Amani
Olugbala
Community Educator
A storyteller who weaves music, film, speech and poem into art that
highlights social injustice, honors the ancestors and demands for
change. This, in an effort to uplift the spirits of the marginalized
and promote love and service as necessary acts of rebellion against
isolation and disconnection. An artist, farmer, educator and
community organizer Amani uses artistic expression, urban
agriculture and social awareness to impact change and foster a sense
of empathy and inter-being in local urban communities. Amani started
out at Soul Fire Farm as a participant and later facilitator of the
Black and Latino Farmers Immersion.
Sean
Sherman
The Sioux Chef
Chef Sean Sherman, Oglala Lakota, born in Pine Ridge, SD, has been
cooking across the US and Mexico over the past 30 years, and has
become renowned nationally and internationally in the culinary
movement of indigenous foods. His main focus has been on the
revitalization and evolution of indigenous foods systems throughout
North America. Chef Sean has studied on his own extensively to
determine the foundations of these food systems to gain a full
understanding of bringing back a sense of Native American cuisine to
today’s world. In 2014, he opened the business titled, The Sioux
Chef as a caterer and food educator in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul
area. He and his business partner Dana Thompson also designed and
opened the Tatanka Truck, which featured pre-contact foods of the
Dakota and Minnesota territories. In October 2017, Sean was able to
perform the first decolonized dinner at the James Beard House in
Manhattan along with his team. His first book, The Sioux Chef’s
Indigenous Kitchen was awarded the James Beard medal for Best
American Cookbook for 2018 and was chosen one of the top ten
cookbooks of 2017 by the LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle as well
as the Smithsonian Magazine. This year, Chef Sean was selected as a
Bush Fellow, as well as receiving the 2019 Leadership Award by the
James Beard Foundation. The Sioux Chef team of twelve people
continues with their mission to help educate and make indigenous
foods more accessible to as many communities as possible through the
recently founded nonprofit North American Traditional Indigenous
Food Systems (NATIFS). Learn more at
www.natifs.org.
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