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| Above, Thunder Road Steakhouse & Cantina at Route 66 Casino Hotel. Photo by Armand Vaquer. |
Last month, a friend and I went to the Route 66 Casino Hotel near Albuquerque, that is owned by the Laguna Pueblo, to have dinner at Thunder Road Steakhouse & Cantina. At the main door, security said that only New Mexico residents are allowed in. I would be able to go in, but my friend (an Arizona resident) could not. So we went into Albuquerque for dinner.
Now, the hotel and casino are open to everyone.
Slowly and cautiously, tribes in New Mexico are reopening their casinos, trading posts, parks and other facilities to visitors.
The Albuquerque Journal posted an article on tribes bringing back tourism. The process hasn't been easy.
A snippet:
Across New Mexico, tribal nations are grappling with similar questions. For many of the 23 tribal nations in New Mexico, tourism, in the form of overnight stays at resorts or visits to cultural sites like Sky City, was an important part of their pre-pandemic local economies. By not allowing visitors during the pandemic, tribal nations incurred significant economic impacts in order to protect vulnerable citizens.
New Mexico lifted its own restrictions at the start of the month, and has seen renewed visitation and tourism activity. But some tribal nations, which are free to set and remove their restrictions as sovereign nations, have done so piecemeal. Acoma, Nambe and Cochiti pueblos remain partially or fully closed to visitors, citing safety concerns, even as casinos on Sandia and Isleta pueblos reopen. The Navajo Nation, where more than 1,300 people died from COVID-19, reopened parks, casinos and other facilities to visitors on July 8.
“After 16 months of this pandemic here on our nation, and our businesses having a difficult time,… I think it was time for us to reopen,” Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez told the Journal earlier this month.
To read more, go here.
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