Lois Ellen Frank

Education Frank attended culinary school

Career During college, Frank worked as a cook at the first Good Earth restaurant.

In 1991 she proposed a book on Native American cuisine to publishers in New York. in collaboration with Walter Whitewater (Diné). In 2003, the book won a James Beard Foundation Award, the first cookbook on Native American cuisine or by a Native American author so honored.

She serves as a Culinary Ambassador Diplomat for the United States Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, travelling with Whitewater to Ukraine (2013), the United Kingdom (2015), and Russia (2016), to teach about Native American foodways.

Her 2023 cookbook, Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky: Modern Plant-Based Recipes using Native American Ingredients, was nominated for three 2024 IACP awards in the American, Food Issues & Matters, and Health & Wellness categories. The book won the latter two categories.

Academic and consultant career Frank is an adjunct professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where her classes have included Traditional Arts and Ecology, Ethnobotany of Foods and Plants of the Southwest, and Indigenous Concepts of Native American Foods. She works on issues surrounding Native American diet and diabetes with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and is a Certified Lifestyle Coach for the National Diabetes Prevention Program. She consults for the Cultural Conservancy on Native American Foodways. The first is prior to 1492, which she calls "Pre-Contact", when Native Americans were of necessity relying on ingredients they grew, gathered, or hunted in their local areas. which she calls "a very complicated food for me. It represents survival. If the ancestors had not created this bread, they might have starved... For some it is a comfort food, for others including some chefs and some Native community members, it represents colonization and a period of time in history that is traumatic." According to Frank,

Unlike some Native American chefs and cookbook authors, she believes that others developing recipes for and cooking Native American cuisine is not a problem if Native American producers, such as wild rice harvesters, are benefitting.

Her recipes have a vegetable-forward approach, Taco Table (2013)