Frybread making personal for Maulson

Menominee woman enjoys how it makes people feel and loves how it tastes
By: 
Lee Pulaski
City Editor

Many a pow wow or cultural event for Native American tribes has the sight of golden, round bread somewhere, often heaped with taco fixings, honey or other foods.

Lorna Maulson of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin knows the frybread all too well. Many times, she’s the one making the bread and cooking it up for people at various events. She recently lended her talents to Wolf River Lutheran High School, cooking up over 150 pieces of frybread to be sold at a taco luncheon fundraiser for the parochial school.

“I’m constantly asked to make frybread for some kind of event,” Maulson said. “It seems like almost every week someone asks me.”

On the morning of Sept. 11, as she was talking about frybread and how it’s made, she dropped a piece of dough into a pan filled with cooking oil. The dough immediately sizzled and started to turn dark. She took out the burnt dough and said that the oil was too hot, and with the help of her husband, Dennis, the oil soon cooled to a point where the bread could be cooked in a fast and efficient way but didn’t turn it into edible charcoal.

The history of frybread goes back to when the United States government took control of Native American ancestral lands and herded the people onto reservations. Instead of the crops and animals they usually depended on for sustenance and survival, Native Americans were given flour and other basic materials to make the food they needed. Those materials were made into the frybread that people enjoy today.

“In 1864, the Navajos invented frybread from the surplus given to them of flour, salt and lard,” Maulson said.

Although many Native Americans denounce the notion that frybread is a part of their culture, others see the food as a way of surviving tragedy, and the frybread has become a symbol of tribes’ resilience. Maulson said frybread is commonly accepted, and she sees it even as a “treat.”

“It was a treat to everybody,” Maulson said. “Later on, it was served with butter, sugar and cinnamon. There are other things you can put onto it — powdered sugar and more.”

The frybread was taken to pow wows, she said, and that is how the Indian tacos were created. Even though it was softer than a traditional taco shell and thicker than a standard tortilla, a person could easily heap seasoned meat, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, onions and anything else that makes for a tasty taco.

“Taco meat was added to the frybread, but I add all kinds of stuff to it,” Maulson said. “I’ve made pizzas with frybread. We’ve put hot dogs with frybread. You can do anything with frybread.”

The tacos are still the favorite, though, but Maulson can see why, as America loves tacos of all kinds, coining terms like taco Tuesdays.

“When you add them to a frybread, that makes it more tasty,” Maulson said. “It’s filling, and if a person eats two tacos, that makes me happy because they’re filling.”

One time, a lady asked Maulson to put an Oreo into the frybread.

“That was my strangest request ever,” Maulson said. “I didn’t enjoy it because I’d rather have an Oreo in milk, but she really liked it. I made her two, and she ate them.”

Maulson likes to combine flour, sugar, salt and baking powder with her frybread, but everybody has their own ways, even within her own tribe.

“Each tribe has put their own way of making it,” Maulson said, noting that the Ojibwe tribe, which her husband hails from, makes the frybread without sugar. “It depends on what you like. I like the sugar.”

Maulson wanted to learn how to make frybread when she was younger, and she went to a class taught by a Fanny LeMay, who taught her the basics. It wasn’t until she met Dennis and his mother that she got the chance to make it full time.

“She was heavily involved with the pow wows,” Maulson said. “I learned a little more from her how to make big amounts like I do. My mother-in-law taught me, more or less, what I know about frybread.”

Maulson noted that she learned to put a hole in the middle of the frybread just before she puts it in the oil to cook, learning from her mother-in-law that it’s supposed to keep bad spirits away.

For Maulson, it takes about a half-hour for the bread to rise enough to prepare it for cooking. Measuring cups and spoons are not required for her, as she often puts handfuls of the dry ingredients into the bowl. It still comes out just fine for her, she said.

Maulson hopes to teach her grandchildren how to make frybread, but she feels that it will be better once they are older. Even though the bread did not exist until the 19th century, Maulson feels it should remain a part of tribal culture, as it has a way of bringing people together through its taste.

“I really love frybread,” Maulson said. “My kids love it. To me, it’s a treat. It’s a symbol of our nationality. I love to see people enjoying it.”


lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com