September 5th, 2006
Resorts That Offer Spas, Golf and Indian Lore
WHEN American Indians put their hand to a Western resort, this is the result: the grand entrance faces east, as the ancient sun worshipers prescribed; flute music quavers through an atrium piled with giant boulders and crowned with wraparound murals of Indian life; and wild mustangs with bloodlines back to the days of the conquistadors raise dust clouds against the purple mountains.That, at least, is the version at the $175 million Pima and Maricopa community’s Sheraton Wild Horse Pass outside Phoenix. As the land’s historic hosts - unwilling hosts in most cases, for sure - American Indians have been slow to stake out a share of the modern hospitality industry. But now, after centuries of victimization at the hands of gate-crashers, and flush with fortunes from casino gambling tables, some tribes are assuming new roles as luxury hoteliers and partnering with hotel chains to offer guests bridges to Indian culture.
“I call it guerrilla anthropology,” said Lance Polingyouma, a Hopi cultural interpreter on the staff of the Hyatt Regency Scottsdale, not an Indian enterprise but one that has expanded the usual resort offerings to incorporate a Hopi Learning and Environmental Center with a native seed garden. “It’s education by any means necessary.”
Few tribes have put as much store in tourism and development as the Pimas and Maricopas, who share the 600-square-mile reservation of the Gila River Indian Community in the Phoenix region and used earnings from their casino to build their 500-room resort and twin golf courses on 2,400 acres at Wild Horse Pass 11 miles south of the Phoenix airport in 2002. And an entire Wild West town is coming - the tribes recently bought the Rawhide theme park in Scottsdale and plan to transport it to the property by fall.
That may be as it should be, for the tribes welcomed white settlers and gold-rushers who streamed into their territory in the 1800’s. The Pimas and Maricopas (the former are basket-weavers, the other potters) even joined with the cavalry in fending off the hostile Apaches and Comanches. Yet settlers repeatedly undermined government efforts to reward their faithful Indian allies, and in 1887 dammed the Gila River, throwing the tribes into a century-long spiral of destitution, malnutrition, obesity and diabetes.
In a long-delayed thank you and redress of historical wrongs, Congress last November passed a landmark water-settlement bill that secures the region’s water supply by allocating a part of the Colorado River flow through a newly built 336-mile canal into the Gila River Indian Community for lease to Phoenix and other fast-growing municipalities.
“Some people say the casinos gave us a voice,” said Ginger Sunbird Martin, a Pima cultural concierge at the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass. “No. We always had a voice. Now they’re choosing to listen to us.”
And more voices are joining the chorus. On March 15, the Mescalero Apaches are to open their $200 million Inn of the Mountain Gods in Ruidoso, N.M., the prototype Indian resort that was torn down after 30 years for this remake. Along with rubbing shoulders with descendants of Geronimo and Cochise, guests can ski and hunt big game. Bagging a bull elk for your trophy wall will set you back $13,500, however, with six nights’ lodging thrown in; the resort will dress and ship your kill, but taxidermy is extra.
At the four-year-old tribal-owned Tamaya, in a remote and peaceful setting on the Santa Ana Pueblo between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, guests can mix adobe and throw pots with community members, bake Indian bread in traditional haruna ovens, star-gaze with Indian storytellers or play golf or soar aloft in hot-air balloons.