They can have my bread when they pry it from my cold, cholesterol ridden fingers.

Suzan Shown Harjo is protesting frybread. Don't get me wrong, I love Harjo, she's done some really great things. Her work on the mascot issue is first rate. Great woman. But I really love frybread.

I think there's something in the native metabolism that turns goofy over sugar and carbs. Type II diabetes is twice as common amongst Indians than it is in the general population, much of which is due to the diet available to people on the rez: sugars and starches. But a lot of it is that native people seem to go goofy over sugar and carbs. My grandfather is an ice cream junkie, he'd probably sell his soul for a case of drumsticks. My big vices are Mountain Dew and blonde women. So I live the stereotype, get off my back about it. I love the sugar, and I am what is politely known as a carb junkie. Beats heroin, I guess.

Frybread isn't technically a "traditional" food, as it depends on flour which was not available in the pre-contact world, but then many things which are now more or less traditional were introduced by Europeans. Things like horses, sheep, and frybread. The popular notion seems to be that Indian cultures should somehow be frozen in amber, preserved at the precise moment Columbus made landfall. But like all cultures Indians societies are living, growing entities which are constantly changing and adapting; regalia is now made using modern fabrics, the horse has become an integral part of numerous tribes, and certainly we've had a little luck using firearms.

But really, I just love frybread.