Amelia Schafer
ICT
For a five-year-old Menominee girl growing up in the early 1980s, cooking with an Easy Bake Oven was the perfect form of expression. Now a full-time chef and educator, Jessica Pamonicutt carries on what she learned in her family’s kitchen on the Menominee Reservation in north-central Wisconsin all those years ago.
“My mom always taught me everything you do when you cook for people should be done with love,” she said. “It’s sacred. You’re not just feeding people’s stomachs, you’re feeding their spirits.”
Over time for Pamonicutt, also known as Chef Walks First, cooking became a love language and source of pride.
Nearly a decade ago she launched Ketapanen Kitchen, a full-service cultural culinary immersion experience. Ketapanen is the Menominee word for love.
Ketapanen Kitchen, the only Native-owned catering company registered in the state of Illinois, offers a unique mix of education and cooking. In 2025, the educational aspect of Pamonicutt’s business took a step up when she was offered a position as a visiting scholar for Northwestern University’s Global Health Studies Program.
“When I first saw my name on the door, ‘Professor Walks First,’ I cried,” she said. “A lot of the things I’ve done in life I never pictured I would be doing.”
Last spring, Northwestern University’s Global Health Studies program reached out to ask if she’d lead a class on Indigenous food sovereignty in the fall. After thoughtful consideration, Pamonicutt accepted, and in September she began teaching with a class of eight students, all from different backgrounds, at the Northwestern campus in Evanston, Illinois.
The 10-week course focuses on educating students about the countless foods in our modern diets that came from Indigenous people and how they can continue to educate others about the foods around them. In line with the Global Health Studies program, the course also prioritizes health.
Traditional foods have become a way for many Indigenous communities to effectively combat chronic illnesses like diabetes and heart disease that disproportionately impact Indigenous communities, according to research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Foods like pumpkin, chocolate, blueberries, strawberries and wild rice are all Indigenous to North America, Pamonicutt said, though most people aren’t familiar with this history.
In line with the dishes that have become staples in her own business, Ketapanen Kitchen, the program doesn’t exclusively use Indigenous ingredients but does place an emphasis on them and requires their use in dishes.
Students picked different Indigenous recipes to cook based on cookbooks by Indigenous chefs Sean Sherman and Loretta Barrett Oden. Pamonicutt said she arrives at class with ingredients needed to make the students’ meal of choice then guides them during their lessons. Students also had the opportunity to share about foods important in their cultures.
“I don’t sit there and teach them how to cook,” she said. “I taught them, this is how we work in our community. We work as a group. We work as a family unit. We jump in where help is needed. We help one another. We work together to get the job done.”
Dishes made during the class range from savory to sweet. One day, Pamonicutt said, students wanted a full class focused on desserts. Students spent their time cooking wild rice crepes topped with strawberries and cream followed by wildberry moose and dark chocolate wojapi cake.
“After we ate all of us were so tired we couldn’t even get to the discussion part,” she said. “They cooked themselves into a carbo-coma.”
Not all of the lessons can be taught in a classroom. A main focus of the course is on how central food is to Indigenous communities, especially when it comes to gathering together.
Growing up, Pamonicutt learned that food is the centerpiece of life, she said. From daily family dinners to celebrations, ceremonies and mournings – food is a central aspect of many Indigenous gatherings. It’s a way to pass down traditions, revive age-old traditions and is above all medicine, she said.
To embrace the community aspects of Indigenous cooking, students broke off into groups to actually feed the Indigenous community in Chicago.
One group fed those at a local powwow, another cooked for the annual Chicago American Indian Center Gala and a third cooked for an event for Native author Robin Wall Kimmerer.
“They were all fan-girling, well, so was I,” Pamonicutt said. “But they just felt deeply connected to our community during those events and that’s what I wanted.”
The class will wrap up Dec. 8 with students cooking a feast for Pamonicutt and representatives from Northwestern’s Center for Native American and Indigenous Research.
With the course nearing its end, Pamonicutt said she herself is reflecting on what she’s learned from her students.
“I realized I get to live my dream every day,” she said. “I do amazing things in amazing spaces, I meet amazing people, and I realized I’m impactful.”
Aside from her recent work with Northwestern, Pamonicutt serves as the board president for the American Indian Center of Chicago. She’s previously collaborated with the Chicago Field Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, The Goodman Theatre, Feeding America, The Greater Chicago Food Depository. In 2024, she was featured on Top Chef Season 21.
Pamonicutt said in the future she’s open to more opportunities like this and would love to teach again.
“Now that I know I’m capable and able to bring something to these students I would love to do it again,” Pamonicutt said.