Chef Walks First, also known as Jessica Paemonekot, is planning to take her pop-up at the Field Museum and eventually open a food truck and a permanent restaurant in Chicagoland.
Chicago’s first Native American executive chef served her indigenous food this month at the museum through her catering company, Ketapanen Kitchen. A few of these dishes, which include tamales and pulled bison, often sell out by midday, according to Block Club Chicago. Now, Chef Walks First has launched a $15,000 GoFundMe through her Seed to Feed Native Foods Initiative, not only to take her catering business to the next level but also to educate Chicagoans on indigenous culture while connecting Native people with their food.
“For Native people, cooking and sharing meals and food itself is part of everything we do,” Walks First tells Block Club Chicago. “When you grow up in a communal setting, there’s lots of events. And anytime we’d go to these events, I would go in the kitchen and help. It’s always been second nature to me.”
Serving her food at the museum during Native American and Indigenous Heritage Month isn’t the only way she has empowered the area with her heritage. Walks First, a member of the Menominee tribe of Wisconsin, has been staging “kitchen takeovers” at local universities featuring her dishes and local Native performance groups. A big reason why Walks First is so passionate about educating and connecting is because Chicagoland houses the country’s largest urban native community, with more than 10,000 Indigenous people living in the area. Despite the large population, people rarely see any Indigenous people’s influence on the city.
“You live in Chicago, where there’s representation of every ethnicity, but there’s very minimal Native representation, and there was zero in the culinary industry,” she tells the publication. “I knew right then and there that is what I needed to do.”
Walks First, whose Indian name is Oneyaw Neskehsak (Bright Eyes), grew up in Chicago, 250 miles away from her reservation, the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin. Eventually, she would attend Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Chicago before its closure. Her vision and mission became to bring Indigenous Cuisine to the forefront of Chicago’s culinary scene. She says her menu will offer traditional Indigenous dishes, modern Indigenous dishes, and familiar dishes featuring Indigenous ingredients.
