5 ways to experience Indigenous tourism in the US

Whether it’s in the planning of North America’s newest national monument — framing one of its greatest natural wonders — or in reimagined museum exhibitions, the country’s visitor attractions and experiences are ever more likely to be shaped and guided by its Indigenous peoples. From the Great Plains to the Californian coast, there’s a continent-wide variety of cultures to encounter.

1. Native Dakota

The US’s Indigenous heritage predates the stars and stripes by some 12,000 years. What’s much more recent is the growing number of travel experiences where Native American communities are highlighting their cultures on their own terms. One such tour focuses on less-explored North and South Dakota. The new nine-day National Parks and Native Trails of the Dakotas itinerary, from tour company Trafalgar, takes in the weathered landscapes and bison ranges of Badlands and Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and historic sites such as the memorial to the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. But at the heart of the programme, designed in partnership with Native tourism representatives, are the four Indian Reservations of the Oglala Lakota and fellow nations, some of which are welcoming tour groups for the first time. It’s a chance to learn directly from Indigenous communities, whether it’s knowledge of the stars from a Lakota elder or cultural dances of the MHA Nation. Tours from £2,925 per person. 

2. West coast museums

California has a particularly great diversity of Indigenous cultures, and several new centres help to give a fuller account of the Native peoples of the Pacific coast. The revamped museum of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians is set to open later this year in Palm Springs, part of a cultural plaza that includes a hot spring spa informed by traditional healing techniques. A museum for the Santa Ynez Chumash people near Santa Barbara is also near completion. 

3. Oklahoma’s ancestors

The First Americans Museum opened in 2021 in Oklahoma City, capital of a state that’s home to 39 Native peoples. The museum hosts two permanent exhibitions put together by an all-Native curatorial team. One tells the stories of Oklahoma’s different peoples and their ancestral homelands, while the other finds new ways of presenting artefacts such as beaded coats or drums, different from their previous traditional museum-style displays in the Smithsonian collections. 

4. Grand Canyon monument

The newest national monument, Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni — Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon — was listed in August. It protects the nearly million acres of deep gorges, pine woodlands and sagebrush prairie that borders the attraction. This landscape of great cultural significance is run under the co-stewardship of a coalition of Indigenous peoples in Arizona. 

5. Route 66 reinterpreted

The American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association (AIANTA) has produced a free digital guide for drivers between Chicago and Los Angeles, to increase awareness of the rich Indigenous cultures along North America’s best-known road trip. Highlights include Cahokia Mounds, a city of the Mississippian culture that dates back to 700 CE, and the similarly ancient but still occupied pueblo settlements of New Mexico.