Today, Yazzie’s work is focused on reviving the ingredients central to Diné cuisine before The Long Walk. The survivors invented fry bread as a source of nourishment from the flour and lard given to them by their captors. The remaining 9,000 people were confined to a 40-square mile plot of land that resembled an internment camp and could not support the traditional Diné crops of corn, beans, and squash. The 18-day, 300-mile journey claimed the lives of 200 Diné people. It carries resonances of home, family, and nostalgia, but its origins are rooted in strife: Fry bread is the product of The Long Walk, the forced relocation of the Diné people from Arizona to New Mexico in 1864.

Many Diné people grow up eating it at home, where their mothers and grandmothers prepared it for them. In the encyclopedia of Indigenous food, perhaps one of the most recognizable dishes is fry bread. Survival staples have a complicated history. That means eschewing what he calls “survival staples” - flour, sugar, salt, and lard - ingredients introduced to Indigeous tribes by white settlers. The chef, who is now based in Minneapolis, has spent most of his professional career rebuilding the very concept of Indigenous cuisine. Yazzie immediately took to his social media channels, calling on people to donate wild game and fresh produce. A memory came to me of looking through my ancestors, thinking this was what we had to cook with for survival.” Canned vegetables from the ‘60s or the ‘80s that people had donated. “There were rows of flour on the left side, and the right side, rows of lard cans and crisco.

“I realized how that ancestral memory and trauma manifests,” he recalls. Yazzie will never forget what he saw when he opened the pantry on his first day of orientation at the protests. “With a couple of volunteers, were cooking three meals a day for over 2,500 people.” He’s the founder of Intertribal Foodways, a mobile catering company. Yazzie is Navajo, or Diné, the tribe’s preferred name, which means “the people” in their language. “My front line was in the kitchen,” Yazzie tells me.

Fry bread native american story