Columbus’ Native American Food Truck Shares Culture and Builds Community

The fry bread comes topped with both butter and wojapi, a Native American berry sauce that is beautifully squiggled across the top of the pillowy dough from edge to edge. I realize my mistake of not opting for the sauce only after placing my order, but I get the chance to correct that decision when Ty Smith looks down from the serving window and asks if I’d like some. I nod enthusiastically.

“Yeah, you do,” he says with a smile.

Smith’s NAICCO Cuisine fits right in with the more than 30 food trucks and trailers lined up in downtown Newark for the city’s annual food truck festival. The words “Native American Street Food” appear boldly on the side of the art-covered trailer while seven colorful flags ripple in the mid-May breeze.

NAICCO stands for the Native American Indian Center of Central Ohio, and the organization’s food trailer has been rolling across the region since 2020 under the care of Ty and Masami Smith. NAICCO’s mission is to support Native Americans living in central Ohio through a variety of initiatives, and its food trailer operates under the same three pillars that the organization does: community, culture and economic development.

“More of our people, a great majority of them, are far from their homelands,” Ty Smith says of Native Americans who have traveled to central Ohio for jobs, college and family. “Accessing culture and community that they are commonly used to in their native homelands, on their reservations, isn’t readily available in places like Ohio.”

The Smiths moved to Ohio in 1996 with their daughter and soon-to-be-born son from the 640,000-acre Warm Springs Reservation in central Oregon, which is home to a confederation of the Warm Springs, Wasco and Paiute tribes. When they arrived in Columbus, they got involved with NAICCO, which was led at the time by its founder, Selma Sully-Walker. The Smiths became the third set of directors in 2011, with Ty as project director and Masami as executive director. Shortly after they took their posts, NAICCO was awarded several grants to create a blueprint for future initiatives. After collecting opinions from the group’s members, NAICCO Cuisine was born.

“The guiding source of all this has been the people’s voice,” Ty Smith says. “[We’re] trying to do everything we can to champion that and do our due diligence to hold true to the way that we’re seeing the consensus of our people’s voice come toward us.”

The people behind NAICCO are represented by the flags displayed across the top of the trailer. The banners bear names like Makah Indian Nation, Collville Confederated Tribes and Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. The seven flags flying on any given day represent the heritage of those working the truck at that time. They also serve to represent the makeup of the community and to honor people like organization founder Sully-Walker and Mark and Carol Welsh, who oversaw NAICCO prior to the Smiths.

NAICCO Cuisine’s menu is small, accessible and packed with flavor. Along with the fry bread, the menu has a one-third-pound bison burger with a side of corn salad, an NDN taco served on fry bread and an NDN taco bowl. (“NDN” is a shorthand term Native Americans in the United States sometimes use to refer to themselves.) The exterior of the food trailer is decorated with works by five different artists that reflect Native American culture. During the winter months when the truck is parked, the NAICCO Cuisine team hosts events showcasing intertribal platters of Native American foods.

“It paints the picture in a modern context,” Ty Smith says. “Yet, it can show that we haven’t forgotten, we haven’t let go, we haven’t lost those certain parts and pieces to who we are.”

To learn more about NAICCO and where to find NAICCO Cuisine, visit naicco.com.