![]() Indian rocker Keith Secola celebrates the food in his popular song "Frybread." In Sherman Alexie's award-winning film Smoke Signals, one character wears a "Frybread Power" T-shirt. To prevent the indigenous populations from starving, the government gave them canned goods as well as white flour, processed sugar and lard-the makings of frybread.įrybread appears to be nothing more than fried dough-like an unsweetened funnel cake, but thicker and softer, full of air bubbles and reservoirs of grease-but it is revered by some as a symbol of Native pride and unity. Navajo frybread originated 144 years ago, when the United States forced Indians living in Arizona to make the 300-mile journey known as the "Long Walk" and relocate to New Mexico, onto land that couldn't easily support their traditional staples of vegetables and beans. She'd been making the food for so long that the work seemed part of her.įor Lewis and many other Native Americans, frybread links generation with generation and also connects the present to the painful narrative of Native American history. It's not easy to fashion the perfect piece of frybead, but it had only taken Etta a few seconds to do it. The bread puffed, and Etta turned it once with the fork, and flipped it over. She then pierced a hole in the center of the pancake with the back of her thumb, and laid it in the skillet. She began moving a ball of dough back and forth between her hands, until she'd formed a large pancake. Etta Lewis, 71, set the cast iron skillet on the burner, poured in corn oil, and lit the stove. On Dwayne Lewis's first night home on the reservation in northeastern Arizona, he sat in the kitchen, watching his mother prepare dinner.
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