On a recent trip to the US, writer Karen Gardiner drove New Mexico’s 400-mile (643-kilometer) stretch of Route 66. But instead of chasing kitschy Americana, she sought out the Mother Road’s Indigenous history and experiences—and found a state filled with communities connected to their culture, and open to sharing their traditions with visitors.
As dusk falls, Tucumcari’s neon signs flicker to life across the city. When this stretch of Route 66, through eastern New Mexico, is awash in color it’s easy to see why it’s catnip for lovers of vintage Americana.
Of Tucumcari’s collection of kitschy roadside signs and architecture, most eye-catching is the giant tipi-shaped (conical) entrance to the Tee Pee Curios souvenir store. The thing is, tipis don’t actually belong in the southwest desert. These dwellings are traditional to the Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains.
But the appropriation of Native American culture, from faux trading posts hawking ‘Native Crafts’ made in Asia to motels masquerading as wigwams (typically dome-shaped), is commonplace along America’s iconic ‘Mother Road’.
Stretching 2,448 miles (3,940 kilometers) from Chicago to Los Angeles, US Highway 66 was officially commissioned in 1926 and decommissioned (removed from the U.S. Highway System) in 1985 and replaced by the Interstate Highway System. But for many, Route 66 remains an enduring symbol of freedom and the open road, holding a unique place in the American imagination.
But the route holds a different resonance for the 25 tribal nations whose lands the highway crosses, and their historic trading routes that ‘America’s Main Street’ follows.
To mark Route 66’s centenary, I’m following the highway through New Mexico, the state with the longest stretch. While a continuous road no longer exists, the majority is still drivable and identifiable by brown ‘Historic Route 66’ markers.
But on this trip I’m not looking for a dose of American nostalgia: I’m seeking out New Mexico’s Indigenous stories and experiences. With my guidebook, American Indians and Route 66, published by the American Indian and Alaskan Native Tourism Association (AIANTA), the goal is to experience the well-trodden route in a way that neither ignores, nor commodifies, its Indigenous heritage.
And New Mexico, which is home to 19 Pueblos (Indigenous settlement), three Apache tribes and a third of the Navajo Nation, is the perfect place to start.
“The rise of Route 66, had a complex and multifaceted impact on the Pueblo Peoples. While it provided economic opportunities and increased visibility, it also brought real challenges related to commercialization, appropriation, and potential disruption of traditional practices.”
- Arianna Chavez, Indian Pueblo Cultural Center
By Route 66’s beginnings, after decades of harmful assimilation policy that encouraged, coerced and forced Indigenous people to abandon traditional lifestyles , Native Americans had become mythologized in American culture, says AIANTA’s CEO Sherry Rupert.
According to Rupert, Native Americans “were seen as exotic” by tourists whose expectations were shaped by Hollywood stereotypes, where diverse tribal identities were collapsed into singular representations—often a Plains warrior in a feathered headdress.
“Those images [along Route 66] played off of what people saw in the movies, and really did a disservice to the Native people who are not those depictions,” she says. “It’s been a challenge to change people’s minds about what they think to be true.”
That’s why, she adds, tribal nations along the route are now engaging with the tourism industry to accurately tell their stories. “Because for so long other people have been telling stories for us,” Rupert says.
I leave Tucumcari’s kitsch behind and head west to Albuquerque, settled by the Tiwa people around 1250. There, the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, founded in 1976 by the 19 Pueblos of New Mexico, serves to educate visitors about the Pueblo peoples’ ways of life.
‘Pueblo’ refers to both southwestern settlements and the people who reside there, the descendants of the Anasazi, or Ancestral Puebloans, who lived in the Four Corners region where modern Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet. Each Pueblo is a sovereign nation.
According to Arianna Chavez, the center’s Director of Cultural Education, the Pueblo members of the 70s saw a “need to counter the misconceptions and stereotypes” facing Native peoples.
“The rise of Route 66, had a complex and multifaceted impact on the Pueblo Peoples,” says Chavez. “While it provided economic opportunities and increased visibility, it also brought real challenges related to commercialization, appropriation, and potential disruption of traditional practices”. Some artisans, for example, changed their traditional craftworks to accommodate the tastes of tourists, who sought decorative ‘trinkets’ rather than functional objects.
“But we adapted,” she adds, “and are proud to share the importance of our history and culture with dignity and respect”.
While looking at a display of water jars, I learn how to identify a Pueblo craftsperson by their handwork. Acoma pottery is characterized by fine lines and geometric patterns, while Picuris and Taos artisans use mica, which gives their pottery a metallic shimmer. “Although we’re all Pueblo people, each Pueblo is very distinct in their own way,” says Chavez.
From Albuquerque, I watch the Sandia Mountains recede and the wide open spaces of the high desert open up as I head north to Santa Fe, known as Oga Po’geh (“White Shell Water Place”) to the Tewa people who settled the area around 900 CE.
In 1937 Route 66 was rerouted away from Santa Fe in order to cut travel time, but I choose to drive the original alignment because there are two concurrent Native fashion weeks happening: Native Fashion Week Santa Fe and SWAIA Fashion Week.
I’ve never seen anything quite like Sky City. Its singularity just confirms for me that the reality of Route 66 is so much more interesting than its stereotypes.
Here I watch on as Indigenous designers reclaim their place in contemporary fashion. “This is the original design language of America,” says Native Fashion Week Santa Fe organizer Amber Bear Robe.
She says this during a show being held on board a train as it rolls through the desert at sunset. Models glide through moving carriages dressed in Ojibwe designer Nonamey’s fringed buckskin jackets and fitted, collared dresses adorned with geometric patterns, followed by the glam structured gowns by Jason Baerg (Métis tribal nation) of Ayimach Horizons. The event itself is an act of reclamation: The train tracks largely parallel what would become Route 66, a turning point in the colonization of Native homelands.
From the 365-foot (111-meter) mesa (a flat-topped hill typical of western and southwestern USA) named Sky City, my view stretches far across the shrub-spotted desert floor all the way to Mount Taylor, also known as sacred Tsoodzil or ‘blue-beaded mountain’ to the Pueblos of Acoma, Laguna, and Zuni, and the Hopi and Navajo tribal nations.
The Acoma people made their way to Sky City, in western New Mexico, from the ancient sites of Chaco Canyon (around 100 miles north) and Mesa Verde (around 250 miles north) and have lived here since 1,100 CE, which the Acoma say makes it North America’s longest continuously inhabited community. “We always believed that home was going to be on top of a mesa,” my Acoma guide Gail Toribio explains. “Because that meant being closer to the heavens.”
Elevation brought another advantage: The Puebloans could see the winds of change as they approached, from Spanish conquistadors on horseback to the tourists who arrived by train.
According to Acoma historian Brandon ‘Turtle’ Valdo, who I meet while perusing prized pieces of white clay Acoma pottery in the Pueblo’s Haakú Museum, the arrival of tourism brought economic benefits to the community. Native artisans were able to sell their crafts directly to passing tourists. “They would get up early, set up along the road and just wait,” he explains. But the increasing numbers of visitors also brought problems.
“We’re very hospitable people,” says Valdo. “But some took that kindness for weakness and started stealing things.” Acoma Pueblo’s solution, in 1988, was to take control of tourist traffic. Since then, visits to Sky City are strictly limited to the tour buses that depart from the museum, and no-one is allowed to separate from their guided group.
Earlier, I’d watched Toribio repeatedly reel in members of my group who’d wandered off. I’d shaken my head at their apparent disrespect but then, looking around at the mesa settlement’s low-slung adobe and sandstone structures almost touching the blue sky, I’d felt similarly awed and curious.
I’ve never seen anything quite like Sky City. Its singularity just confirms for me that the reality of Route 66 is so much more interesting than its stereotypes.
And that’s the message that Rupert hopes AIANTA’s guide imparts on travelers. “There are 574 federally recognized tribes in the US” she says, “even traveling along Route 66, you’re going to see that diversity of cultures.” And no more so than in New Mexico, which is home to 23 of the 25 Indigenous nations who live along Route 66.
I ask Rupert what she wants travelers to get out of an Indigenous-focused trip along Route 66. “To understand that we’re not a historic people,” she answers. “We’re not just a likeness on a sign. We are still here.”
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Karen is a freelance writer from Scotland, whose articles have appeared in publications including Condé Nast Traveler, BBC Travel, The Guardian and Canadian Geographic Travel. She is particularly drawn to remote places, the far North and cold islands.
