Chef Brave Heart

29/10/2025

with the sweet baby 🥰 she’s a steakaterian 🤣🤣🤣

28/10/2025

“The World Needs More Love, Mama.”

Tonight, as I was putting my little girl to sleep, she asked me quietly,
“Mama… will we have enough food?”

I told her, “Yes, baby. We are prepared. We will share what we have, and we will help where we can.”

She paused for a moment, then whispered,
“It’s cruel to starve people.”

I said, “You’re right. Having access to food is a basic human right.”

And with her small, steady voice, she said,
“The world needs more love, Mama. A whole lot more love.”

That stayed with me.

Because what’s happening right now with the SNAP and EBT cuts isn’t just about food insecurity, it’s about survival. It’s about a fatal economic impact that will ripple through every community, every small business, every kitchen table. It will affect our elders, our children, our neighbors, and yes, our local food systems, farmers, and chefs too.

I’m already seeing it. My own business, rooted in food, culture, and education, has been impacted. Funding for nutritional education, cultural food programs, and DEI initiatives are being slashed, the very programs that teach people how to feed their families with dignity, connect to ancestral foods, and build community through nourishment.

Food has always been more than just something on a plate. It’s medicine. It’s memory. It’s connection.
And in times like this, being a good relative means we return to that teaching.

We share recipes. We share resources. We stretch what we have and make it beautiful. We teach our children generosity, not fear.
Because when systems fail us, community saves us.

So tonight, as I tucked my daughter in, I made a quiet promise to myself:
We will continue to cook, to teach, to share, and to feed one another.
Even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.

Because she’s right,
the world needs more love, a whole lot more love.

27/10/2025

Trying for the very first time! Omg it was bomb 10/10 so delicious. We loved the texture and flavor. Our new favorite

25/10/2025

I’m alive y’all I know you’ve missed me. Work, sickness and grief tried to take me out but I rally like a warrior. My rocking the new new by dress by ass by my ancestors.

22/10/2025

Love that Ben has become apart of our family.

22/10/2025

Come with us we made and traditional or

21/10/2025

For Now, I Rest.

People often tell me I make it look easy, being a single mother, entrepreneur, daughter, sister, friend, and community member. No matter how much truth I share, they still imagine my life as somehow effortless.

The truth is, it’s not.
I work three jobs. I nurture my children with presence and intention. I cook, I create, I clean, I organize, I communicate. I heal, I learn, I teach, I show up, even through grief, through sickness, through heartbreak, through growth.

So much of my work is teaching others: how to write a business plan, craft talking points for a tribal leader, build a chef’s business, host an event, prepare medicine, manage time, balance finances, even navigate love. I hold no secrets, if I have knowledge, I share it. That’s part of who I am, All with loving energy and humor.

But today, I couldn’t do much. Pneumonia humbled me. The kind of sickness that scares you. The kind that reminds you how much falls apart when you go down.

And then healing came in the smallest, most sacred ways.

I sat across from my beautiful son, just as my grandmother once sat across from me. I gave only quiet direction as he made soup. I watched his cuts, his focus, his instincts, his hands becoming her hands. He slow cooked it all day. When I took my first bite, exhausted and aching, I cried.

Later, my sweet baby girl brewed pȟežúta tea from my sister’s medicine, just as I had done for my own mother. Watching them care for me, for each other reminded me that my work matters. These teachings will carry on. They live in them now.

Today was hard. But it was also holy.

Thank you for your love, your prayers, your patience as I heal. I will continue to show up and do the work, but please know, none of this is easy. It’s hard. It’s messy. It takes everything.

For now, I rest.

19/10/2025

I am so proud of my brother Nick Tilsen and the NDNCollective family that helped to bring Leksi Leonard Peltier home. Fun fact my best Cole James Hunter helped create his now home!

15/10/2025

So exciting!!!

A ho pi ti ke no. Welcome. These words are written on the board above the counter as guests come into Wahpepah’s Kitchen, and now they extend to all of you in my new cookbook A Feather and a Fork: 125 Intertribal Dishes from an Indigenous Food Warrior, coming March 17, 2026. With this book, I am inviting you into a way of thinking about the food you cook for yourself and your family that is rooted in the oldest traditions of my people and of this land we now share. These traditions represent the key to not only our physical, mental, and spiritual health but also to the health of our planet. What we grow, how we grow it, and how we distribute the food to our communities can change how we live with one another and begin to solve so many of the problems that separate us from one another and ourselves. Preorder your copy today at the link in my bio. Signed copies will be available at Omnivore Books. Thank you for your support and I can’t wait to share more with you!
Pre-order at chefcrystalwahpepah.com