Author: Patrick

As we move into the final days of the course, it can become challenging to reflect on all that we found over these last four weeks. Spring Term course by nature are meant to be intense and immersive, and these very qualities that make them so unique can also allow some of the smaller, day-to-day details we’ve seen and discussed to be lost in the shuffle. But despite the wealth of information we were exposed to in both the classroom and the field, several key moments did stick out in this course.

One of the most clear memories I have of the trip, though not necessarily the first chronological event, is seeing Baboquivari for the first time while on the road. Immediately, I understood why much of the Tohono O’odham religion centered around this site. The small mountain range containing Baboquivari is impressive in itself, slashing a stark barrier across the desert flatland that gives it a baseline mystical quality. But rising above even that impressive site is the almost monolithic peak of Baboquivari. It stands sentry over the desert surrounding it, which includes the Tohono O’odham reservation at its feet. This view typifies the natural beauty of the Sonoran Desert, present during almost every facet of the trip and truly one of the most memorable aspects of it. Though we never got the opportunity to climb or stand a the foot of Baboquivari peak, it’s impact wasn’t lost on me.

Several trends I noticed among the people we met also stuck out to me. The first was how they spoke. I believe it was Peter the Anthropologist (Eric’s inspiration) who told us after the meetings that the older O’odham people (the group that most of our speakers came from) would say their peace, regardless of whatever “time constraints” or “prior appointments” those listening might have. Admittedly, this didn’t end up a negative for us, at least from my perspective.  With every speaker, we got the complete picture of their specific topic (even if it took a little extra work to keep it all in line). Something else that stuck out was the prevalence of obesity among the people. Of course, we’d read about diabetes and the litany of health problems stemming from diverging from traditional foods. But it was still shock to find out that nearly every Tohono O’odham person we met over the age of 30 appeared to be obese. That put the problem we’d studied academically into a much more human context.

Well, that looks like everything. Here’s to hoping this wasn’t the last time I make it out to the Southwest.

When thinking of the litany of issues facing people of the desert today, “heat” usually isn’t one of the primary topics brought up. But when we visited the Water Resources Office on the reservation, increasing heat in the form of global warming was one of the more prevalent issues. Upon deeper than cursory consideration, the issue makes sense; desert agriculture is already somewhat of a precarious, fickle business, and more changes will just make it that much more difficult to carry out. Temperature increases have been found to greatly through off agriculture worldwide; why should it be any different in the already scorching desert?

Now, Selso, the man we were speaking with, did make a point to mention            that even among the O’odham (primarily the elderly population) a similar disbelief about rising temperatures harming O’odham practices exists. He reported that, in the style of walking to school “uphill both ways,” the older O’odham retorted that of course the desert was hot, and that doesn’t mean anything because of who the O’odham are and that the kids these days are just getting soft. More recently however, as Selso reported, even these people have begun to realize that this is new heat, with new problems.

Selso also shared insight outside the scope of water resources. One of the more compelling topics he spoke on was his own return to the nation and the return of outside educated O’odham in general. Selso had gottent about as far away from Sells, Arizona as he could by the time he attended Yale for his masters. But even he, like many of his generation, couldn’t sit idle and act like he had the capacity to forget about the place that made him and the O’odham. So he came back…and his coworker, who’d been making a lot of money in the oil industry, also came back… and others, far flung by a desire to leave the reservation behind all came back to try to help. The land and the people, even in this modern day, still hold on to each other as best they can.

I would be remiss if I didn’t dedicate a blog post to the time (however brief) at the mission in Topawa. As we first drove down that long dusty road, looking for where we were staying, several people in our van thought Professor Guse was joking when we drove past the fading, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it white façade of a small mission compound standing almost alone on the side of an empty road. But as the day went on, it became clear that this was our home for the next two nights, a far cry from the hotels we’d stayed in in Phoenix and Tucson.

Don’t read that at a criticism though. Initially, I was skeptical when we walked into the small guest house where Donny, Evan, and I would be spending the next several days. The heavy metal outer doors and bars on the window didn’t seem to be a welcoming sign, and I’ll admit, even as a Catholic the breadth of religious symbols and Christian books threw me off for a little. But the house proved to be cozy, and the mission another step inching further into the desert.

It felt like stepping back into the 70s, while surrounding by the ghosts of the mission that was. The burned-out shell of the school, the house where the now departed sisters once lived, all the outdated appliance, it really felt like we’d entered a place frozen in time. This was a body, mummified by sand and sun, now standing testament to efforts and hopes blown away by time. But, still standing, nonetheless.

Sifting through the deluge of information we got today during the talks might take more brain power than I have, but among that flood were several moments and topics that stood above the rest. First among these moments came courtesy of Joe Joaquin, who we’ve come to learn is somewhat of a legend in these parts. Mr. Joaquin spoke of how in the modern day, the O’odham people have a choice of how they want to live. They can live as close to the traditional way as possible while incorporating non-threatening modern aspects, or they can accept what he referred to as the “outside world” and lose their connection to the ancestors, the culture, and the land. Obviously Mr. Joaquin was in favor of the latter point, but his description of this issue as a choice is what drew me in. So much of the time when speaking of external action and influence on Native Americans, Native agency is removed from the scenario by making it seem like Western culture, once it touches something, will inevitably conquer it and there’s nothing the participants in the previous culture can do about it. By telling the story as a choice, Native Americans in Joe’s telling are given agency and independence, a say in their own destiny. A second discussion that stuck out was with the Tohono O’odham PD, and parts of their tenuous relationship with both Border Patrol and their former associates, the Shadow Wolves. In a situation similar to drawing groundwater and losing river services, the Shadow Wolves recruit TOPD officers just after their training is completed, costing the TOPD a lot of money in both lost investment and training new recruits. This phenomenon struck me as both somewhat wasteful and self-defeating, as it draws money and resources from the people they want to protect.

Informed optimism is the best phrase I can come up with to describe Tohono O’odham Community College outside of Sells. Unsurprisingly, TOCC has a small campus set in the middle of desert landscape across from a seeping mountainside. Surprisingly (at least to me), the facilities were well kept, newish, and most importantly, expanding. The faculty we spoke with all eagerly mentioned the new amphitheater under construction, along with plans to expand dorm facilities and make them more accommodating to their increasing and increasingly wide spread student body. On top of all this, the school even boasted a competitive basketball team, which has sent several players to division one schools, according to the faculty.

In terms of my topic of interest, O’odham language, the college seemed to place a high importance in the revival and survival of O’odham. In addition to language programs the partner with the local high schools, the college also offer classes in the O’odham language free to the Tohono O’odham people. The language fulfills language requirements both at the college and at many four-year universities, making this an attractive offer to prospective students of the language. At least at the college, a vested interest in reinvigorating the Tohono O’odham language exists.

All this is not to say that challenges don’t exist. At least for the O’odham language, most students come in with little to no experience before teaching. This implies that the language either isn’t being spoken among the wider O’odham population and/or that there’s little to no intergenerational communication with or about the language with the youth. Furthermore, studies on the prevalence of the language are outdated, with none being undertaken in at least the last ten years. Finding teachers also presents a challenge, as many O’odham speakers just don’t feel comfortable enough to teach. Despite these rode blocks, the O’odham language, and the TOCC, both are in good shape for growth if they continue their current trajectories.

It seems we journey a step deeper into the dessert with each passing day. We’ve already encountered an introduction to the human presence in the region, in seeing the rising city of Phoenix, sprawling Tucson, and sites like Casa Grande and the San Xavier Mission. The last day and a half, however, has gently directed us toward the natural world surrounding these human establishments.

The Desert Museum provided a carefully constructed and managed summary of what natural Arizona holds. While it was fascinating to see the variety of dessert creatures right before our eyes, this obviously wasn’t the real nature of the land. The animals, many of them rescues, were there to be observed in a controlled setting (as is the nature of zoos), not seen interacting with the landscape and doing what they would do in the wild. The Dessert Museum was an amazing learning experience, extremely educational, and at its core, an introduction to the greater dessert we’ll likely encounter as the trip progresses.

This morning’s hike took us tentative steps further into the paradoxically harsh and bountiful landscape. Though there were trails and a set path, no longer were we able to look at a map and know exactly what we were about to see. A trickle of wilderness found its way into the trip. Professor Guse made a point to check for snakes at several spots, a moot point while at the Dessert Museum. Wild hummingbirds and lizards crossed our path, and for much of the trip we walked not on a paved pathway, but in an arroyo carved by water over thousands of years. As we progressed to the mountain pass, even trails were abandoned in favor of scrambling up jutting rock formations to get a better view of the expanse of dessert and farmland on one side, and urban sprawl on the other. While not truly in wilderness, today allowed the group to dip our toes in, and begin to see the landscape as a dynamic entity, not just scenery from a plane window.

As I sat in a scratched pew at San Xavier, my mind began drifting back to last spring term, to a place thousands of miles away and much larger in the scale. El Catedral de Sevilla in Spain bears few similarities to this small mission in southern Arizona, but one that stuck out in particular was the veneration of saints. At El Catedral, representations of various saints in the form of statues line several of the cathedral’s outer walls, and several saints have shrines inside the colossal structure. Similarly, at San Xavier, much of the iconography inside the church centered around a small group of saints, such as Francis Xavier and Jude. A notable difference in this regard, however, was the absence of the stations of the cross at San Xavier. In Sevilla, a series of golden tablets, beautifully painted and several stories tall, spells out the events of the stations of the cross in glory to all in the cathedral. So why in San Xavier, the most significant church in its area for hundreds of years, are the stations omitted?

I’ll preface this by saying that I’m no theologian, nor have I done any extensive studies on either Sonoran Catholicism or the opinions on saints of various populations. However, I have theory as to why these stations were excluded. As we’ve discussed in class, much of the Sonoran Catholicism focuses on the combined form of Francis of Assisi and Francis Xavier, two saints whose followers spread Catholicism to the region. From the beginning, the efforts to spread Christianity in the region are based off the teachings of two saints, not of centralized Vatican doctrine or theology. Much of the veneration event today focuses on these two saints, and this likely reflects a trend among the people of the region at the time of Christianization to focus more on the saints whose teachings they were learning as opposed to the sacred mysteries or even Christ himself. San Xavier likely reflects this trend by focusing on the saints the people would’ve venerated, making them more likely to continue to worship at San Xavier. Also, in general, saints are much easier for people unfamiliar with Catholicism to relate to. Many saints were converts, and with the exception of the archangels all were human, making them more accessible for the average man than the infallible Christ. Whatever the reason, the San Xavier mission was extremely successful in introducing Catholicism into the region, and likely this had to do with careful consideration of what was and was not venerated in the actual church.

Patrick Hofstedt

While walking the ruins of Casa Grande, Professor Guse at one point mentioned how this site is one of the most significant pre-European Native American structures in the United States. This statement struck me, not because I didn’t agree with it or didn’t expect it, but because I remembered I’d never heard of Casa Grande, Pueblo Grande, the Hohokam, or even the O’odham people before enrolling in this course. The site represents not only significant architecture among the ancient peoples of the Southwest, but it also demonstrates a complex alignment of architecture, everyday life, and astronomy.

As noted on one of the displays around Casa Grande, several of holes in the structure aligned with astrological events such as the summer solstice, winter solstice, and an event (which name escapes me) that occurred only once every eighteen years. The connection of architecture and astronomy is clear in the design of the building, which shows the Hohokam had a thorough understand of complex astrological patterns. The purpose of this connection, however, brings the importance of agriculture (and by extension, everyday life) into the same realm as both architecture and astronomy.  Once again on one of the displays, it was noted that the theorized purpose of these astronomical measurement was in part to mark seasons as they passed, that the Hohokam might know when it was best to begin planting. Agricultural activity was a fundamental obligation of the average Hohokam citizen, thus the function and existence of Casa Grande blends complex architecture, agriculture, everyday life, and astronomy together to give a picture of an advanced culture existing in the ruthless desert.

As noted earlier, teaching about Casa Grande as an example of Native American culture in the Southwest hasn’t extended at least to the East Coast. By increasing awareness of Casa Grande’s existence, people nationwide could begin to shed misguided notions about the societies in what became the US prior to colonization.

 

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