MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota — Heti means "home" in the Dakota language. When naming her new business, Dana Thompson found the word to be a perfect fit.
"I was thinking about my grandfather and thinking about the different places he's lived," Thompson recalled. "I'm a lineal descendant of the Wahpeton-Sisseton and the Mdewakanton Dakota through my mother's bloodline. My grandfather, Clem Felix, was born on the Santee Indian Reservation. He went to boarding school in Pipestone, where I also lived as a toddler. Then he raised his family... including my mother, in Prior Lake. So the inspiration for this was really thinking about the plants that were around him in those three places."
Thompson said she thought about foraging and recalled the stories her mother would tell of Felix asking his daughter to pick whatever they needed for dinner.
It became the inspiration behind Thompson's new adult beverage and Indigenous social impact brand, Heti.
"With the 2018 Farm Bill legalizing low-dose, hemp-derived cannabis, it just inspired me to start thinking about the flavor profiles that I would like to enjoy as I have been moving away from alcohol," Thompson said.
Heti is a hemp-derived, low-dose THC and CBD cannabis seltzer featuring the Indigenous botanicals of North America.
There are four varieties: River Path, Woodland Edge, Meadow Cat Nap and Marshland Harvest. Meadow Cat Nap features wild mint, lemon balm and dandelion leaf. Meanwhile, Woodland Edge includes cedar, maple and wild mint. Thompson opted out of using refined sugars and instead opted for small amounts of honey, maple and agave. Each beverage has 3 mg THC and 5 mg CBD.
"A lot of people are trying to get away from alcohol right now and I think that this is a really great little alternative," Thompson said.
This is Thompson's newest venture since leaving the companies she co-created with Sean Sherman, including Owamni, the nonprofit NĀTIFS (North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems) and the Indigenous Food Lab. Owamni won the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant in 2022. But Thompson decided to leave those organizations in 2023 and went to work in making Heti a reality.
Now in April, Thompson will start distributing Heti to stores in Minnesota with plans to later expand outside the state.
Thompson also plans to use the business to support health and wealth in Indigenous communities.
About a year ago, Thompson's daughter, who works for the American Indian Cancer Foundation, sent her a newsletter from the Santee Indian Reservation about the challenges they face with housing and access to clean water.
"I'm going to create a multisector project where I'm going to be working with Habitat for Humanity and other volunteer organizations to help create housing out of hempcrete, which is a byproduct of my product. So it's really sustainable; it absorbs carbon; it's really great in the cold weather, as well as hot weather, and very resilient," Thompson said.
It all encompasses a sense of place, which starts for Dana with the flavors of home.
Heti is available now to preorder online. It's guaranteed to ship by March 31.
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