Nativo Lodge

“How was your hotel, Daddy?” my kids ask me every time I go somewhere. Or used to, at least, until I answered “just like every other hotel room” 100 times in a row and they stopped asking.

A hotel room in Florida is a hotel room in California is a hotel room in New York. And then I visited Nativo Lodge in Albuquerque, where each room celebrates diverse Native American cultures and traditions.

There were traditional guest rooms, where the artwork and furnishings were influenced by Native American culture; and Mountain Guest Rooms, where the views took full advantage of the watermelon-hued Sandia Mountains at sunset. I opted for one of the 47 Artist Rooms, which the lodge commissioned as “large-scale, livable installation works of art” to be painted by Native artists.

My room was No. 520, the Apsaalooke’ Room, painted by enrolled tribal member and 2017 graduate of Santa Fe’s Institute of American Indian Arts Del Curfman, who is known for imagery that conveys Indigenous heritage and tradition (he also skateboards). With loose brushwork and hints of abstraction and impressionism, Curfman’s Nativo Lodge mural told the story of the Apsaalooke’ (Crow Nation of Montana) and their life on the Great Plains of eastern Montana.

I was within a stone’s throw of I-25, but the place’s former life as a freeway travel lodge didn’t enter my mind — and the room’s art spirited me to another time and place entirely. The centerpiece was a brave standing watch over an open prairie. In front of him was the last of a disappearing herd of buffalo. On the wall adjacent to the brave were the Pryor Mountains, which were sacred to the Crow people. The highlight — or at least the image that stuck with me the longest — was Curfman’s depiction of a crow. Shown in profile, the black popping against a yellow and blue background, the crow bid me good night and good morning.

It took me a bit to explain that to the kids.

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For more on Nativo Lodge, visit their website.