native communities know little of the deep connection of Native foods and traditions to culture. NATIFS is working to channel that deep well of cultural wisdom and practices into improved physical and economic well-being in Native communities.

Approximately one in four Native Americans experience food insecurity, as compared with about one in nine Americans overall. It’s just one of the consequences of historical economic inequities and disinvestment. NATIFS mission and programs aim to address this by creating access to traditional foods and sharing the knowledge of how to prepare them—all while nurturing economic opportunity in food production and distribution.

The nonprofit was founded in 2017 by Sean Sherman (Oglala Lakota). Sherman is a James Beard Award-winning chef who founded The Sioux Chef, a food education and catering company, and Owamni, a celebrated fine-dining restaurant in Minneapolis. He’s also an advocate for decolonizing the food system in the United States by restoring precolonial food practices. His work as executive director of NATIFS is one of the ways he’s following through.

Growth offers opportunities to expand NATIFS programs in Minneapolis and beyond.

“We’re growing so much in all kinds of ways,” Black Elk shares. “We’re focused on expanding our reach, because good, healthy food is important for everyone, especially right now, when food is getting more expensive, and access is becoming more limited.”

NATIFS’s robust and growing educational programming includes classes and workshops with recipes, information on forageable plants, and more than 200 videos, plus educational materials available independent of classes. One example is a set of beautifully illustrated “trading cards” that highlight the properties and uses of Native plants.

Expansion is geographic as well. Currently, NATIFS operates an Indigenous Food Lab with a professional Indigenous kitchen, training center, and retail market in Minneapolis. Its first expansion site is in Bozeman, with a vision that its Montana location will one day be joined by satellite Indigenous Food Labs in other areas such as Alaska, Hawaii, and South Dakota. Each lab will reflect the needs and resources of the Indigenous communities in the locations served.

The funding for NATIFS is all general operating support.

The Foundation’s $750,000 funding this quarter combines with a $250,000 grant awarded in 2024. All $1 million supports general operating costs as NATIFS pursues three targeted initiatives over the next two years:

OPENING OF WÓYUTE THIPÍ (“food building” in Dakota), NATIFS’s new site in the American Indian Cultural Corridor in Minneapolis. The space will house NATIFS offices and training spaces, and a new casual restaurant, ŠHOTÁ Indigenous BBQ by Owamni (Šhotá is “smoke” in Dakota).

LAUNCHING OF MEALS FOR NATIVE INSTITUTIONS (MNI), a scalable and culturally grounded food production model designed to deliver thousands of healthy, ready-to-eat Indigenous meals daily to schools, universities, hospitals, and tribal programs. A pilot is in place with Minneapolis Public Schools and talks are underway with other institutions.

PROTECTING EMERGING INDIGENOUS ORGANIZATIONS by maintaining the financial capacity to offer business development support for entrepreneurs with complementary missions. Today’s uncertain funding landscape creates instability for Indigenous- and BIPOC-led organizations that are striving to create living-wage jobs while shoring up cultural transmission.

Additional Q2 grantmaking:

Most of our work to double our grantmaking in 2025 comes in the form of expanded funding to current grantees. In addition to the cost amendment for NATIFS, the 40 grants and $12.1 million of grantmaking in Q2 included funding for:

MN8 of St. Paul, MN—a $750,000 cost amendment to an existing $200,000 general-operating grant that MN8 will use over the next three years to support its rapid response and resiliency efforts in the Southeast Asian immigrant and refugee communities experiencing detention and deportation in Minnesota, North Dakota, and Iowa.

TAALA Fund of Taholah, WA—an additional $450,000 over the next two years as a cost amendment to an existing $300,000 grant to this Native community development financial institution, to support general operating costs as it works to continue meeting the needs of its community despite the elimination of federal grant funds.

Please reach out to Paul Bachleitner, the Foundation’s communications director, at pbachleitner@nwaf.org for more insights on our grantmaking.

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