At the forefront is the American Indigenous Tourism Association (AIT), whose free-to-download American Indians & Route 66 guide highlights the vibrant diversity of Native cultures along and near the route. Highlights include the Hopi Arts Trail in Arizona, home to craft studios producing traditional pottery and basketry, and the annual Oklahoma Indian Nations Powwow that features singing, gourd dancing and drumming contests.
According to AIT’s CEO, Sherry L Rupert, a broader interest in Indigenous-led tourism has sparked a rise in travellers seeking to visit Native American sites more respectfully, often with questions about appropriate conduct. “We often got questions about correct terms and acceptable behaviours,” she explains. “So we came up with 15 protocols to help.” Among them: filming ceremonies in the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona is strictly prohibited. “If a tourist didn’t know this, they’d be surprised if their phone were taken off them,” Rupert adds.
Beyond roadside stereotypes
On Rupert’s advice, I continue driving west to the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City, passing looming 20ft (6m) Muffler Man statues and rainbow-painted motels along the way. The museum finally opened in 2021 after a 15-year construction journey. Built on the site of a former oil field, the striking structure – with a sloped roof designed to resemble a soaring bird – chronicles the histories and cultures of Oklahoma’s 39 federally recognized tribal nations.
Waiting to greet me at the entrance is Summer Mitchell, an associate at the museum, wearing a denim jacket pinned with a badge that reads: “Columbus didn’t discover anything“. She guides me through the sleek, high-tech galleries, where immersive exhibits explore the intersection between Route 66 and the Trail of Tears, in which thousands of Indigenous people were forcibly displaced between 1830 and 1850. In some places, their route overlaps with the later-built highway, now travelled by tourists in RVs.
We pause at a cabinet filled with caricatures: Pocahontas Halloween costumes; dime-store trinkets of cartoonish chiefs; even a toy monkey wearing a feathered headdress and mechanically banging a drum. “A lot of this misrepresentation makes fun of us. In the past we couldn’t always speak up for ourselves, but we can now,” she says, gesturing with a hand across to the opposite wall. There, contemporary works – like the cover of Arigon Starr’s Super Indian comic and a photo by Reservation Dogs writer Ryan RedCorn – reclaim the narrative.
At Oklahoma City’s First Americans Museum, works by Indigenous artists help place Route 66 within a much longer Native history.
READ MORE ON THE NEXT PAGE..
