To donate to support our community journalism, please go to this link: tinyurl.com/y4u7stxj
Jason Champagne is passionate about helping Native Americans in what has always felt like his calling – and he does it through food.
Education is at the center of his Eudora-based business, Native Chef LLC. It started as a small business in 2017, but has turned into a traveling educational program that takes him all over the country.
Through teaching the basics of culinary education, hands-on cooking demonstrations and motivational speaking, Champagne focuses on using healthy ingredients to show young people that cooking doesn’t have to be difficult.
Champagne, a member of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa, does a lot of events at Haskell Indian Nations University, something especially important to him as he’s an alumnus himself.
He mostly travels to Native American programs since many receive grant money for health promotion. He’s done events for the Chiefs, Russell Stover Chocolates, conferences and tribes in states from California to Oklahoma.
Champagne attended Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Minnesota then received a master’s degree in public health nutrition from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.
When he finished school, he knew he wanted to help Native American populations.
“I just wasn’t sure how that was going to happen, you know, getting a master’s degree and all that. I just, you know, I wanted to help Native American people from the start, and it’s crazy how things have evolved,” he said.
Going into culinary always made sense to him. He said it’s just something that’s always come easily to him from a young age.
After a career in many realms of the culinary industry, Champagne was ready for a change. He worked at Disney World and had other culinary jobs before deciding money wasn’t bringing him happiness.
Champagne moved to Eudora to be closer to family after realizing what he really needed was to be closer to home. That’s when he started Native Chef.
He was ready to take on the goal he always had for himself: helping teach about healthy eating, especially to Indigenous communities.
Champagne’s journey to become the Native Chef began after struggling with alcoholism and other health issues for years. He was told by doctors he only had four years to live. Since then, he’s become sober and turned his life around, he said.
He credits a lot of that change to eating healthy whole foods.
“My body healed itself. So now with my business, that’s kind of what I do, is I do health promotion using culinary arts, but I share my story with people,” he said.
Teaching kids that they don’t have to go to culinary school to have these skills is also an important part. He also teaches students that cooking will save them money down the line, as well as skills in basic food safety information and kitchen efficiency.
A lot of his meals have beans, wild rice, squash, vegetables, fruits and berries at the center of them. Champagne focuses on pre-colonization foods, meaning he doesn’t use flour and hardly any dairy.
It’s not as likely for kids to get home-cooked meals all the time anymore, he said. His program gives students that.
During a recent event at the Topeka Center for Advanced Learning and Careers, Champagne prepared meatloaf, wild rice, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, salad and blue corn cakes for 150 students.
Champagne doesn’t have a set menu when he is invited to events. It’s something that comes to him before the event, which allows him to be more creative, he said.
“I don’t have a lot of recipes written down. A lot of them are just in my head,” he said.
Yale Taylor is the Title VI coordinator for the Topeka Public School District. He oversees Native students whose families opt into the Native education program.
He serves as a counselor to Indigenous students by taking them to college visits, helping them prepare for life outside of public school and connecting them with their nations if they need assistance. He also puts on cultural events for the students.
He’s now been involved in two of Topeka’s Native youth gatherings.
“A lot of our kids within the urban environment don’t necessarily have the opportunity to experience Native foods, and so Jason is a staple in this area, because he is doing something that is not common in this area,” Taylor said.
Expanding to new ventures
Within the next couple of years, Champagne plans to also open a food truck – something that will be based in Eudora but will enable him to take his dishes to the next level. He also hopes it will bring recognition to Eudora,
Champagne didn’t always do well in school growing up, but when he attended Haskell he started applying himself and realized he did have what it took to be a good student.
“That’s where I kind of come in now with what I do, sharing my story with others, kids, whoever that, ‘Hey, look, we have it in us. We’re not dumb,’” he said.
Getting to be a keynote speaker at several Native health conferences with hundreds of people was never something he would’ve thought he’d do, but now he gets to share his story with others.
After being a chef for a wealthy tribe, he realized he was burned out, unhappy and far away from the people he loved. He realized what he needed to do to be happy was live his life closer to the way his ancestors did, he said.
“Two hundred years ago, they didn’t need money. There was no alcoholism and depression, losing our land and we can’t keep up because we don’t have the businesses on our reservation to keep up to pay the bills, right? But we didn’t need that. We were happy before the colonization,” he said.
When he started living minimally, money came, and Native Chef started to take off.
Amy Bousman, an education specialist for the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, has partnered with Champagne for several programs after being introduced to him by Haskell.
Bousman was working on an Indigenous People’s Day event and wanted to host a foraging hike and utilize the foraged goods in traditional Indigenous dishes through a USDA cultural grant with the department and through Haskell.
Being inspired by Champagne’s own health journey to then advocate and teach others is an impressive journey, she said.
“He is very relatable to the Indigenous people that he serves. This is, you know, a byproduct of – poor health, obesity and Type 2 diabetes especially – are byproduct symptoms of the oppression that Indigenous people have experienced through forced assimilation and displacement onto reservations and being disconnected from their traditional life ways,” Bousman said.
She appreciates that he brings a unique fusion of traditional Indigenous food with modern components, she said. It is respectable to see him reclaim Indigenous health through its pre-colonial roots, she said.
People have started to look forward to seeing Champagne at events, she said, not only because of his cuisine but because of his motivational and friendly approach.
Not only does Champagne provide invaluable experiences to students, he also helps students get involved by hiring them to help serve at these events, said Carrie Cornelius, the supervisory librarian at Haskell. Cornelius has worked with him for many events over the years.
He has the technical know-how of working in large businesses, but he also has a heart that wants to help others. His traditional teaching is helping the community, Cornelius said.
He’s also given empowerment talks about sobriety that are funded by the USDA Extension program at Haskell, but he’s also taken a hands-on approach with students.
“He also has been hired to empower students by letting them know that they can also learn how to cook, so sometimes he would set up multiple tables and have all the ingredients there,” she said.
Students would get to craft their own meals with healthy vegetables while also tying in components of Native cooking styles.
If she asked a caterer to feed the students, they wouldn’t get nearly as much out of the experience, but the way Champagne makes it special makes the students feel special, too.
Seeing the way his small business has grown to find a place within the Native community and having support from all over has been a blessing, Champagne said.
“I’m just happy, man. I think when you do good for the community and you mean well, you know, the universe is powerful and will put the right people in your place,” he said.
Reach reporter Sara Maloney at [email protected].
