V&T Daily
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southern exposure
By Merran White.
Published in the January-March 2012 issue.
Whether you’re trying on handmade jewellery at an open-air market or marvelling at prehistoric high-rise homes, Native American culture permeates the southwest U.S. states of New Mexico and Arizona.
America’s southwest states of Arizona and New Mexico are known for their dramatic desert landscapes: oversized cacti, red-rock pinnacles and vast canyons. They’re also the favoured stomping ground of around two-dozen Native American tribes. Get a taste for the richness and diversity of the region’s indigenous cultures on a whistlestop tour of 10 of its top attractions – colourful markets and fascinating museums, ancient pueblos and stirring festivals that meld centuries-old tradition with thriving contemporary culture.
Arizona: Heard Museum
With a focus on the indigenous people, art and artefacts of the American southwest, the Heard Museum in Phoenix (and, if you’re heading that way, its offshoot in North Scottsdale) offers an excellent introduction to the diverse Native American culture of the region. The main museum has 10 exhibition galleries, an art space and outdoor sculpture gardens, best explored on a free guided tour. Temporary displays often showcase contemporary indigenous culture – a recent exhibition was dedicated to vintage and modern bolo ties – Arizona’s official state neckwear. If you’re peckish, the Heard’s acclaimed onsite café serves up southwest specialities; you can also buy authentic pieces from the trading-post-style shops on site.
Arizona: Hopi Cultural Center and Old Oraibi Mesas
Recent excavations near Tucson unearthed pit houses dating back four millennia belonging to the ancestral Puebloans – hisatsinom to the Hopi – who once inhabited cities and cliff dwellings throughout northern Arizona. On the 610,000-hectare Hopi Reservation, a dozen villages grouped into a trio of awe-inspiring mesas (isolated hills with three steep sides) loom 2,200 metres above sea level, affording extraordinary vistas of the surrounding low-lying desert.
Traditionally agricultural, spiritual and reserved, the Hopi tribe is bound by clan, residing in self-governing villages and hosting frequent religious ceremonies accompanied by Katsina dances, most open to the public, though photography and video recordings are forbidden.
Old Oraibi, the most westerly Hopi pueblo, is believed to be the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in North America – 100 generations, by the Hopi’s calculations. Established in 1,100 A.D., the stacked-room, multi-level residential complex is constructed around a central courtyard and is an extraordinary feat of prehistoric engineering.
First Mesa Consolidated Villages runs tours of their settlement, taking in historic high-rise villages including Walpi, with its celebrated potters and katsina doll-makers. Katsina are “spirit” figurines, intricately carved from cottonwood root and used as tools to teach young Hopi girls traditional lore (a fabulously fierce “hero woman” has just one ear and a tuft of bright-blue hair).
Drop in at Hopi Cultural Center and to Second-Mesa villages Shungopavi, Sipaulvi and Mishongnovi to see residents crafting beautiful coiled baskets and their own versions of katsina. Don’t miss the Third Mesa, where women weave ceremonial multi-hued wicker baskets and plaques, some for sale through local craft markets (or directly to you).
Arizona: Navajo Interactive Museum and Code Talker Exhibit
The number four is integral to Navajo tradition, representing the nation’s first four clans, symbolic colours (black, blue, yellow and white), four sacred mountains and the directions in which they lie. In Tuba City, the Navajo Interactive Museum is likewise organised into four quadrants, each housing tribal relics and artefacts, imaginative recreations and explanations of Navajo history, practices and philosophy – everything from the crucial role of sheep in their agricultural prowess to the creepy legend of the spider woman.
An adjacent exhibition details the key part Navajo “code talkers” made in outwitting the enemy in WWII. It’s a marvellous microcosm of Navajo culture, society and accomplishments, and a terrific introduction to this powerful Native American nation. Museum staff are happy to give tour-planning tips and point you towards Navajo sites, events and attractions.
Arizona: Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park
Driving past the bizarrely-shaped buttes and fragile spires of Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, eroded by wind and water over millions of years, you’d be forgiven for imagining you’re in Back to the Future’s DeLorean. The park, part of the massive Navajo reservation in northeast Arizona, is scattered with ancient petroglyphs (rock art) and evidence of early inhabitants. At Navajo National Monument, look up to see an extraordinary honeycomb of dwellings carved into the pine-studded ochre cliff-face by ancestral Puebloans; near Canyon de Chelly National Monument, gaze down on centuries-old cliff dwellings and the valley where Navajo have lived and herded sheep for aeons.
From the visitor centre, get a glorious panorama of Mitten and Merrick buttes, or take a Navajo-guided jeep tour into the valley to visit landmarks including the evocatively named Ear of the Wind (an ochre-hued rock pierced by a large hole). Over summer, you can also dine here at Haskenneini Restaurant, specialising in native Navajo and American cuisines. Nearby, roadside Navajo hawkers sell native foods, arts, crafts and souvenirs. Stop in at the Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site, established in 1878, to stock up on hand-woven Navajo rugs and authentic arts and crafts.
New Mexico: Santa Fe Indian Market
Organised by non-profit group Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA), the annual Santa Fe Indian Market has been running for around 90 years. Occupying 14 blocks of the city’s historic central plaza in late August, it’s a massive showcase for handcrafted works by some 1,100 artisans from 100 federally recognised tribes from around the region.
Be prepared to jostle – the market and associated arts festival draws more than 100,000 buyers, gallery owners and collectors from all over the world. Stroll among 600-odd stalls packed with traditional and modern Native American jewellery, pottery, textiles, paintings, kachinas (wooden carvings), baskets, drums and more, chatting to the artists while you walk. Be there Friday night to view the Best in Show; Saturday (early) if you’re a serious collector – die-hards camp out next to their favourite artists’ booths – and Sunday morning for the Native American Clothing Contest, the Market’s most photographed event. And bring an appetite, as all that art is accompanied by an array of traditional and contemporary Native American foods, from fry bread to roast lamb and corn, as well as live performances and film screenings.
Widely regarded as the world’s largest, most prestigious native arts market, the event is your chance to view thousands of Native American works in one spot and, if you can afford it, buy treasured tribal pieces direct from their makers, some of whom have been selling their wares here for decades.
New Mexico: Santa Fe Museums
Santa Fe bristles with top-notch Native American museums. Start your education on Museum Hill at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, showcasing southwest art, past and present; and at the adjacent Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, with its superb art exhibits, library and family-friendly daytime adventures. The Institute of American Indian Arts Museum on Cathedral Place is a must-see for contemporary and traditional art, much of it from up-and-coming Native American artists.
Then head for Santa Fe Plaza and the fantastic Palace of the Governors’ Native American art program, where you can buy authenticated jewellery, pottery and other arts and crafts made from traditional materials and chat with more than 900 artisans representing 40 southwestern tribes, pueblos, villages and chapters.
New Mexico: Jicarilla Apache Nation
Deep in the mountains of northern New Mexico is the Jicarilla Apache Nation, a tribe known for its hunting skills and exquisite craftsmanship. In Spanish, the name Jicarilla means “little basket maker” and, even today, tribal artisans create superb handwoven baskets as well as colourful traditional beadwork and clay ceramics – on show at Jicarilla Arts and Crafts Shop where you can also watch artisans at work. Bone up on Jicarilla culture and history at nearby Jicarilla Culture Center.
If you can, be here on the third weekend of July for the Little Beaver Roundup celebration, with its exuberant pow-wow, parade and carnival, Pro-Indian Rodeo and pony express race; or mid-September for the Go-Jii-Ya feast held at Stone Lake, near Dulce, with foot races, a pow-wow and a country-style rodeo.
Keen to commune with nature? Upscale, Apache-run The Lodge at Chama makes a great base for fly-fishing, horse-riding and hiking. It also offers ranch tours and, for those with the stomach for it, hunting – an equal drawcard at Horse Lake Mesa Game Park, which claims the biggest elk enclosure in America. Or simply cast a line into one of the area’s five tranquil mountain lakes.
New Mexico: Petroglyph National Monument
The rock faces and caverns of Arizona and New Mexico are etched with petroglyphs – images carved by the area’s early Native American and Hispanic inhabitants. You can see fine examples around Arizona, at Rock Art Canyon Ranch, south of Winslow, in Petrified Forest National Park and at Signal Hill in Tucson’s Saguaro National Park West; around V-Bar-V Ranch near Sedona; and north of Phoenix at Deer Valley Rock Art Center.
Just outside New Mexico’s largest city, Albuquerque, Petroglyph National Monument preserves archaeological sites, fissure volcanoes and an estimated 24,000 petroglyphs – of people, animals, brands, crosses – some dating from prehistoric times. Stop in at the monument’s visitor’s centre for maps, then join a tour along a scenic walking trail, which meanders through a diverse desert landscape where reptiles and rodents scuttle. There’s a picnic ground and plenty of rocky terrain to hike through – climb to the top of the mesa for a breathtaking overview of the Rio Grande Valley’s striking geological formations.
Farther south, off U.S. Highway 54, New Mexico’s Three Rivers Petroglyph Site has an estimated 21,000 petroglyphs, carved between 900 and 1400 A.D. by the Jornada Mogollon people.
New Mexico: Pueblo Feast Days
Each of New Mexico’s 19 Pueblo Indian tribes is a sovereign nation with its own annual feast day and ritual dances, and visitors are generally welcome. Originally, feast days were determined by moon and agricultural cycles but after centuries of contact with the Spanish missions, most now coincide with Catholic religious holidays and patron saints’ days. Pueblo feast days are exuberant affairs, centring on tribal dances celebrating corn, the harvest, and animals – buffalos, deer and eagles – the eternal cycle of life. The singing and dancing is generally accompanied by processions, hotly contested pole climbs and footraces, artisans’ markets and, of course, eating. Some of the biggest and best are held at the 1,000-year-old Taos Pueblo in northern New Mexico, the only living Native American community that’s both a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a National Historic Landmark.
New Mexico: Gathering of Nations PowWow
An exhilarating spectacle that runs over two days and nights in spring, the Gathering of Nations PowWow features more than 3,000 indigenous and Native American dancers and singers in full tribal finery. The annual gathering is the largest of its kind in North America – each April, crowds converge on the University of New Mexico’s outdoor stadium, The Pit, to witness stirring song-and-dance rituals from elaborately costumed performers representing more than 500 tribes from across the U.S. and Canada. And with around US$200,000 in prize money up for grabs, it’s an impressive dance-off. Running simultaneously are the Indian Traders Market – 800 artists and artisans selling handmade wares – and Stage 49, a free showcase for Native American country, hip-hop, rock, reggae, rhythm and blues and traditional performers. •
Photographs courtesy of the New Mexico Tourism Department, the Heard Museum and the Arizona Office of Tourism.
TRAVEL FACTS
getting there
Several airlines, including V Australia, Qantas, United Airlines and Delta Air Lines operate daily services from Australian capital cities to Los Angeles that connect with domestic flights to Phoenix, Arizona and Santa Fe and Albuquerque in New Mexico.
• Delta Air Lines. delta.com
• Qantas. 131-313; qantas.com.au
• United Airlines. 131-777; unitedairlines.com.au
• V Australia. 138-287; vaustralia.com
when to go
Arizona and New Mexico experience extreme climatic variations: at altitudes of less than 1,500 metres, temperatures topping 38˚C are typical in summer but the mercury plummets to half that in January and February. In Arizona’s mountains and on New Mexico’s northeast plateau, conditions are milder, ranging from the mid-20s in summer to sub-zero temperatures in winter.
what to do
• Gathering of Nations PowWow. gatheringofnations.com
• Heard Museum. 1-602/252-8848; heardmuseum.org
• Hopi Cultural Center. 1-928/734-2401; hopiculturalcenter.com
• Horse Lake Mesa Game Park. 1-575/759-3255; jicarillahunt.com
• The Institute of American Indian Arts Museum. 1-505/983-1777; iaia.edu/museum
• Jicarilla Apache Nation. 1-575/759-3242; jicarillaonline.com
• Jicarilla Arts and Crafts Shop. 1-575/759-4274.
• Jicarilla Culture Center. 1-575/759-1343.
• The Lodge at Chama. 1-575/756-2133; lodgeatchama.com
• Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. 1-435/727-5874; navajonationparks.org
• Museum of Indian Arts & Culture. 1-505/476-1250; miaclab.org
• Navajo Interactive Museum. 1-928/283-5441; explorenavajo.com
• Palace of the Governors Native American Art Program. 1-505/476-5100; palaceofthegovernors.org
• Petroglyph National Monument. 1-505/899-0205; nps.gov
• Santa Fe Indian Market. swaia.org
• Three Rivers Petroglyph National Recreation Site. 1-575/525-4300. blm.gov/nm
• Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian. wheelwright.org
further information
For more information on Native American attractions around Arizona and New Mexico, contact the respective states’ tourism bodies at arizonaguide.com and newmexico.org
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