The Southern Tiwa name of the pueblo is Shiewhibak (Shee-eh-whíb-bak)[a] meaning "a knife laid on the ground to play whib",[3] a traditional footrace.

Pueblo of Isleta is located in the Middle Rio Grande Valley, 13 miles (21 km) south of Albuquerque.

The pueblo was built on a knife-shaped lava flow running across an ancient Rio Grande channel.

[6] The population of Pueblo of Isleta consists mostly of the Southern Tiwa ethnic group (Spanish: Tigua[7]).

[8] In 2016 the Kellogg Foundation made grants totaling $148,000 for development of the dual language Tiwa-English program for young children at the school.

Isleta is considered an Eastern Pueblo according to this classification, derived largely on their subsistence farming techniques.

The traditional religion involves the cult of the Kachinas, spiritual beings that personify various aspects of the immaterial and natural worlds.

[citation needed] In the 21st century, Isleta includes the main pueblo, as well as the small communities of Oraibi and Chicale.

On October 21, 1887, the French missionary Father Anton Docher traveled to New Mexico, where he was assigned as a priest in the Cathedral of Santa Fé.

The King decorated Pablo Abeita, Governor of the Pueblo, and Father Anton Docher with the Order of Léopold.

Abeita was appointed by the tribe to the Council of All Indian Pueblos, which was active in the 1920s to resist United States government political takeover of its lands.

Beginning in the late 20th century, the tribe's leaders have worked to buy back lands to re-establish their homeland territory.

In the mid-2010s, Pueblo leaders purchased 90,151 acres (140 square miles) of land that was once part of the tribes’ aboriginal homeland, at a cost of approximately US$7.3 million.

The land is primarily located within what is known as Comanche Ranch, and is one of the Pueblo's profitable businesses, where they run 1,000 head of cattle.

[citation needed] Up until the early 20th century, the tribe was headed by a cacique, a man selected by elders from a clan with hereditary rights.

[citation needed] Father Anton Docher, a French Catholic priest serving for decades at the Pueblo church, described the community in a 1913 article in The Santa Fé Magazine: A Cacique appointed for life, has the supreme power over his subjects.

[citation needed] The portion of Isleta Pueblo in Bernalillo County is zoned to Albuquerque Public Schools.

[18] The Bureau of Indian Education operates Isleta Elementary School in an unincorporated area west of the CDP.