Stretching from Chicago to Santa Monica, the road passes through Native lands for much of its length – yet Indigenous voices have long been overlooked. Now, First Nation communities are reclaiming their place along the Mother Road, reshaping how travellers understand and experience the legendary highway.
In a low-rise strip mall in suburban Tulsa, the scent of sizzling bison drifts from the kitchen each time the door swings open. Inside Nātv – a quietly radical restaurant that opened in 2022 – sprigs of native grass from the Great Plains, juniper berries and sunchokes line the slate-grey walls. Across the table from me, chef Jacque Siegfried, who is of Shawnee descent, reflects on the culinary gap she’s trying to bridge. “It’s still really hard to find Native American restaurants around here,” she says, her navy-and-purple hair swept into a high topknot.
We’re just a couple of miles from Route 66, the most iconic of American roads, which turns 100 this year. But instead of searching for vintage diners and neon signs, I’ve come to follow the route west from Oklahoma to New Mexico and see it through a different lens – one shaped by the Indigenous communities that have long existed alongside it.
More than half of Route 66 passes through or runs alongside self-governed Native American lands, sometimes called Indian Country. Yet Indigenous-owned businesses remain strikingly rare along the route.
That gap is what led Siegfried to open Nātv. Drawing on her classical French culinary training and her Shawnee heritage, she crafts refined dishes that “bring Indigenous food and local ingredients to the forefront”, she says, as the low hum of the traffic carries in from the nearby highway.
From Chicago to Santa Monica, Route 66 traces one of the US’s most famous cross-country journeys.
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