About Dean Thomas Parisian

Growing up, his father worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the family lived on many Indian reservations across the Great Plains. From the Badlands of the Hidatsa along the Missouri, to the hills of the Sisseton-Wahpeton tribe, to the Yanktons chalk rock bluffs on the Missouri, west to the Big Horn Mountains on the Crow Reservation were considered home. It was near Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota that Dean Parisian spent the majority of his high school years. Only 80 years before, the Hotchkiss guns were carefully trained on a group of terrified and disarmed Sioux in the hills northeast of Pine Ridge. It wasn’t a battlefield at Wounded Knee, like historians suggest, it was an assassination; as were America’s first freedom fighters; Sitting Bull, Dull Knife, and Geronimo. The carnage continues today as the Indian Affairs Trust Office still can not account for billions of dollars of Native American fund transfers.

Dean Parisian founded CHIPPEWA PARTNERS, Native American Advisors, Inc. a Registered Investment Advisor, in 1995 and closed in 2019. The firm was a manager to an exclusive clientele and was closed to new clients for many years. As a Registered Investment Advisor, their expertise developed over 35 years balanced experience, integrity and tremendous work ethic.

Mr. Parisian founded the company to manage serious wealth for Native American tribes and tribal members who understand that casino gaming alone is not the answer to viable long-term economic success.

Dean T. Parisian attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, the University of Minnesota-Morris, and Hamline University School of Law. During his undergraduate years, he was active in the Tau Kappa Epsilon Fraternity, a member of Kappa Lambda pledge class, Scroll #198.  His undergraduate degrees were in Education and Economics and he began his investment career in 1982. He trained on Wall Street with Kidder, Peabody, and Co. and joined Drexel Burnham Lambert, Inc. in LaJolla, California in 1984. Before the formation of Native American Advisors, Inc./Chippewa Partners in 1995 he was a Trust Officer at First Union Bank (then Wachovia, now Wells Fargo) in Atlanta, and managed his personal holdings with significant success before founding the firm in 1995. For over a decade, Dean was a member of the Atlanta Society of Financial Analysts. He was the first Native American mutual fund advisor licensed with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission.

He is a member of the White Earth Reservation at the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. You are encouraged to visit www.deanparisian.com to learn about Dean Parisian's commitment to inspiring a culture of Fatherhood and Philanthropy which is vital for the growth of human capital in Native America and to help in breaking the cycle of poverty, addiction, moral courage, and the suffocating absence of fathers and opportunity in Native communities.

Mr. Parisian, for over a decade, was an arbitrator for the New York Stock Exchange and the NASD (now FINRA). He is a member of the President's Club at the University of Minnesota, the Georgia Ornithological Society, and the Tennessee Ornithological Society.  Dean was recognized in many financial publications such as Barrons, Investment Advisor magazine, Financial Planning magazine, and the Atlanta Business Journal.

His greatest accomplishments include raising two sons and 33 years of marriage.

His philanthropic interest is in Native American education and he has endowed a significant scholarship for Native Americans as the benefactor of the Dean T. Parisian Native American Student Scholarship at the University of Minnesota.

The Parisian family enjoys outdoor pursuits at Pamelot, their farm in Tennessee, at the Ghost Ranch, their retreat on their Yellowstone River ranch in Montana, and at Casa Tule, their winter home in San Jose del Cabo, Mexico where he ocean swims daily on Palmilla beach.