by Lanee Lee on
THE DINÉ ARTIST and first-place winner in the 2025 MIT Reality Hack competition founded Glittering World Girl to use technology to foster cultural revitalization. As part of the Route 66 Remixed project, her augmented reality (AR) installation Origin Route, at the Route 66 Visitor Center on Central Avenue, explores traditional Native trade routes. “There are records that show trade routes aligned with certain constellation patterns, reaching from South America into Chaco Canyon and further north,” she says. “When I thought about Route 66, I just reminisced on what it meant to me when creating this.”
Visitors walk through a portal draped with a Pendleton blanket and enter a world of falling shells, like digital rain, while Indigenous-trade-route maps layer beneath Route 66, revealing how nearly identical they are.
I hope for some acknowledgment that this is part of the true history of Route 66 and a lot of the highway systems in the United States.
It’s really cool to respect each other and connect through art. When visitors walk through the portal, that’s one way to connect with another culture.
I got into AR because of my grandma.
I was probably three years old, with my grandma and grandpa. We were watching TV, and I really noticed that the programming was only in English. They only spoke Diné Bizaad. In my little mind, I was like, I’m the only one who could probably understand this. I didn’t feel too good about that.
After I graduated college, I moved home to take care of my grandma.
One night, I showed her a short film I’d been in, It’s Not Free, which was primarily in Diné Bizaad. She stood up, leaned in toward the screen, and was totally enthralled.
That was probably the first time she’d seen a motion picture in her language with cultural imagery she recognized. If I ever question why I do this, I think about that moment.
I love using augmented reality to revitalize language and culture and to establish Indigenous language and culture futurism.