Tohono O'odham people

Tohono O'odham

Joe Lewis, Tohono O'odham, 1907 or earlier, Smithsonian Institution
Total population
(20,000[1])
Regions with significant populations
United States ( Arizona)
Mexico ( Sonora)
Languages
O'odham, English, Spanish
Religion
Catholic, Christianity, Traditional
Related ethnic groups
other Piman peoples

The Tohono O’odham (/toʊˈhɑːnə ˈɑːtʊm/, or /tɑːˈhoʊnə ˈɑːtəm/)[2] are a group of Native Americans who reside primarily in the Sonoran Desert of eastern Arizona and northwestern Mexico. "Tohono O’odham" means "Desert People". The governmental entity for the tribe is the Tohono O'odham Nation.

Although the Tohono O’odham were previously known as the Papago, (meaning "tepary-bean eater"), they have largely rejected this name. It was applied to them by conquistadores who had heard them called this by other Piman bands that were very competitive with the Tohono O’odham. The term Papago derives from Ba:bawĭkoʼa, meaning "eating tepary beans." That word was pronounced papago by the Spanish.

The Tohono O'odham Nation, or Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation, is located in southern Arizona, encompassing portions of Pima County, Pinal County, and Maricopa County.

Culture

Shrine at Covered Wells, Arizona

The Tohono O’odham share linguistic and cultural roots with the closely related Akimel O'odham (People of the River), whose lands lie just south of Phoenix, along the lower Gila River. The Sobaipuri are ancestors to both the Tohono O’odham and the Akimel O’odham who resided along the major rivers of southern Arizona. Ancient pictographs adorn a rock wall that juts up out of the desert near the Baboquivari Mountains.

Debates surround the origins of the O’odham. Claims that the O’odham moved north as recently as 300 years ago compete with claims that the Hohokam, who left the Casa Grande Ruins, are their ancestors. Recent research on the Sobaipuri, now extinct relatives of the O'odham, shows that they were present in sizable numbers in the southern Arizona river valleys in the fifteenth century.

In the Santa Barbara Mission Archive-Library are materials that a Franciscan friar who worked among the Tohono O'odham collected, including scholarly volumes and monographs.[3]

Historically, the O'odham-speaking peoples were at odds with Apaches from the late seventeenth until the beginning of the twentieth centuries when conflict with European settlers caused both the O'odham and the Apaches to reconsider their common interests. It is noteworthy that the O'odham word for the Apache 'enemy' is ob. Still there is considerable evidence that suggests that the O'odham and Apache were friendly and engaged in exchange of goods and marriage partners before the late seventeenth century. O'odham history, however, suggest the constant raids between the two tribes caused the intermarriages, resulting in a mixed tribe of two enemies. Many women and children were taken as slaves between the two tribes, one way a woman could survive in the tribe she was taken into, would be to intermarry and learn the ways and customs of her captors, thus resulting in intermarriage and children of mixed tribal descent.

O'odham musical and dance activities lack "grand ritual paraphernalia that call for attention" and grand ceremonies such as Pow-wows. Instead, they wear muted white clay. O'odham songs are accompanied by hard wood rasps and drumming on overturned baskets, both of which lack resonance and are "swallowed by the desert floor". Dancing features skipping and shuffling quietly in bare feet on dry dirt, the dust raised being believed to rise to atmosphere and assist in forming rain clouds.[4]

The original O'odham diet consisted of regionally available wild game, insects, and plants. Through foraging, O'odham ate a variety of regional plants, such as: ironwood seed, honey mesquite, hog potato, and organ-pipe cactus fruit. While the Southwestern United States did not have an ideal climate for cultivating crops, O'odham were able to grow crops of white tepary beans, Papago peas, and Spanish watermelons. Pronghorn Antelope, hornworm larvae, and pack rats were amongst the sources of meat. Desert foodways included steaming plants in pits and roasting meat on an open fire.[5]

Traditional basketmaking, 1916

The San Xavier District is the location of a major tourist attraction near Tucson, Mission San Xavier del Bac, the "White Dove of the Desert," founded in 1700 by the Jesuit missionary and explorer Eusebio Kino, with the current church building constructed by the Tohono O'odham and Franciscan priests during a period extending from 1783 to 1797. It is one of many missions built in the southwest by the Spanish on their then-northern frontier.

The beauty of the mission often leads tourists to presume that the desert people embraced the Catholicism of the Spanish conquistadors. In fact, Tohono O'odham villages had resisted change for hundreds of years. During the 1660s and in 1750s, two major rebellions rivaled in scale the 1680 Pueblo Rebellion. Armed resistance prevented increased Spanish incursions on the lands of Pimería Alta. The Spanish retreated to what they called "Pimería Baja." As a result, much of the desert people's traditions remained largely intact for generations.

It was not until Americans of Anglo-European ancestry began moving into the Arizona territory that traditional ways consistently were oppressed. Indian boarding schools, the cotton industry, and U.S. Federal Indian policy worked hand-in-glove to promote assimilation of these tribe members into the American mainstream. The structure of the current tribal government, established in the 1930s, is a direct result of commercial, missionary, and federal collaboration. The goal was to make the Indians into "real" Americans, yet the boarding schools offered only so much training as was considered necessary for the Indians to work as migrant workers or housekeepers.[6] "Assimilation" was the official policy, but full participation was not the goal. Boarding school students were supposed to function within the segregated society of the United States as economic laborers, not leaders.[7]

Despite a hundred years of being told to and made to change, the Tohono O'odham have retained their traditions into the twenty-first century, and their language is still spoken. Recent decades, however, increasingly have eroded O'odham traditions in the face of the surrounding environment of American mass culture.

Health

Since the 1960s, obesity, and with it, type 2 diabetes have become commonplace among tribal members. Half to three-quarters of all adults are diagnosed with the disease, and about a third of the tribe's adults require regular medical treatment. Federal medical programs have not provided solutions for these problems within the population, and some tribal members have turned to traditional foods and traditional games to control the obesity that often leads to diabetes. Research by Gary Paul Nabhan and others shows that traditional foods regulate blood sugar. A local nonprofit, Tohono O'Odham Community Action (TOCA), has built a set of food systems programs that contribute to public health, cultural revitalization and economic development and has started a cafe that serves traditional foods.[8]

Cultural revitalization

Luzi, a Tohono O'odham woman
photograph by Edward Curtis circa 1905

The cultural resources of the Tohono O'odham are threatened—particularly the language—but are stronger than those of many other aboriginal groups in the United States.

Every February, annually, the Sells Rodeo and Parade is held in the capital of the Nation. The rodeo has been an annual event for 73 years. February 2012 was the 74th year the Nation has held the Event.

In the visual arts, Michael Chiago and the late Leonard Chana have gained widespread recognition for their paintings and drawings of traditional O'odham activities and scenes. Chiago has exhibited at the Heard Museum and has contributed cover art to Arizona Highways magazine and University of Arizona Press books. Chana illustrated books by Tucson writer Byrd Baylor and created murals for Tohono O'odham Nation buildings.

In 2004, the Heard Museum awarded Danny Lopez its first heritage award, recognizing his lifelong work sustaining the desert people's way of life. At the National Museum for the American Indian (NMAI), the Tohono O'odham were represented in the founding exhibition and Mr. Lopez blessed the exhibit.

Tucson Indian School

The Tohono O'odham like many other tribes in the United States attended Indian boarding schools. According to historian David Leighton, of the Arizona Daily Star newspaper, the Tohono O'odham attended the Tucson Indian School. This boarding school was founded in 1886, when T.C. Kirkwood, superintendent of the Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church, asked the Tucson Common Council for land near where the University of Arizona would be built. The Common Council granted the Board of Home Missions a 99-year lease on land at $1 a year and the Board then purchased 42 acres of land on the Santa Cruz River, from early pioneer Sam Hughes.

The new facility opened in 1888, with 54 boys and girls. At the new semi-religious boarding school, boys learned trades like carpentry and farming, while girls were taught sewing and similar skills. In 1890, additional buildings were completed but the school was still too small for the demand and students had to be turned away. To raise funds for the school and be able to admit more students, its superintendent, entered into a contract with the city of Tucson to grade and maintain streets.

In 1903, Jose Xavier Pablo, who later went onto become a leader in the Tohono O'odham Nation, graduated from the school. Three years later, the school bought the land they were leasing from the city of Tucson and sold it as a significant profit. In 1907, they purchased land just east of the Santa Cruz River, near present-day Ajo Way and built a new school. The new boarding school which opened in 1908, also had a post office known as the Escuela Post Office and this name was used sometimes in place of the Tucson Indian School.

By the mid-1930s, the Tucson Indian School covered 160 acres, had 9 buildings and a capacity of educating 130 students. In 1940, about 18 different tribes made up the population of students at the school and in 1960 the school closed its doors. The site is now Santa Cruz Plaza, just southwest of Pueblo Magnet High School.

Tohono O'odham Nation

Main article: Tohono O'odham Nation

A United States reservation residing on a portion of its people’s original Sonoran desert lands, the Tohono O’odham Nation within the United States is organized into eleven districts. The land lies in three counties of the state of Arizona: Pima County, Pinal County, and Maricopa County. The reservation’s land area is 11,534.012 square kilometres (4,453.307 sq mi), the third-largest Indian reservation area in the United States (after the Navajo and the Uintah and Ouray). The 2000 census reported 10,787 people living on reservation land. The tribe’s enrollment office tallies a population of 25,000, with 20,000 living on its Arizona reservation lands.

The nation is governed by a council and chairperson, who are elected by eligible adult members of the nation under a complex formula intended to ensure that the rights of small O’odham communities are protected as well as the interests of the larger communities and families. The present chairman is Edward Manuel.

The Nation's lands include:

Border issues

Most of the 25,000 Tohono O'odham today live in southern Arizona, but there also is a population of several thousand in northern Sonora, Mexico. Unlike aboriginal groups along the U.S.-Canada border, the Tohono O'odham were not given dual citizenship when a border was drawn across their lands in 1853 by the Gadsden Purchase. Even so, members of the nation moved freely across the current international boundary for decades – with the blessing of the U.S. government – to work, participate in religious ceremonies, keep medical appointments in Sells, and visit relatives. Even today, many tribal members make an annual pilgrimage to Magdalena, Sonora, during St. Francis festivities. (The St. Francis festivities in Magdalena are held in the beginning of October, the anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi, and not at the time of St. Francis Xavier, who was a Jesuit). Since the mid-1980s, however, stricter border enforcement has restricted this movement, and tribal members born in Mexico or who have insufficient documentation to prove U.S. birth or residency, have found themselves trapped in a remote corner of Mexico, with no access to the tribal centers only tens of miles away. Since 2001, bills have repeatedly been introduced in Congress to solve the "one people-two country" problem by granting U.S. citizenship to all enrolled members of the Tohono O'odham, but have so far been unsuccessful.[9][10] Reasons that have been advanced in opposition to granting U.S. citizenship to all enrolled members of the Nation include the fact that, for a large part, births on the reservation have been informally recorded and the records are susceptible to easy alteration or falsification.

The proximity of the U.S.-Mexico border incurs further costs to the tribal government and breeds many social problems.

Many of the thousands of Mexican nationals and other nationals illegally crossing the U.S. Border to work in U.S. agriculture or to smuggle illicit drugs into the U.S. seek emergency assistance from the Tohono O'odham police when they become dehydrated or get stranded. On the ground, border patrol emergency rescue and tribal EMTs coordinate and communicate. The tribe and the state of Arizona pay a large proportion of the bills for border-related law enforcement and emergency services. The former governor of Arizona, Janet Napolitano, and Tohono O'odham government leaders have requested repeatedly that the federal government repay the state and the tribe for the costs of border-related emergencies. Tribe Chairman Ned Norris Jr. has complained about the lack of reimbursement for border enforcement.[11]

Districts

Notable Tohono O'odham

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ American Indian, Alaska Native Tables from the Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2004–2005
  2. ↑ Volante, Enric. "Respectful ways go a long ways on Ariz. Indian lands". Arizona Daily Star / Tucson Newspapers. Retrieved 26 May 2014.
    Hedding, Judy. "How To Pronounce the Names of Indian Tribes". About.com. Retrieved 26 May 2014.
  3. ↑ Kiernan F. McCarthy OFM Collection, Santa Barbara Mission Archive-Library http://www.sbmal.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/SBMAL_McCarty.pdf
  4. ↑ Zepeda, Ofelia (1995). Ocean Power: Poems from the Desert, p.89. ISBN 0-8165-1541-7.
  5. ↑ Nebhan, Gary Paul (1997). "Cultures of Habitat: On Nature, Culture, and Story", p.197-206.
  6. ↑ Banks, Dennis & Yuri Morita (1993).Seinaru　Tamashii: Gendai American Indian Shidousha no Hansei, Japan, Asahi Bunko.
  7. ↑ by official internet site of "the American Indian Heritage Support Center"
  8. ↑ "TOCA Website". Retrieved 2014-02-17.
  9. ↑ Duarte, Carmen. "Nation Divided." Arizona Daily Star 30 May 14 February 2001 2007
  10. ↑ Grijalva, Raul M.. United States. Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims. H.R.731. Washington, D.C.: GPO, 2003.
  11. ↑ McCombs, Brady (2007-08-19). "O'odham leader vows no border fence". Arizona Daily Star. Retrieved 2011-04-11.

Further reading

External links

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