In the past decade of running on TV, Top Chef Canada will have Siobhan Detkavich as the youngest, and first Indigenous female competitor on their newest season airing April 19.

“This is probably one of the most diverse set of competitors . . . we each have our own story, and being Indigenous is part of my story and is a culture that I am so proud to be able to share and kind of learn more about,” said the 21-year-old chef.

Detkavich is a former Oliver high school student, who moved to town from the Cowichan Valley. When she got the opportunity to leave high school to learn a trade at college with free tuition, she jumped at the chance. Through the Industry Training Authority (ITA) Youth Program she picked culinary arts thinking that it would be a useful life skill.

Currently, Detkavich works as a chef at Mission Hill Family Estate Winery in Kelowna. Her passion for cooking developed from wanting to get most of the opportunity that she saw was something not everyone gets.

“I was pretty much going to college that’s been paid for me and so if I don’t make the most of my time that I’m there, I would be dumb,” she says laughing.

Young chef Siobhan Detkavich won bronze at the Skills Canada competition in Winnipeg back in 2017. File photo.

She later apprenticed at Terrafina at Hester Creek and worked under chef Jenna Pillon, who Detkavich says is one of her biggest mentors.

“I think watching the passion [Pillon] has for cooking is what kept growing mine,” says Detkavich. “Working with different chefs and seeing the passion that they have for food, I think it’s still what drives me to this day.”

Since she stepped foot into the culinary world, Detkavich has been fiercely ambitious. She was working two jobs up until last year, clocking nearly 20 hour days, seven days a week.

It’s no shock that the restaurant industry is cut-throat and often lacks a welcoming atmosphere for women, and more so women of colour. Siobhan recalls some of the demoralizing experiences she had when she first started out.

“I’ve worked in the kitchen where I’ve literally had the chef look at me (like when I walk beside him in an open kitchen), and he’s like, ‘there’s no way that I’m having a woman, let alone a woman of colour stand in front of me for the guests to see.’ And then he sent me to the back,” says Detkavich, who was 19 years old at the time and the only woman in the kitchen.

This incident, unfortunately, was one of many for the young chef. Though Detkavich says it made her “grow a backbone,” it also helped her recognize the on-going problems in the industry and gave her a push to know what to fight for.

Representing her Indigenous identity to the world and especially other Indigenous youth is another vital element for Detkavich.

“Indigenous youth have been stuck, the way that I describe it, is like living under a roof of oppression and  colonialism,” explains Detkavich, “and when you’re stuck with systemic racism, your loss of culture, your language, all the stereotypes and stuff like that, you kind of get stuck.”

The lack of Indigenous representation in media, whether in TV shows, movies, or news articles, is an issue that Detkavich is passionate towards fixing.

“How are you supposed to truly believe that you’ll go places, if you’re not really seeing people who are very similar to you make it far?” she asks.

Detkavich says that If you grew up from a background where you don’t come from a whole lot, it kind of doesn’t give you that push, or give you that hope to believe that you’re going to reach heights in life or your career. She relates this to her own experience as someone who came from a lower-class upbringing and had to work tirelessly to move up every step in her career.

“I had to work two to three jobs to pay off like my braces, my first car; I drove to and from Kelowna (three hours) every day just to make it to culinary school. The fact that all that hard work pushed me to get to the point where I’m 21, I’ve made it to Top Chef Canada in my career thus far,” says Detkavich.

Yet even with her remarkable achievement, Detkavich is quite down to earth. One of her biggest goals is to just show people, especially Indigenous youth, that recognizing your self-worth and having that perseverance is key to achieve what you want.

Although the young chef has been in competitions before, this is her first time competing at a large scale like Top Chef Canada. But she ran with an optimistic attitude.

“if you don’t do good, let’s say hypothetically, you still went, you tried it out. Honestly, there are no negatives that could come from it, right? As long as you try hard, do your best, that’s what matters. So when it comes to competition, I’m just like, if it scares you go for it,” says Detkavich.

As for her style of cooking as a chef, Detkavich weaves together her Indigenous influences from her roots in the Cowichan tribe and an Okanagan touch, or a “coastal meets interior” as she describes it herself.

“As I kind of develop my brand as a chef, I think if I’m going to do those two together, just because how earthy most of the dishes are, that come from Indigenous roots. I know there’s a lot of people out there who are picky especially in the Okanagan. So I tried to have a little bit of a fusion.”

At the moment she’s still playing around with doing a type of Italian-Indigenous fusion, but says with a laugh that it’s still a work in progress.

Top Chef Canada’s newest season will air on April 19 at 10 p.m. PT on Food Network Canada.