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Photo by Jennifer Fumiko Cahill
Frybread Love's Indian taco.
Watching frybread go from a fist of pale dough pulled from a bucket to its final form, cumulus in shape and caramel in color, is like watching up-close magic. In a straw hat with a kitchen towel hanging from her shoulder, Lisa Sundberg pats, then pulls the dough with practiced hands, turning it to stretch under its own weight, pinching a few holes and laying it gently into the hot vegetable oil, where it bubbles and puffs, the oil
shush-ing like distant applause.
Frybread itself is a feat of metamorphosis. In Native communities across the U.S., frybread is a staple and a comfort food born from displacement and the destruction of traditional resources and foodways that were replaced by government commodity foods, dating back to the Navajo people's "Long March" from their homelands to New Mexico. "The government made us make frybread," says Kayla Maulson, Sundberg's daughter and owner of the Frybread Love stand newly opened outside Cher-Ae Heights Casino. "We were only given commodities ... my dad said he grew up on commodities; they were given powdered milk, sugar, flour, salt." From those rations came what Sundberg calls "a delicacy," a base for a hearty chili taco, a jam-schmeared treat crispier and chewier than doughnuts, a satisfying comfort eaten plain and warm.