Posts Tagged ‘Flowing Waters Navajo Casino’

9
Dec

‘Champion’ fry bread maker serves up traditional faire at Navajo casino

   Posted by: admin    in Fry bread, gambling, Native business, Navajo

Helen Moore, 70, shapes dough for fry bread at Flowing Water Navajo Casino on Nov. 10, in Hogback, N.M. (The Daily Times, Rebecca Craig, Associated Press)

Helen Moore, 70, shapes dough for fry bread at Flowing Water Navajo Casino on Nov. 10, in Hogback, N.M. (The Daily Times, Rebecca Craig, Associated Press)


Before she was dubbed “Champion Fry Bread Maker” at the Flowing Water Navajo Casino in New Mexico, Helen Moore, 70, was a postal worker, a teacher and worked from the Bureau of Indian Education. She was a bilingual teacher and worked seasonally at an agricultural products business.

Now her days are spent carefully crafting the traditional favorite in the most authentic of ways, as the Deseret News reports. She is one of two chefs that are on full-time fry bread duty at the new casino.

Moore learned the craft as a child and now will help Flowing Waters fill its more than 400 orders for the treat each day. She can measure the recipe by sight and knows just how well the fry bread goes with mutton stew, another favorite at the casino. It’s something she made for her sister and brothers, then taught her children the recipe so they could keep the tradition alive.

Moore holds this process close to her heart.

    The process of making fry bread is deeper than clocking in for work every morning, however, Moore said.

    “A lot of it is your mood,” she said while stretching a ball of dough in preparation of dropping it into the deep fryer. “If you’re angry or upset, the dough will not cooperate. If you come to work frustrated, the dough won’t come out good. It’s best if you’re in a good mood. The dough will be soft.”

    Though working hand-in-hand to produce jobs and revenue in Hogback, casinos and fry bread share an unappetizing history.

    The Navajo people began making fry bread when they were forced off their sacred land in the Four Corners in 1863 and were rationed government supplies of flour, salt, baking powder, lard and water.

Jenna Cederberg

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26
Sep

Indian Country Sunday Brunch – Flathead centennial. Pine Ridge voting. Art patron dies. First Nations schools. New Navajo casino.

   Posted by: admin    in Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Education, First Nations, Flathead Indian Reservation, Indian gaming, Native art, Navajo, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation

David Steindorf starts the Massey Ferguson tractor his father bought in 1961 – and which Steindorf still uses – as his brother Jim watches recently at their place near Charlo. The Steindorfs’ grandfather, Albert, homesteaded the land when the Flathead Indian Reservation was opened up to non-Indians 100 years ago. Photo by TOM BAUER/Missoulian

David Steindorf starts the Massey Ferguson tractor his father bought in 1961 – and which Steindorf still uses – as his brother Jim watches recently at their place near Charlo. The Steindorfs’ grandfather, Albert, homesteaded the land when the Flathead Indian Reservation was opened up to non-Indians 100 years ago. Photo by TOM BAUER/Missoulian


Flathead Indian Reservation sees centennial of white settlement
Joe McDonald, whose father sold off two allotments to pay for his brother's casket. (Tom Bauer/Missoulian)

Joe McDonald, whose father sold off two allotments to pay for his brother's casket. (Tom Bauer/Missoulian)

This year marks the centennial of homesteading on the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana, a painful time that saw much of the reservation’s Indian land sold off to non-Natives. In today’s Missoulian, Vince Devlin has a pair of stories told from both the perspective of the Salish, Kootenai and Pend d’Oreille tribes who watched their lands vanish, and from that of the whites who moved there, often not knowing how those lands were obtained. “They were certainly brave souls,” Joe McDonald says of the homesteaders. “Most came in and didn’t know the politics” behind the opening of the reservation to non-Indians. McDonald’s own father sold off two of the family’s tribal allotments to pay for a casket for his little brother. The situation led to the tribes becoming minorities on their own lands.

Voting site set for Shannon County, S.D., and Pine Ridge Reservation residents
It looks as though a plan has been worked out for voting in Shannon County, S.D., home to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The Rapid City Journal reports that beginning Tuesday, Shannon County voters can cast ballots for the upcoming general election at the county’s Lakota Language Program office in the old hospital at Pine Ridge.

Advocate for Native American art dies
The New York Times says Ralph T. Coe, “played a central role in the revival of interest in Native American art, from the ancient to the modern.” Coe – known as Ted — headed the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo., from 1977 until 1982. He was 81 when he died Sept. 14 at his home in Santa Fe, N.M.

First Nations chiefs protest deplorable school conditions
The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs helped lead a demonstration in Winnipeg Friday to protest problems at schools in First Nations communities. The group said that schools in three Manitoba First Nations are closed, while others are overcrowded, and that the buildings are moldy and deteriorating, according to the Vancouver Sun.

Second Navajo Nation casino to open Oct. 13
The Navajo Nation Gaming Enterprise has announced that the Flowing Waters Navajo Casino will open Oct. 13. Gaming there will be more limited than at the Fire Rock Navajo Casino, according to the Navajo Times. There will be no card games and slot machine players compete against each other instead of against the house, the story says.

Gwen Florio

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