Navajo Woman and Baby at Bosque Redondo, 1866, courtesy New Mexico State Monuments
Fry bread (or frybread) is associated with Native American cuisine, but it is not a traditional food for native peoples. The food originated during hard times, and is a symbol of both pride and pain.
In 1863 Gen. James Henry Carleton, commander of New Mexico Territory, rounded up Navajos and Mescalero Apaches in the Four Corners region and forcibly marched them from Ft. Defiance in Arizona to a camp called Bosque Redondo at Fort Sumner. Around 10,000 men, women, and children (including the elderly) walked 450 miles into this eastern New Mexico encampment. Many died along the way or were shot as stragglers. This tragic event is known as The Long Walk.
Once in Bosque Redondo–which was 40 square miles of shortgrass prairie and desert that wouldn’t support farming–at least 2,380 people died of exposure, disease, and hunger. The U.S. government finally issued commodity rations like white flour, lard, sugar, and canned goods to alleviate the misery. Fry bread was a filling meal these prisoners could make, though it was not a nutritious one.
Today fry bread is still a common food which is also popular and prominent at celebrations and powwows. The bread has been eaten for many years by Native Americans and represents a shared culinary experience among many tribes, but more importantly, it represents their perseverance and resiliency. Fry bread is a subsistence food that represents repression and hard times on one hand, yet speaks to triumph and tenacity on the other.
In 2005, the Bosque Redondo Memorial center opened as a place to mourn the dead and to celebrate survival.
Survivors of The Long Walk, 1864, at Fort Sumner
Navajo at Bosque Redondo
You’ve done a lot of research into this issue, and it shows. Fry bread is a poor substitute for the nutritious seeds and grains that were part of the Native American diet before the reservation era. I am hoping that as this entire country recognizes how broken its food system is, everybody can benefit from any changes that are made. I hardly eat any kind of bread (except the sourdough that I make myself) because it’s so unhealthy. However, it’s interesting to note that nearly every culture in the world has some sort of fried dough dish that its people love.
I’m glad that you’re able to take courses and do so well in them; you can take pride in how you spend your time.
Best,
Carla
I have been afforded to take online community college classes at Chemeketa College and I have 8-classes down with A’s and b’s. Here is the Final I turned in for WR121 I got a 78% on this paper MLA style and a 84.7% in the class.
Todd Earl Van Dorn
Professor of English Ms. T. Jabin
WR121, OL-50215
15 March 2016
This is Your Brain on Native American Fry-Bread and This is The Question
Has Native American fry-bread become an unhealthy acquired right for reservation Indians: “I encourage all of our brothers and sisters to cook up a bunch of fry-bread this weekend, and let the odor of our cooking grease carry the message across America that we (Native Americans) are still here, and we are “Fry-Bread Strong!” (Shield). On the Umatilla Indian Reservation there is a snobby, wielding Whiteman’s world and a secret Native American world seeking balance and now exposing the great health rifts that have been freefalling into the framework of modern “Indian Country” times. “54-years later I look around and think we may not be white people but indeed we are more like them. We emulate their ways.” (Horse) Native Americans are working out of their wrong identity, but not letting go of the white people’s gift of fry-bread and the cash crop of wheat flour dominated their first foods way of life.
There are many key issues circling the comfort food of fry-bread and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation have been backhanded by the psychologically ramifications of these issues and could be the new number one detrimental enemy. Native Americans seem to almost identify with fry-bread as if it were their (prison issue) and survival tool (Indians, Insanity blog). In the colonial past, Natives were issued rations of flour and lard for nourishment on their march to uncharted reservations, nasty crude camps where the conditions were of starvation, death and despair. Oregon Department of Corrections (ODOC) inmates call rations “your issue” like it is a coveted possession. In the past Natives may have even become connoisseurs of deep frying fry-bread on makeshift wood stoves and perhaps threw up a shingle and bartered their fry-bread for other merchandise like ODOC prisoners trade their “issue” for canteen and envelopes if they are indigent.
Native Americans in the U.S. sometimes used government commodities to their advantage to assimilate instead of used as an outright rebellion like the Irish Republic Army (IRA) when they starve out when captured in prisons or as the Boston Tea Party where they threw tea into the harbor in rebellion of British taxation. The Native Americans acted in self-interest and preserved themselves with the staples used in concocting fry-bread, but we now know fry-bread isn’t a harmless friend.
The trends I witnessed in “Indian Country” in the 1970’s were poverty due to alcoholism and unemployment. “Harjo says fry-bread has replaced “fire water” in stereotypical portrayals of addicted American Indians as “simple minded people who salute the little grease bread and get misty-eyed about it” (Linthicum). From 1910-1990’s there was an often racial underhanded validation towards tribal Round-Up participants from the citizens of the City of Pendleton, during Pendleton Round-Up, and Happy Canyon where the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation put in numerous volunteer hours and tedious labor setting up a teepee village for the hundreds of thousands of paying visitors. The out of town spectators paid to watch the tribal members fancy dance in the arena, play Indian roles in Happy Canyon, but the Umatillas weren’t paid as much as the white cowboys to perform. “With over 1,400 employees, the confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation are the second largest employer in Umatilla County behind State of Oregon (Newton). A lot of local historians believe this took a toll on the morale of the tribe until the day they were able to win their fight to build a casino at a strategic location near I-84 and began to employ their own people.
Native Americans becoming ostracized for the alcoholism disease, socioeconomic issues and residing with the family on a rural reservation with no means of transportation can lead to low self-worth and possibly a person could start to psychologically identify with crazy things like fry-bread. “All the psycho-social fry-bread answers have been mocked into Indian reservation humor if you watch the movie (More Than Fry Bread). “Fry- bread makes certain endorphins rush for fun time with the whole family and the conversation piece is anticipating eating a great piece of fry-bread possibly with some sweet toppings” (More Than Fry-bread). I love to get together with my family and eating food is usually something we share in common. The bad part of fry-bread is the nutritional value is horrible and the high experienced when you have a family event can’t be replaced by eating it alone.
“The evidence I’ve researched isn’t positive for future at-risk-youth and unbalanced eating habits. Native writers are targeting their own K-3rd graders in South Dakota saying an Indian taco is a balanced meal” (igrow.org). How can a Native American coming from Sioux stock that lived off the prairie land and no access to supermarkets pile all that junk on an Indian taco and sell it to K-3 graders as a balanced diet? “Aiding the psychological mind there are no health benefits to eating fry-bread and a person avoids responsibility and finds a reason to justify why they continuously eat fry-bread and get poor health results” (Molnar). The justifications of Indian tacos are superb and white people in towns all over across the reservation lines are ordering quantities of Papa Johns Pizza and 2-litre cola products for their justified reasons also. Not only is it Native Americans on this track it is our entire nation taking a fast track to any food types that are easily edible and unhealthy for us.
Going out to pick roots like the antiquated era is now only a root festival for women, daughters, and granddaughters. “Fenced grazing lands has made following the way the roots grow much harder for the Umatilla ladies” (Oregon Public Broadcasting). The root diggers find value and deep spiritual meaning going out in the basalt digging roots. Addictive behaviors and attachments to comfort food like fry-bread or drugs can be treated on a spiritual level, which is a blessing since at least there is hope for the health phenomena. “The discouragement of being blocked by the greedy barbed wire fences on their homelands is enough to reinforce the fry-bread phenomena again as the illusory effect of the negative message have been pounded home to the Umatilla’s. The negative messages are constantly there for them to adopt a false identity when they straddle the reservation lines” (Dudukovic). Negative messages are hard to erase without stuffing them down with something to comfort the anxieties. Many people hate to use spiritual programs as they take so much committeemen and require letting go. Many always justify why they are right to feel negative and they may be right, but it doesn’t make these particular issues ant healthier.
Natives have quite a lot of support from their tribes and government funded programs than the old men did, but lack the authentic cultural identity and spiritual services like horses, sweat lodges, and hunting abilities on ceded grounds that got the old men what they needed not wanted. “Without salmon, people could no longer practice their religion or their culture. Without the practices associated with salmon fishing, berry picking, root digging, preparing and sharing first foods, opportunities to speak and practice the language and culture came under threat of extinction” (Newton).The old men didn’t sit around wondering when the fry-bread was going to be done justifying that so many years ago their way of life was stolen from they went on to survive as best they could hunting big game and fighting for their treaty rights.
Natives can’t see the damage of the fry-bread phenomena and are so blind by pride they don’t want to recognize this as a phenomenon. Is fry-bread a slippery slope to justify the projects, commodities, loss of easy access to ceded grounds? The constant bombardment of every single time a hard working Native tries to do it up first food Indian style another tries to throw the darn monkey wrench in it? Letting Native traditions backslide has been the normal flow, but the health concerns of diabetes and obesity are becoming a statistic Washington D.C. has been keeping tabs on and not everyone in “Indian Country” agrees with this fact.
The Indian agent at the old Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) office at the agency in Mission divvied up rations to reservation Indians sent from his contact person, from their person in Washington D.C. Nobody at the level of the President of the United States of America knew how the money for rations or commodities was being spent and/or cared about the nutritional values.
Originally the Umatilla’s subsisted from the fish runs on the many water ways in the Umatilla Basin that spilled into the Columbia River Gorge down to the trading area at Ceililo falls. “The movie “Food Inc.” voiced the same theory about Washington D.C. becoming out of touch with the long distance reality of Indians health matters from unhealthy commodities and loss of traditional fisheries and fish runs impacting the health of a whole sovereign Nation” (Food, Inc)
Can the rest of the surrounding nations support the Sovereign Indian Nations helping them to finding their true identity and dropping the false ones that were forced upon them centuries ago? A Nation of broken survivors also has the potential power to reach for spiritual answers on the Road of their choice. Do you want the road of the old antique horse warrior ancestors “Yes, fry-bread. That universal symbol of what is good, and just, in Native America?” (Shield)
Or take the road of the reservation Indian car ancestors who bought and paid for all the misery with the termination payouts? Fry-bread is another artificial man made dogma leaving a legacy of what Natives never considered having control of. Fry-bread is a natural (separated wheat flour) and unnatural (fried) man made disaster and a one way road to defeat.
Works Cited
Dudukovic Ph.D., [**Don’t need degree in citation**] Nicole. “This Is Your Brain…On Anti-Drug Campaigns.” Psychology Today. 15 May 2008. Web. 25 Feb. 2016.
I picked this article because I felt it was very worthy for the author had graduated from Harvard and had a vast knowledge of the brain and its memory. The impacts that negative advertising had on making kids not use drugs could also be used to measure the Native Americans’
Food, Inc. Movie One, 2008.
Food Inc. is a good show since we were watching it as part of the curriculum of our class study. We all have a main talking point to start from by using the movie as a relative topic. I used the fact that Washington D.C. has a lot of power and is too far away to be making decisions ion Native Americans health.
“Frybread Movie – ‘More Than Frybread'” YouTube. 07 Nov. 2011. Web. 25 Feb. 2016.
I didn’t get to watch the whole movie, but from the trailers I learned it was a mockumentary mocking the way Natives have the insanity and addiction for fry-bread.
Horse, Perry G. “Native American Identity.” New Directions for Student Services 2005.109 (2005): 61-68. Web. 15 Mar. 2016.
I like this article as it has a great view on native American identity. The author is a Native American and seems to really know her stuff.
http://igrow.org/up/resources/04-5031-2014.pdf jingle dancer
The South Dakota lady wrote a book “Jingle Dancer” for K-3rd graders educating kids Indian tacos are- a balanced meal. Fry-bread piled with greasy beef taco meat, sour cream, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes? If you eat that it is going to be enough calories 1,200-1,400 for a 4-8 year old child day long.
http://www.critfc.org/
The website is all about the Columbia River tribes and how they came together to restore salmon runs prehistorically where the tribes had subsisted on these to thrive on with healthy bodies before fry-bread even existed.
“Indians, Insanity, and American History Blog.” Indians Insanity and American History Blog. Word Press. Web. 25 Feb. 2016.
I found this website and blog by accident. I was able to post a few poems and interact with the author of a book displayed on the website. I hope it will shed light on the importance of getting Native services into mental health and treatment facilities in North America.
Linthicum, Leslie. “ABQjournal: Activist Raises Heat Over Staple Many Indians Believe Is Symbol of Their People.” ABQjournal: Activist Raises Heat Over Staple Many Indians Believe Is Symbol of Their People. Albuquerque Journal, 06 Feb. 2005. Web. 15 Mar. 2016.
I found this journal on Google scholar looking for key words of fry-bread and Washington D.C. Leslie Linthicum interviews people against fry-bread and speaks in so many ways in which I believe also. I am not exactly sure why it is a scholarly article except it is a journal.
Molnar, Kim. “Thinking Errors.” Thinking Errors. Web. 25 Feb. 2016. I found this article when
I was looking for thinking errors, especially the justifications anybody uses when they begin to accept maladaptive behaviors and have to justify them with excuses to prolong the bad habits and also to let others enable the maladaptive behaviors.
Newton, Isaac. “Returning Sacred Species, Languages, and Economic Sovereignty to the Umatilla Indian Reservation through Tribal Cultural Resource Management Practices.” (2015).
I found this article on Google scholar. I don’t know much about Issac newton except he went to Northern Arizona University and wrote this April 28, 2015 so it is very up to date information. The tribe is very different B.C. Before Casino and A.C. After Casino and there are new statistics and jobs. I think he did a wonderful job from what I’ve read. He isn’t a local from the name I can’t place it, but could be wrong.
Shield, James Parker. “The Fry-Bread Indicator.” The Fry-Bread Indicator. Native Sun News, 13 Jan. 2016. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.
I found this article first about Washington D.C. taking fry-Bread away from Native Americans and the clear identity that Indian Country needed to keep and that Washington D.C. needed to respect this identity.
Dear me, I don’t know what to say except that I’m sorry you’re having so much trouble with the staff. I hope that your spiritual adviser and you can both find a way to bring the peace you need into your space.
Best,
Carla
Native American Spiritual Advisor Larry Belcher’s Set Up
3/10/2016
6:30 p.m. Visited with Bridge-2 Nurse Supervisor Rn Larry Belcher about my flash drive, Jon S.’s MP3 player all stolen on this unit. My backup flash drive came up missing from inside my book bag today. He said be hyper vigilant about what is going on and offered to do nothing about it for us.
Then I pulled him up about the fact Taylor M. has been sexually harassing Christy my Native American Spiritual advisor that comes to do 1:1 every Wednesday from 12:30-1:30 and we had been talking and doing nature art from material Pete T helps me gather from the grounds. Taylor M. was touching her inappropriately and invading her space at sweat lodge and patient. David R. (Elder Smudge) and I have had quite a few discussions about this and we have talked to our staff and I talked to Danielle, RN Saidaira, Dr. Blakey, and Dr. Mittal and nothing was done before Christy told Taylor M. off in a group and he wrote a grievance on her. The abuse hearing is tomorrow and Nurse Supervisor Rn Larry Belcher told me it was my job to call another hospital department (Spiritual Care) to set up appointments with Christy my Native American Spiritual advisor.
Nurse Supervisor Rn Larry Belcher won’t take care of Taylor M’s behavior so that we can go about and conduct our business as usual, but he expects me to arrange hospital business department to department like I’m a unit coordinator? The last I read I was the patient receiving treatment and services and Bridge-2 staff were getting paid upwards of $80,000 a year to work and do their jobs not delegate a circus act. If every patient was to conduct their own affairs with (Spiritual Care) to set up appointments with Christy Native American Spiritual advisor what do you think would be the outcome? I don’t really think it looks appropriate either for a patient calling for a staff member. I’m calling Nurse Supervisor Rn Larry Belcher way out of line and setting me up for failure again.
Nurse Supervisor Rn Larry Belcher has many prior misconduct reports and gets shuffled around instead of fired and is a master of getting out of entanglements. The Oregon State Hospital method of abuse known as treatment.
The Native Chaplains we have now are probably some of the best spiritual advisers in the North American countries as the sweat pourer is from B.C. and claims his roots there.
I’m so sorry you’ve been mistreated this way. As a historian, I have nothing to do with today’s practices, of course, but I’m sure there is someplace to report HIPPA violations. When I did research for my master’s degree, I couldn’t even look at records more than 100 years old in some states, because they went overboard on HIPPA protection. It’s there to protect your privacy, for sure.
You have so much to say through your poetry…poetry is not my genre, so I can’t offer any particular advice, but I know that self-publishing can be free or very inexpensive. Have you considered writing enough thematic material for a Kindle book?
Best,
Carla
Diane L. Goeres-Gardner is the mother of career Oregon State Hospital sex offender psychologist Dr. Laurie Lyn Burke. Diane wrote a revealing book “Inside the Oregon State Hospital” breaking patient confidentiality including mine about patient and staff assaults telling one side of my story to the hospital and PSRB’s benefit. Diane L. Goeres-Gardner undeniably had a conflict of interest to be tapping a well where her child worked for the mentally ill and had all access to the evidence and records she used as material in her gold mine. If you don’t call this a conflict of interest and violation of HIPPA rights, patient abuse, and abuse of patient rights then she is to be held with more careless sense of judgment than many that are accused of having judgment on a full blown psychotic break.
They had pushed me over the limit by taking everything away including my religious rights, friendship, and loyalty to my friend on the reservation since that is all I had ever known and cared about was my allegiance to my homeland. I love my ranch and the reservation and people who got screwed over where I grew up.
Every time you try to get involved in Native traditions a lot of these diverse people Mexicans, Filipinos, in the valley won’t help you. I had to have my grounds crew boss that drives a tractor find the sweat lodge form as 3-diverse nurses played possum and refused to help me. They said they didn’t get the email, but the tractor driver got it since Native Services sends it to every 1,100 staff in the hospital.
I am just getting warmed up on these filthy brats too. The two faced cowards in charge here will be getting humiliated in writing over this the longer they play their card and I hope that you can have a book showing and tour here at the mental health museum at the hospital here at (OSH) and maybe in Portland at Powell’s or even in Pendleton out at Tamastlikt at that museum. The light needs to be shed on the way this jerky beef went down. They can score card themselves guilty for not following the freedom of religion acts and go home and ride something besides horses. Every man that died in our warrior memorial died so Orval and I could have jerky on winter solstice. Not for a bogus violence risk assessment. Get the cart before the horse.
Awaken The Dead 2/29/2016
His judgment day was encroaching
An old warrior sat horseback on a grassy knoll
His head was shaved slick and horse adorned eagle feathers
Pony held painted handprints his coup was untold
He didn’t subscribe to any particular side
Whites, Blacks, Yellows, or Reds
If Judgment Day was only verbal hear say
He would cite his sources to awaken the dead
One Native girl’s message ran barrels through his head
A message he yearned for and decided not to unravel
He had not given in to runnin’ for the 1910 whiskey in Pendleton
Broken whiskey bottles cost him the Homedale championship saddle
He wants to be judged for the scores on the chalk boards
He said, “Sir please judge me for the way I still believe in reviving her old ways
Your honor she is my saddle when we didn’t have any cattle to ride back then
Your honor I awaken the dead Presbyterian Indians and ask them for their praise
The Presbyterian Indians have always been in church at the end of our road
I don’t see how they were Presbyterian Indians until you your honor come along
What religion did the Natives practice before they had to come to a judge’s institution
They ate jerky, roots, berries, moss, many types of fish and dried salmon
Here we are in your formal and cozy court room your honor
Proceed your honor and it is in my best interest to let you lead
The psychological perceptions you call evidence is opportunistic strong arm
When I finish this fight I will properly cite and humiliation will make you M. F.’s bleed.
Writing is a wonderful outlet, as your experience today shows.You’ll probably derive more satisfaction from that, over time, than from most other things in your life. I’ve read about the boarding schools, though mostly academic works. They were a shame to all societies.
Best,
Carla
Yes it is great to have this book coming out and Oregon State Hospital is infamous for “One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest” where the Columbia River Indian threw the commode through the wall. Kesey was partial to the Natives out here. Everybody has different views and he romanced them he said or they said about his writings. I wrote this out there on the sweat grounds today.
A Feminine First Nation 2/26/2016
My Cayuse was brilliant using her resilience
Boarding schools stung like the snap of a rubber band
She crossed the back roads to the cottonwood groves
Her reservation kept the beat of (3) bands (Walla Walla-Cayuse-Umatilla)
The Walla Walla hid a predator better
The band you look and never fully discover
Up steep trails of long ago legendary tales
Cougars and bobcats lay hidden In natural color
The Umatilla clever fishing on the river
Cat tails hide them from the enemy
When salmon would run they were blessed ones (CRITFC)
A way of life passed on to eternity
The Cayuse-Nez Perce is crossed with rain and fire
None of the horseman were for 40-acres
My Cayuse has the drive of a spawning salmon
She has the courage of a high seas sailor
My Cayuse was always hanging down inside
She kicked the rib with an outside spur
If you take the time go back in time
Her resilience made my heavenly moments occur
Reflecting on only one reservation girl
A girl that is as good or better
A girl that pulls the chain on my bit
A girl that rides too fast for a prison letter…<3TV
Sitting out in the rain at a picnic table I was in a drumming pow wow group and wrote this poem in 15-minutes then read it to the group drumming it was surreal like a movie set.
Thank you for sharing your poetry–I’m sure it’s a great comfort to you to compose it. I’m so glad you have Native services and the availability of sweat lodges or grounds to use; it shows that there has been at least some advancement in cultural sensitivity since the Canton Asylum opened in 1902. I wish you well in your program and hope you will be blessed with peace and joy.
Best regards,
Carla
Hello I’m in Oregon State Hospital and we have Native services. I beat up a staff for stealing my winter solstice jerky and have paid heavily for it. The jerky was for me and another from the Umatilla Indian Reservation I had been in treatment with in Pendleton. We have sweat grounds here and Native contractors.
I’m a cowboy poet too and write about the reservation and plateau.
The Monkey Wrench 2/24/2016
We weren’t exactly little kids
Cold trackin’ steers to the catch pen
The cowgirl of my dreams rodeoed off into the sunset
For her heartstrings seems I could never win
I put in some hurricane faith and trusted the Walulla winds
I tied my leather reins to her pecker pole fence
All she could comprehend was I wasn’t her kinda Skin
I jumped in the hole with the monkey wrench
The bailin’ wire will give all it has and rust
And the orange balin’ twine will break
The leather is tough and takes no shit
Now tell me y’all who are the flakes
Now I sit here and smell the Walulla paper mill
The air is all polluted for the ticker tape parades
The world is hassle drownin’ in negativity is my castle
Roping reins are now split reins. Oh a game of charades
Word gets around town faster than a sonic boom
You rolled out south to Duck Valley to lay up with a Doc Bar Colt
Walulla wind blow my mama back to Umapine again
We tied our knot hard and fast and now the notion to revolt
I know your business has always been above board
But oh Lord, your Burke regalia is flyin’ like the hawk
Do I even waste my time for some Romeo short-go
Knowing it was runaway Cayuses that I could never stop…<3TV