When Crystal Wahpepah opened Wahpepah\u2019s Kitchen five years ago, Native food spaces were, even that recently, still hard to find. When she was a child, Wahpepah told me, she never saw or set foot inside a Native restaurant. Now the chef gets to see her community, young and old, experience a \u201chealing connection\u201d when they walk through the door. \u201cWe need to have our foods visible to people when it comes to talking about health and wellness,\u201d Wahpepah said. At the same time, a Native kitchen \u201cuplifts food producers\u201d and the ingredients she cooks with that other chefs don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Earlier this spring Wahpepah, with Amy Paige Condon, published her first cookbook, A Feather and a Fork: 125 Intertribal Dishes from an Indigenous Food Warrior. Wahpepah\u2019s biography provides the backbone of the book. The recipes are all informed by and connected to her life story. She recounts the good memories\u2014foraging for berries, cooking with her auntie Johnella\u2014and contextualizes the more troubling ones within the many destructive government policies directed toward Native Americans.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI really wanted to share my story, how I became an Indigenous chef,\u201d Wahpepah said. On her current book tour, people are engaging with the recipes as home cooks look for inspiration. But they\u2019re also reading the chef\u2019s anecdotes as a way to connect with \u201cwhat\u2019s going on in Indian country.\u201d Both the cookbook and her restaurant have provided the chef with a platform to introduce Native cuisine. Her culinary influences reflect the history of a people and their relationship to the land.<\/p>\n
Wahpepah\u2019s Kitchen only serves game meat. The chef pointed out that, \u201cThese are the meats from this land.\u201d There are recipes in A Feather and a Fork for bison, rabbit, venison, turkey and fish. The chef loves rabbit because she associates it with a childhood memory. \u201cMy grandfather would hunt rabbit,\u201d she recalled. \u201cBut if you think about what the animal eats\u2014they eat a lot of veggies and greens\u2014rabbit is the cleanest animal, even more than chickens.\u201d Depending on how it\u2019s prepared, whether in tacos or pozole, Wahpepah describes the taste as \u201creally light.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have grown so much when it comes to creating recipes on the menu,\u201d Wahpepah said. In 2021 she wasn\u2019t making acorn crepes, but she since found an acorn provider. The chef also wasn\u2019t offering frybread. Now she serves it with soup, stew and chili. \u201cIt\u2019s part of our story, and it\u2019s a part of our resilience,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s part of when I\u2019m making my grandmother\u2019s sweet corn soup.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wahpepah is an enrolled member of the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma. The chef lists each dish on her menu in Kickapoo and in English. In A Feather and a Fork, she includes a Kickapoo glossary right before the first chapter as a way of \u201creclaiming our voice.\u201d She writes, \u201cBy sharing these words, we keep the language alive and show our gratitude for all who came before.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapter one is dedicated to beans, corn and squash, also known as The Three Sisters. \u201cIf you come from a bean, corn and squash foundation of a tribe like I do, we have The Three Sisters,\u201d Wahpepah said. She sources blue, white and yellow corn from Bow & Arrow, located on Ute Mountain Reservation land in Southwest Colorado. \u201cThey are pretty much one of the biggest providers for Native restaurants,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Blue corn reminds the chef of her grandmother. She serves it as a corn mush topped with berries, in cornbread and in tortillas. \u201cIt has a lot of good healing remedies,\u201d Wahpepah said. \u201cI believe corn can really tell a story. Even though it originated from down South, it\u2019s all throughout North America.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of the produce at the restaurant is grown at Heron Shadow, a farm in Sebastopol. There they grow seven different kinds of squash, beans, corn, chard and greens. \u201cWhen you come to Wahpepah\u2019s Kitchen, you get a window of seasonality in our menu,\u201d Wahpepa said. But squash is definitely a major player. \u201cRight now I\u2019m looking at these beautiful seeds of squash that have been around for hundreds of years. And we have this opportunity to present it in a really good, tasteful way where people can connect with it.\u201d<\/p>\n