TESUQUE PUEBLO, N.M.—The Tesuque Pueblo Tribe, a small northern New Mexico Native American tribe, has opened Camel Rock Studios near Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The studio is designed to offer location for external or internal filming. Outside, the studios feature 27 square miles of tribal land including stunning desert and the iconic Camel Rock formation in the red-brown foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
Inside filming can take place in a former casino that the tribe has converted into a movie studio campus with more than 25,000 square feet of filming space.
The tribe with about 800 members decided to open the studio after scenes from the Universal Pictures western movie “News of the World” starring Tom Hanks were filmed last year in the Camel Rock Casino, which closed in 2018. Older movies filmed on the Tesuque Pueblo include the 1955 western “The Man from Laramie” starring James Stewart and the 1988 “Young Guns” with Emilio Estevez and Kiefer Sutherland.
Also influencing the decision were investments in New Mexico movie studios by Netflix and NBCUniversal in recent years, said Tunte Vigil, Tesuque Pueblo’s business development associate.
Cheyenne and Arapaho filmmaker Chris Eyre, a Santa Fe resident and an advisor to Camel Rock Studio, said the studio’s unique aspect is that its former makeup as a casino provides the site with pre-made infrastructure that can be used for filming different types of movie scenes, as well as having a set workshop called a mill that can be used to build sets.
“It’s a museum. It’s an opulent hotel lobby. It’s a capitol building,” said Eyer, who directed the 1998 film “Smoke Signals” about two Coeur d’Alene tribal members who travel from Idaho to Arizona. “There are sorts of interesting standing sets that can be creatively (crafted) for all sorts of scenes.”
The studio is being established at a time when Native American writers are transforming American Literature—and putting pressure on Hollywood to incorporate more Native American stories.
Tribal officials plan to create internships and movie training programs for Tesuque Pueblo members and hope that the studio will foster a new storytelling movement, Eyer said.
“Native Americans are natural storytellers,” he told Russell Contreras of the Associated Press. “What better place to do it?”
