Tohono Oʼodham

The Tohono Oʼodham ( , ) are a Native American people of the Sonoran Desert, residing primarily in the U.S. state of Arizona and the northern Mexican state of Sonora. The United States federally recognized tribe is the Tohono Oʼodham Nation. The Ak-Chin Indian Community also has Tohono Oʼodham citizens.

The Tohono Oʼodham Nation governs the Tohono Oʼodham Indian Reservation, a major reservation located in southern Arizona. It encompasses portions of three counties: Pima, Pinal, and Maricopa in the United States. Tohono Oʼodham territory extends into the Mexican state of Sonora.

Name

The Tohono Oʼodham tribal government and most of the people have rejected the common exonym Papago since the 1980s. They call themselves Tohono Oʼodham, meaning "desert people". The Spanish colonizers learned that name from the Pima and transliterated it as Pápago, in their pronunciation. Anglo settlers in the area adopted that term. The Office of Ethnohistorical Research, located at the Arizona State Museum on the campus of the University of Arizona, has undertaken a documentary history of the Oʼodham, offering translated colonial documents that discuss Spanish relations with the Oʼodham in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Oʼodham 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. Oʼodham 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.

Society

Society focused on the family, and each member had specific roles to play. Women were in charge of food preparation and also gathered the bulk of food, although all members helped. Older girls in the family would be in charge of fetching water each morning, the duty would fall to the wife if there were no daughters. Women also wove baskets, and made pottery, such as ollas. Men performed many of the farming tasks, and hunted. Older men would hunt larger game like bighorn sheep, younger men and boys hunted small game. Most communities had a medicine man, a usually male position. Decisions were made by men in a communal fashion, with elders holding prominence.

Despite a shared language and heritage, the Oʼodham were only loosely connected across their lands. Loyalty laid with the village, not the people. However, the Oʼodham generally got along well with neighbors. They regularly gathered with nearby villages, and would even partner with them in times of conflict against outsider tribes. Gatherings for races, trade, socialization, and gossip were frequent events.

Subgroups

Though they shared a linguistic root with the Pima, and could understand the languages of nearby tribes, such tribes were considered distant cousins at best. Even within the Oʼodham there were linguistic and cultural differences that led to the groups being only loosely united. Different groups had different origin stories, linguistic quirks, and appearances. Where a person lived was the best indicator of which group they belonged to, more so than the other differences. As of the 1700s, when Europeans began to categorize the tribes, there were probably at least six groups. The actual number of groups has varied by author. The following categorization is from Eric Winston's 1994 textbook on the Oʼodham, and includes seven groups, along with some subgroups. and trapped pack rats for sources of meat. Preparation of foods included steaming plants in pits and roasting meat on an open fire.

Saguaro cactus fruit was an especially important food. The harvest begins in June; villages would travel to the saguaro stands for the duration of the harvest. A pair of saguaro ribs, about long, is bundled together to make a harvesting tool called a kuibit. They then reduce the freshly harvested fruit into a thick syrup through several hours of boiling, as the fresh fruit does not keep for long. of fruit will yield about of syrup. Copious volumes of fruit are harvested; an example harvest in 1929 yielded among 600 families. At the end of the harvest, each family would contribute a small amount of syrup to a communal stock that would be fermented by the medicine man. This was cause for rainmaking celebrations. Stories would be told, there was much dancing, and songs would be sung. Each man would drink some of the saguaro wine. The resulting intoxicated state was seen as holy, and any dreams it brought on were considered portentous. This was the only time that the Oʼodham drank alcohol during the year. Mission Garden in Tucson, Arizona, includes Oʼodham areas that show foods and farming methods before and after European contact. This includes planting in basins that hold the monsoon rains.

Traditional tribal foods were a combination of goods provided by nature and items they cultivated. From nature, the Tohono Oʼodham would consume rabbit, sap and flour from mesquite trees (flour was made by crushing the pods of the trees), cholla cactus, and acorns. On the agricultural side of their diet, farmers focused on corn, squash, and tepary beans.

As Oʼodham communal lands were allocated to households and some "surplus" sold to non-Native Americans under the Dawes Act of 1888, a variety of religious groups entered the territory. Presbyterian missionaries built schools and missions there, vying with Roman Catholics and Mormons to convert the Oʼodham to their faith.

Major farmers established the cotton industry, initially employing many Oʼodham as agricultural workers. Under the U.S. federal Indian policy of the late 19th and early 20th century, the government required native children to attend Indian boarding schools. They were forced to use English, practice Christianity, and give up much of their tribal cultures in an attempt by the government to assimilate the children of various tribes into the American mainstream.

The current tribal government, established in the 1930s under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, reflects years of commercial, missionary, and federal intervention. While the federal government encouraged tribes to reestablish their governments, it approved models based on the electoral system and structure of the US. The goal was to make the Indians into "real" Americans, but the boarding schools generally offered training only for low-level domestic and agricultural labor, typical of jobs available in rural areas. "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.

The Tohono Oʼodham have retained many traditions into the twenty-first century, and still speak their language. Since the late 20th century, however, U.S. mass culture has penetrated and in some cases eroded Oʼodham traditions as their children adopt new trends in technology and other practices.

Health

Beginning in the 1960s, government intervention in the tribe's agricultural cultivation caused the Tohono Oʼodham tribal citizens to shift from a traditional plant-based diet to one that favored foods high in fat and calories. The government began to close off the tribe's water source, preventing the Indigenous group from being able to produce traditional crops. This resulted in the widespread trend of type 2 diabetes among citizens of the tribe. The adaptation of a processed food diet caused the presence of type 2 diabetes to rise at alarming rates, with nearly 60 percent of the adult population in the tribe facing this disease

The Tohono Oʼodham community has made efforts to combat future issues by attempting to rehabilitate the systems the tribe had in place before government intervention. The Indigenous group has been advocating for the restoration of their water privileges so that they will be able to effectively produce traditional crops for the tribe. Moreover, even in tribal schools, such as those in the local Baboquivari Unified School District, the quality of lunch programs is being reassessed in order to bring a larger emphasis of the need for healthier food options.

Cultural revitalization

thumb|upright|Luzi, a Tohono Oʼodham woman<br />photograph by [[Edward Curtis circa 1905]]

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

Every February the nation holds the annual Sells Rodeo and Parade in its capital. Sells District rodeo has been an annual event since being founded in 1938. It celebrates traditional frontier skills of riding and managing cattle.

In the visual arts, Michael Chiago and the late Leonard Chana gained widespread recognition for their paintings and drawings of traditional Oʼodham 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 Oʼodham 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 Oʼodham were represented in the founding exhibition and Lopez blessed the exhibit.

Tucson Indian School

The Tohono Oʼodham children were required to attend Indian boarding schools, designed to teach them the English language and assimilate them to the mainstream European-American ways. According to historian David Leighton, of the Arizona Daily Star newspaper, the Tohono Oʼodham attended the Tucson Indian School. This boarding school was founded in 1886, when T.C. Kirkwood, superintendent of the board of national missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, 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. The Board purchased 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 rural trades like carpentry and farming, while girls were taught sewing and similar domestic skills of the period. 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 support its expansion, its superintendent entered into a contract with the city of Tucson to grade and maintain streets. While officially called the Tucson Indian Training School, "any person of either sex, regardless of race or color", who showed "promise of development into a Christian leader or citizen and whose educational needs may, in the judgement of the school, be better served by the school than by another available resource" was eligible for admission.

Tohono Oʼodham Nation

The Tohono Oʼodham Nation within the United States occupies a reservation that incorporates a portion of its people's original Sonoran desert lands. It is organized into eleven districts. The land lies in three counties of the present-day state of Arizona: Pima, Pinal, and Maricopa. The reservation's land area is , the third-largest Indian reservation area in the United States (after the Navajo Nation and the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation). 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 Arizonan reservation lands.

Government

The nation is governed by a three branch system. The executive which includes a chairman and vice-chairman, who are elected by eligible adult members of the nation. According to their constitution, elections are conducted under a complex formula intended to ensure that the rights of small Oʼodham communities are protected, as well as the interests of the larger communities and families. The legislative branch which includes the tribal council which is made up two representatives from each of the twelve districts. The third branch is the Judicial which includes five judges. present chairman is Ned Norris Jr, Vice Chairwoman is Wavalene Saunders, Legislative Chairman is Timothy Joaquin Gu Achi, and Chief Judge is Donald Harvey. This can all be found on the Nation's website.

Lands

Like other tribes, the Tohono Oʼodham felt land pressures from American ranchers, settlers, and the railroads. Documentation was poor, and many members did not leave their lands in a written will.

In 2009, TOCA opened its restaurant, Desert Rain Café.

Basket weaving was a dominant cultural characteristic, being used in rain ceremonies that lasted for four days and nights. These baskets were also purposed for daily use to hold or prepare foods. At the start of the institution, Johnson would hold weekly classes on Wednesday for artisans throughout the reservation. Making a basket could take as long as one year. This prolonged process stems from the fact that the fibers used in these baskets must be harvested and prepared, plus creating a design that represents the history of the Tohono Oʼodham nation. Materials for baskets vary between grasses native to the area, such as Yucca grass and devil's claw plant, an awl, and knife.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s first visit to an Indian reservation

On April 2, 2017, in the Arizona Daily Star newspaper, historian David Leighton related what is believed to be Martin Luther King Jr's first visit to an Indian reservation, the Tohono Oʼodham Indian Reservation.

On September 20, 1959, Martin Luther King Jr. flew to Tucson from Los Angeles to give a talk at the Sunday Evening Forum. On that night, he gave a speech called "A Great Time To Be Alive", at the University of Arizona auditorium, now called Centennial Hall. Following the forum, a reception was held for King, in which he was introduced to Rev. Casper Glenn, the pastor of a multiracial church called the Southside Presbyterian Church. King was very interested in this racially mixed church and made arrangements to visit it the next day.

The following morning, Glenn picked up King in his Plymouth station wagon and drove him to the Southside Presbyterian Church. There, Glenn showed King photographs he had taken of the racially diverse congregation, most of whom were part of the Tohono Oʼodham tribal group at the time. Glenn remembers that upon seeing the photos, "King said he had never been on an Indian reservation, nor had he ever had a chance to get to know any Indians." He then requested to be driven to the nearby reservation, as a spur-of-the-moment desire.

The two men traveled on Ajo Way to Sells, on what was then called the Papago Indian Reservation, now the Tohono Oʼodham Indian Reservation. When they arrived at the tribal council office, the tribal leaders were surprised to see King and very honored he had come to visit them. King was very anxious to talk to them but was circumspect with his questions. "He was fascinated by everything that they shared with him," Glenn said.

The ministers then went to the local Presbyterian church in Sells, which had been recently constructed by its members, with funds provided by the national Presbyterian church. King had a chance to speak to Pastor Towsand, who was excited to meet King. On the way back to Tucson, "King expressed his appreciation of having the opportunity to meet the Indians," Glenn recalled.

Districts

Gu Achi District
Pisinemo District
Sif Oidak District
Sells District
Baboquivari District
Hickiwan District
San Lucy District
Gu Vo District
Chukut Kuk District
San Xavier District
Schuk Toak District

Notable Tohono Oʼodham

Annie Antone, contemporary, pictorial basketweaver
Gabriella Cázares-Kelly, educator, community organizer, and politician
Maria Chona, basketweaver
Juan Dolores, early Tohono Oʼodham linguist
Terrol Dew Johnson, basketweaver and native food and health advocate
Augustine Lopez, Tohono Oʼodham nation chairman
Raul Mendoza, basketball coach
Ponka-We Victors, Kansas state legislator
Ofelia Zepeda, linguist, poet, writer