A Brother’s Tribute

Dining with CJ Bernal at Dawn Butterfly Cafe

By Susanna Space

It was July 2020, the height of the pandemic, when the call came from New Mexico. Carpio J. I. (CJ) Bernal’s sister, Coral Dawn Bernal, had been found dead. CJ, who had grown up on Taos Pueblo, was with his mother’s family in Chilliwack, British Columbia. The US border was closed to all but essential travel, but he had to get home.

As he made his way to his family, CJ learned more about Coral’s death. The cause was a heart arrhythmia, but the family suspected negligence on the part of the Indian Health Service and the police. They called for a thorough investigation into the cause of Coral’s death, and a lawsuit followed. “They just didn’t do their job,” he told me when we talked in December.

The family held press conferences and drew up a list of demands, calling for justice for Coral. But the work took a toll. So CJ began to imagine something different: the creation of an arts center to honor Coral’s memory. The center would also preserve the legacy of CJ and Coral’s late grandfather, Paul Bernal, who fought for justice of a different kind: the 1970 return of Blue Lake, forty-eight thousand acres of Taos Pueblo land taken by the US government at the turn of the twentieth century.

Growing up on the pueblo, CJ knew hard work. Beginning in his early teens, he worked at restaurants in Taos, eventually becoming sous-chef at Deija. There he learned the fundamentals of culinary work, preparing him to cook in restaurants and cafés from New York to Colorado to Canada. In New Orleans he learned about Southern cuisine; working in Los Angeles helped him master vegetarian cooking. All the while, he pursued modern dance and choreography, work he hardly mentioned when we spoke. But that his passions don’t end with food isn’t surprising given the creativity that abounds in his family—his parents are artists, and Coral, who studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, was a prolific poet who received a Native Writers Award through the Taos Summer Writers’ Conference.

“It is definitely unexpected when people come in here,” CJ told me about Dawn Butterfly Cafe’s location inside his parents’ shop, House of Water Crow & Red Coral Flower. The month before, I’d visited the pueblo, and after an horno bread-baking session under a deep blue autumn sky, I crossed over the stream that flows between the clusters of adobe dwellings. A chair upholstered in gold and the scent of woodsmoke drew me toward the shop and café. Inside, the shop featured sculptures and carvings. A drum nearly as high as the ceiling stood against the wall beside a roaring fire.

What lay beyond, though, was indeed unexpected: a café space whose chalkboard was fully worthy of a big-city bistro. The list spanned from cortados to chai lattes to a dreamy tea menu offering clove, nettle, and yerba maté blends. A long table beside a second fireplace was lit with candles and decorated with dried flowers perched in architectural steel vases. On the far end of the kitchen area was an illustration of a butterfly with a QR code printed beneath it. Beside that, above the small residential-style stove, hung a close-up photograph of a sunlight-splashed Coral, the image blurred, like a still from a dream.

The meal at Dawn Butterfly Cafe began with CJ’s father performing on the drum as we settled into our seats beside the fire. Hot hand-blended tea was set before us, a sprig of fresh mint on top, along with a mascarpone butternut squash soup and a delicious spinach salad with plum vinaigrette made from locally preserved fruit. CJ and two helpers, Sequoia Lefthand and Rannon Jiron, presented the dishes gently and unpretentiously, proffering plate after beautiful plate. When I learned about CJ’s time as a dancer and dance company director, his attention to arrangement made sense; there is a deliberateness to his movements, a sure hand, a performer’s calm.

If that had been the end of the experience, it would have been remarkable. But that was just a preview. Next came a bright pink mocktail made with chokecherry, orange, and honey; a dish of rich and textured blue cornmeal with chokecherry honey sauce and fresh berries; succotash with cedar-smoked salmon and honey goat cheese; and a dessert of blue corn lemon cake with bee pollen, accompanied by a lightly sweetened cortado. As the courses flowed and the burners hissed behind the counter, I exchanged glances with the other women around the table. This meal was far more than an opportunity to taste CJ’s cooking. This was an experience, an honor, a gift.

“This has not been an easy ride for me,” CJ told me later, recalling the process of getting the restaurant up and running. “This has been a lot of work, a lot of thinking, and a lot of planning.” The perseverance and grit he’s put in go far beyond the typical hassles and headaches of launching a business. Dawn Butterfly sits in the heart of Taos Pueblo, within a UNESCO World Heritage Site where electricity and running water are prohibited, and the tapering COVID restrictions that caused the pueblo to shut down to visitors for two years has made the process unpredictable. And then there is the grief of losing Coral. Any of it could easily have thwarted a less determined chef from attempting what CJ has created here. And yet.

To make the current location work, CJ applied for and won an economic development grant that allowed him to invest in lithium batteries to power the café, as well as refrigeration and an espresso machine. But working inside his parents’ shop is only the beginning for CJ. Another infusion of grant money allowed him to purchase shipping containers, which he’ll use to build a permanent space for Dawn Butterfly on Veterans Highway. Adjacent to the café, a center for art and literature honoring Coral Dawn and Paul Bernal will offer resources to tribal members. CJ plans to break ground on the new location this spring.

Until then, CJ will offer his café menu, hold special dinners to raise funds for the arts center, and cater events. Asked about how he plans to develop his menu over time, CJ says he’d love to create dishes made with only traditional Native foods, but the cost is too high for that, at least right now. So he’ll continue to serve meals that fuse traditional and modern culinary techniques and highlight local and traditional ingredients, like preserved fruit compotes, blue corn, and sage. The café will work with another Taos Pueblo–based business, Red Willow Farm, for access to local produce.

With everything he does, CJ keeps in mind the sister whose image watches over the kitchen, her features striking in their similarities to his. “We haven’t given up yet,” CJ says of the fight for justice and accountability for Coral. Last year, talks began with filmmakers to create a movie about the case. It’s hard to know what the outcome will be, but it seems certain her legacy will remain strong in her brother’s hands.

Taos Pueblo, 575-770-5852, dawnbutterfly.com; check taos.org/explore/landmarks/taos-pueblo and taospueblo.com for the pueblo’s current admission prices and hours.