The Sacramento Native American Health Center’s second annual First Foods Dinner will raise funds for the center while featuring a five-course menu by James Beard Award finalist Crystal Wahpepah. The dinner is set for Saturday, October 3, at the Mack Powell Event Center in Arden Arcade, from 6 to 9 p.m.; tickets cost $300.
Wahpepah, who practices at Wahpepah's Kitchen in Oakland and was the first Indigenous contestant on Chopped, designed the menu to showcase Indigenous cuisine and ingredients from Northern California and surrounding regions, according to The Sacramento Bee.
What's on the Table
Guests can choose agave-glazed turkey breast or a wild native pumpkin seed mole for the entrée, with chocolate purple potato cake for dessert. The menu also includes coastal autumn greens and mixed California greens with elderberry vinaigrette, persimmons and hazelnuts; sage bison meatballs, smoked salmon with maple, heirloom bean dip and homemade seed crackers; and family-style blue cornbread with maple and maple cream. The dress code is casual elegant.
Maureen Wimsatt, SNAHC's chief program and development officer, told the Bee that the dinner uses locally harvested blue corn alongside ingredients sourced from surrounding states and the Southwest. She connected bringing traditional foodways back into family diets with improved health outcomes. The Bee also reported that Sage LaPeña, the health center's traditional health practitioner and healing ways manager, is expected to discuss where the meal’s ingredients were harvested and their health benefits.
Food as Preventive Medicine
The dinner pairs its fundraising role with a focus on traditional foodways and the health benefits organizers associate with them.
The First Foods Dinner is a fundraiser for SNAHC.
A Health Center Rooted in Decades of Service
SNAHC’s institutional history includes the separate Sacramento Urban Indian Health Project Inc. (SUIHPI), established December 1, 1974, which closed October 19, 2004. SNAHC says its new clinic opened in 2005, distinct from SUIHPI. Today, the center operates on an open-door policy, providing medical, dental and behavioral health care without tribal or ethnic requirements; Native American individuals make up approximately 26% of its staff, according to SNAHC.
Part of a National Urban Health Network
SNAHC’s local history fits within a broader network of urban Indian health services: in 2016, the Indian Health Service described the center as one of 42 nonprofit programs in its Urban Indian Health Programs family.
The organization operates its main Midtown facility at 2020 J Street. The dinner also has sponsors.
Proceeds from the October 3 dinner will support SNAHC's broader mission of providing healthcare to vulnerable and low-income Sacramento County residents.
