Crystal Wahpepah, the Oakland chef whose restaurant Wahpepah’s Kitchen shines the spotlight on Indigenous cuisine, is now telling her story through her debut cookbook. A Feather and a Fork, co-written by Amy Paige Condon, hit the shelves on March 17.
Through recipes that shaped Wahpepah’s childhood and, later, her career as an award-winning chef, A Feather and a Fork brings readers along on her own journey as a pioneer in bringing Indigenous foods into the forefront. The book features 125 intertribal recipes that highlight Native producers, Indigenous ingredients and how to eat in tune with the seasons.
“I love to create with Indigenous ingredients. So that was the easy part,” Wahpepah said. “I love to cook, I’m a creator and that, but you know, writing is totally different.” She enlisted the help of Condon, an experienced cookbook writer and editor, to bring her vision to life. Tommy Orange, an Oakland native and author of the 2019 American Book Award-winning novel There There, wrote the foreword.
“He was born and raised here in Oakland, like myself, and we both grew up in the intertribal community. So, it was a no-brainer,” Wahpepah said.
Eating with the seasons, Wahpepah said, is a core tenet to Native health and wellness. It is to A Feather and a Fork as well.
“There are so many pillars with the book,” she said. “One, definitely how to eat in season. And then the other would be to know whose land you’re on.” The book’s introduction includes a section titled Whose Land Do We Walk On?, which details Oakland’s history as both traditional Ohlone territory and as a hub for intertribal Native communities who moved to the East Bay after the Indian Relocation Acts of 1952 and 1956.
Some of the ingredients featured in her recipes, Wahpepah said, have been around “for thousands of years, but we haven’t seen them so much on the forefront as we do now. I wanted to share that story of how Natives eat in season. This is why we harvest.”
Wahpepah’s recipes all come with stories about where the ingredients can be sourced, and from which tribes. Take, for example, Wahpepah’s maple chili oil — one of her favorites — which she uses to dress up a tepary bean dip and smoked salmon tostadas. She sources Séka Hills olive oil from the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, whose land is in California’s Yolo Valley.
“It really complements the ingredients and everything all in one, but it’s deeper than that. It’s a story — how the Yoche Dehe utilize their land and their soil to grow olive oil. It’s kind of like me honoring the California Natives with this dish,” she said. Other ingredients and producers get a shoutout, too — blue corn from Bow and Arrow (Northern Ute tribe), heirloom beans from Ramona Farms (Pima-Maricopa tribe).
“These are the ingredients I’ve been working with pretty much all my life. It doesn’t matter where you are here in North America; you can access these ingredients,” Wahpepah said.
Wahpepah is a registered member of the Kickapoo tribe of Oklahoma and the first of her family to be born in Oakland. She grew up bouncing between reservations in the U.S. and Canada but always found herself in the kitchen with her family, learning how to make jams with harvested berries and cooking her grandmother’s dry corn soup.
“I come from a background where my grandmother and my aunties never kicked me out of the kitchen,” she said. But growing up within tight-knit Indigenous communities, she realized that the traditional foods she was familiar with were sparsely seen elsewhere.
“I always wondered, where were our foods? Why were our foods never on menus or served in restaurants? How was it that a city like Oakland, home to tens of thousands of Native Americans, had no place that served my grandmother’s dry corn soup?” she writes in her book introduction.
Wahpepah decided to fill the gap herself. She worked in kitchens, went to culinary school and started a catering business before opening Wahpepah’s Kitchen in 2021. Located in Oakland’s Fruitvale Plaza, the restaurant offers a hearty menu of rotating dishes like hand-harvested wild rice fritters, sweet potato hibiscus taquitos and the Three Sisters veggie bowl (which you’ll find the recipe for in the book). Wahpepah’s Kitchen was a 2022 James Beard finalist, and the chef has brought Native cooking to shows such as Chopped and Beat Bobby Flay.
“I can’t wait for everyone to have the book in their home,” Wahpepah said. “I value people that are going to learn from my Indigenous foods journey. And I love to take people on journeys.”
A Feather and a Fork will be available in hardcover online and in-person at major booksellers. You can also pick up a copy at Omnivore Books on Food or at the launch party at Oakland’s Intertribal Friendship House, where Wahpepah spent much of her youth, from 6 to 8:30 p.m. on March 17.
