New Delhi, June 22 -- The moment the hot, puffy, golden flatbread is laid out in front of us, almost too large for our plate, we are reminded of the bhaturas back home. Topped with chopped tomatoes, lettuce and beans, this is the iconic Navajo frybread.

We are at Goulding's Stagecoach Dining Room, beside Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park in southern Utah. The eatery carries a century of history, and is named after one of the Western classic films-a genre, which for decades, had shaped popular stereotypes of the white cowboy hero and the Native American "tribal".

The setting could easily belong to one of those cowboy classics: the American Southwest's red-rock landscape stretching to the horizon, and vast mesas and sandstone buttes risi...