FOOD AS A SYMBOL
"A mainstay of a lot of tribes in this area was beans," observes Jack Strong, the chef de cuisine at Kai, the resort's AAA Five Diamond restaurant. "They'd dry them out and get protein from them. So we definitely use those in some of the dishes."

It doesn't stop with beans. Strong points to peppers, chilies, and corn—what he calls "really humble things"—as other key ingredients in many dishes.

One of the featured appetizers on the Kai menu is a salad created using produce grown on the reservation. The lengthy name of the starter—Lettuces Hand Picked by Local Farmers and Children of the Gila River Crossing School —only begins to tell the tale of this very special dish.

"It's really neat. They have a garden at the middle school and a garden at the elementary school," says Strong. "They go out and work in the garden. It's part of their curriculum, so we take anything we can and support that program. We'll purchase whatever we can from their gardens throughout the year.

Strong—who, like Ahamed, is a Phoenician alum—grew up on an Indian reservation in Oregon. But he knew little about the traditional foods of his people until he joined the Wild Horse Pass team a couple of years ago.

"I came from a simple background," he recalls. "I grew up on handouts from the USDA: the processed cheese, the canned beef, anything that was handed out for free.

"This is like a new cuisine to me," Strong notes, "but it's the oldest cuisine out there. These ingredients have been around for hundreds of years.
"When you come in, you'll learn a little bit about the culture of the tribe, in addition to great service and great food," Strong adds.

UNIQUE ATMOSPHERE
Earlier this year, the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass earned the prestigious Mobil five-star award, to which GM Ahamed points with pride. But he's equally proud of the unique atmosphere that permeates the property. He says it's unlike any other in the resort-rich Valley of the Sun.

"You can have a resort in Scottsdale or Phoenix and it can have brass and glass, all the niceties of a five-star environment, but that experience could also be in Florida," he explains.

"There is a great love affair of the traveler in today's world to have a different experience. Geotourism is big now. People want to have an 'experience' during their vacation," Ahamed notes. "They want to have an experience that is more than a pretty place. They want to learn something. They want to experience something different."

Within the borders of the U.S., it doesn't come much different than this. Take, for example, the experience of attendees of a conference at the resort.

For a team-building exercise, the attendees were divided into 10 groups. Each was given all the parts they'd need to build a bicycle—the frame, the wheels, the pedals, and so forth—and told to figure out how to put it all together.

Amid the expected consternation, the bikes slowly took shape. As they did, 10 children from the reservation gathered in an adjoining room, supposedly for a community service project. Neither group was aware of the other's existence until, finally, the bicycles were ready to ride. Then to everyone's surprise and delight, the newly-assembled bicycles were presented to the kids.

"Some of these children have never had a bike," remembers Ahamed. "That was one of the most unique, enlightening, positive and emotional experiences you could encounter. These bikes they'd built as a team were for real people."

"I'm enamored by the sense of respect and adulation that each (culture) has for the other," the GM says of the unique experiences shared at his resort.

MORE THAN A CHECK
Ahamed meets once a month with the leaders of the Gila River Indian Community, which has 20,000 members. About 130 of them work at the resort. Ahamed is well aware that each of them has a stake in the property beyond their paychecks.

"We have staff members who clean the rooms, say hello to guests at reception, or take care of them in the restaurants who are also the owners," Ahamed says of what he describes as a "very unique" working relationship with his Native American employees. "We don't pander, but we also make sure that we do the right thing to take care of them."

Wild horses still roam the pass in which the resort is built. During the 1800s, as white settlers moved west in their wagons, the Indians who lived in these parts offered shelter from the warring Apaches.

"It was our people who would provide hospitality to them," says Sunbird Martin. "If they made it this far and through Apache territory, they were weary travelers in need of assistance. So our people would provide fresh food and water. We would even trade broken-down horses for new horses, and even allow settlers to stay one night in peace without worrying about attacks from the Apaches.

"It was at that time that we earned our name in hospitality," she continues. "In fact, our leadership today has this quote: 'The Pimas and Maricopas have been practicing hospitality for hundreds of years. Now we're just charging by the night.'"