Category: Author Q&A

Five Questions with David Wentworth Lazaroff

Posted on by maryreynolds

March 27, 2023

Sabino Canyon, a desert canyon in the American Southwest near Tucson, Arizona, is enjoyed yearly by thousands of city residents as well as visitors from around the world. Picturing Sabino: A Photographic History of a Southwestern Canyon tells the story of the canyon’s transformation from a barely known oasis, miles from a small nineteenth-century town, into an immensely popular recreation area on the edge of a modern metropolis. Covering a century of change, from 1885 to 1985, this work rejoices in the canyon’s natural beauty and also relates the ups and downs of its protection and enjoyment.

Picturing Sabino is your third book about Sabino Canyon. How did you become interested in the canyon?

It began in January 1977, when I moved from California to Tucson to take job as Environmental Education Specialist with Coronado National Forest. On my first day at work my new supervisor, Bob Barnacastle, drove me in a Forest Service truck to the end of the road in Upper Sabino Canyon. I knew right away I’d landed somewhere spectacular.

Before long I had an idea for a program in which volunteers would lead children on educational field trips to the canyon. My supervisor and I worked together to make this idea a reality. The volunteers soon added presentations for the general public to their repertoire. Eventually they named themselves the Sabino Canyon Volunteer Naturalists, and they’ve continued to do their good work to this day.

I resolved to learn everything I could about Sabino Canyon both to satisfy my own curiosity and to help provide these volunteers with the background they needed. I found out quickly that the canyon was an inexhaustible source of fascination and discovery. I’ve never stopped learning about it. 

What caused you to focus on Sabino Canyon’s history?

I didn’t, at first. After leaving the Forest Service in 1986, I wanted to share something of what I’d learned about the canyon. The result was Sabino Canyon: The Life of a Southwestern Oasis, published in 1993 by The University of Arizona Press. Although most of the book’s pages were devoted to Sabino Canyon’s natural history, its last and longest chapter was a summary of the canyon’s human history and prehistory.

My research for that chapter convinced me that Sabino Canyon’s past was rich in all kinds of human experience, but that it would take time and effort to bring it more fully to light. As it turned out, I was right on both counts!

How did you uncover previously unpublished stories from Sabino Canyon’s past?

Much of my research involved documentary sources–newspaper articles, private and government correspondence, mining claims, property deeds, articles of incorporation, maps, census records, and the like. Information of this sort can be found in public archives in Arizona, elsewhere in the country, and increasingly, online.

Some of my most interesting research didn’t involve documents, though. Old photographs of visitors to the canyon were invaluable for their intimate views of what people were doing at the canyon, many years ago. What’s more, the backgrounds of these photos could be mined for nuggets of information about changes in the canyon, itself, over the decades. Equally rewarding was meeting and speaking with individuals who had lived through and contributed to Sabino Canyon’s history.

And of course one of the most intriguing sources of information was Sabino Canyon itself. It’s filled with historical treasures, if you know how find and interpret them–abandoned trails, obscure survey marks, poles from an old telephone line, fading targets shot up by military cadets, and many others.

Putting all this together was the challenge. It wasn’t often a matter of recovering stories that others had told long ago, but much more frequently of recognizing and piecing together untold stories from the great mass of disparate information I collected.

Were there any especially memorable moments in your research?

Yes, too many to describe! But here’s one.

As part of my research I often carried a copy of an old photograph into Sabino Canyon to find exactly where it had been taken. As a photographer myself, when I found the place I was looking for I often felt a subtle kinship with the person who had brought a camera there long ago.

One such occasion stands out in my memory. I had come to the canyon with a very old and quite deteriorated photograph. In searching for where it had been taken, I worked my way up a rugged slope covered with dense vegetation. It was tough going. I found the spot, and to my surprise discovered it was only about a yard from where I, myself, had taken a photograph twenty years earlier.

There is no trail to that place. Both I and that long-ago photographer seem to have been looking for the same thing: a long view up the canyon toward the landmark today called Thimble Peak. We had both worked hard to find what we wanted, and we had chosen the same site.

The image made by my predecessor–probably the well-known Tucson photographer, Henry Buehman–became the introductory photograph for Part I of Picturing Sabino. The photo I took appears in a natural-history display in the Sabino Canyon Visitor Center. (You might enjoy taking your book there and comparing the two.)

There are many wonderful historical photographs in Picturing Sabino. Was it difficult to find them?  

I found many of the photographs in public archives, but I also purchased prints online, received permission to reproduce photos from newspapers, and, in a few cases, I was able to borrow prints from generous individuals. I catalogued over fourteen hundred images and chose about two hundred for the book.

Surprisingly, it was much more difficult to find photographs from recent decades than from earlier times. Many of the photos in the book are snapshots taken by ordinary visitors to the canyon, who then mounted prints in family albums or stuffed them into envelopes and shoeboxes. As the decades passed, the photographers or their descendants came to recognize the historical value of these images, and donated them to public archives. Photos from more recent decades are likely still to be in private homes. Not enough time has passed for their owners to think of them as “historical.”

It would be worthwhile for all of us to consider the future value of the everyday photographs in our homes. For those of us still making prints in the digital age, it’s best to label them soon after we take them–before we forget the times, places, and subjects–then keep them safe. (You might be surprised by how many mislabeled prints I came across in my research!) Someday our present will be someone else’s past. Who can say how valuable our photographs may then prove to be?

***

David Wentworth Lazaroff is an independent writer and photographer living in Tucson, Arizona. He became fascinated by Sabino Canyon while working there as an environmental education specialist from 1977 to 1986. He has continued to study the canyon ever since then.

Five Questions with Tom Zoellner

Posted on by maryreynolds

February 27, 2023

Tom Zoellner walked across the length of Arizona to come to terms with his home state. But the trip revealed more mountains behind the mountains.

Rim to River is the story of this extraordinary journey through redrock country, down canyons, up mesas, and across desert plains to the obscure valley in Mexico that gave the state its enigmatic name. The trek is interspersed with incisive essays that pick apart the distinctive cultural landscape of Arizona: the wine-colored pinnacles and complex spirituality of Navajoland, the mind-numbing stucco suburbs, desperate border crossings, legislative skullduggery, extreme politics, billion-dollar copper ventures, dehydrating rivers, retirement kingdoms, old-time foodways, ghosts of old wars, honky-tonk dreamers, murder mysteries, and magical Grand Canyon reveries.

What was your reason for writing this book?

Arizona is an easy place to caricature, either as a scenic wonderland or a den of political craziness. It’s both of those to some degree but that is nowhere close to the whole story.

You grew up in Arizona, intimately aware of its landscape. Was there anything that surprised you about the natural world you experienced while on your Arizona Trail journey?

Nobody knows the whole place. There are pockets of Arizona that will always remain tucked away even to those who spend a lifetime here.

You said in one of the essays that a truly great novel about Arizona has not yet been written. Is this still true?

Yes. There have been plenty of very good novels set here, but none that has truly captured the essence of the state. This is a challenge laid before the state’s fiction writers: where is the Great Arizona Novel? Can you write it, please?

Did the lack of water on the Arizona Trail inform your writing about water challenges facing the state of Arizona?

Most definitely. One of the baseline characteristics of Arizona is aridity — it has defined us from the beginning of human settlement here ten thousand years ago. Thanks to hydrology, it’s easy to live in modern Arizona without experiencing it personally. Nearly running out of water creates a sense of elemental urgency. 

What are you working on now?

A nonfiction narrative about the refugee camps of freed enslaved people in the early days of the U.S. Civil War.

***

Tom Zoellner, a fifth-generation Arizonan, is the author of eight nonfiction books, including The Heartless Stone, Uranium, The National Road, and Island on Fire, which won the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the Bancroft Prize.

Five Questions with David Martínez

Posted on by Abby Mogollon

February 17, 2023

Carlos Montezuma is well known as an influential Indigenous figure of the turn of the twentieth century. While some believe he was largely interested only in enabling Indians to assimilate into mainstream white society, Montezuma’s image as a staunch assimilationist changes dramatically when viewed through the lens of his Yavapai relatives at Fort McDowell in Arizona. Through his diligent research and transcription of the letters archived in the Carlos Montezuma Collection at Arizona State University Libraries, David Martínez offers a critical new perspective on Montezuma’s biography and legacy in his new work My Heart Is Bound Up with Them. Today, Martínez answer our five questions, including about what inspired this work and the importance of archives and family histories.

Why did you embark on this work?

In the fall of 2014, Joyce Martin invited me to join her in applying for an Arizona Humanities Council grant. At the time, she was curator for the Labriola National American Indian Data Center at Arizona State University’s Hayden Library. More to the point, she wanted to digitize the Carlos Montezuma Archival Collection and needed help from a humanities scholar. That’s when I entered the picture. Joyce knew about my interest in American Indian intellectual history, the Progressive Era, and Carlos Montezuma. In fact, I had published a paper in a 2013 joint issue of the American Indian Quarterly and Studies in American Indian Literatures, in which I examined the advocacy work that Montezuma did for the Akimel O’odham and Piipaash communities at the Salt and Gila River reservations. Initially, when I agreed to collaborate with Joyce, I thought at most I was going to write a paper for publication in a peer reviewed journal. Little did I know that my interests in the Montezuma Collection would blossom into a full-length book.

Carlos Montezuma’s biography has been well-documented. But this work uncovers a new dimension to his life story. It recovers how his relatives informed his later activism. How did you uncover this story?

What I soon discovered when I delved into the boxes of material that are held in the Montezuma Collection is that there are nearly 120 personal letters, virtually all of which were composed by Montezuma’s relatives at Fort McDowell, and nearly the entirety was handwritten. Only a handful were typed. The letters spanned a roughly twenty-year period, beginning in 1901, and contained a host of topics, from the utterly mundane, such as needing a winter coat or wanting to purchase a trumpet from the Montgomery Ward catalog, to the profound, such as being anxious to organize a trip to Washington, DC, to plead for Yavapai land and water rights. Moreover, what was equally fascinating was the way that Montezuma’s cousins regarded him as a valued community member, who they urgently depended on to negotiate with the Office of Indian Affairs. As in any Indigenous community, one’s kinship relations are of utmost importance, especially when it comes to understanding one’s role and purpose in life. Montezuma found his. These handwritten letters provide a whole new context for comprehending and appreciating Montezuma’s work and legacy as a founding member of the Society of American Indians, the creator of the Wassaja newsletter, as an activist-intellectual, and, above all, as a Yavapai.

What is the importance of archives to this kind of historical recovery work?

What is remarkable about the Montezuma Collection is that everything was literally cast out with the trash. After Montezuma’s wife Marie passed away in 1956, her husband’s papers wound up on the curb. Fortunately, there were people who knew the value of these discarded items and rescued them. Eventually, the papers found their way into four major collections: the Wisconsin Historical Society, the Newberry Library, the University of Arizona, and Arizona State University. As an historically important Indigenous personage, Montezuma’s belongings are a dramatic example of how easily history can wind up on the trash heap, forever lost to posterity. Montezuma’s papers were saved from destruction, but how much of Indigenous history is lost because no one was around to perceive something’s true worth? When my grandfather, Simon Lewis, died in 1999, his papers, along with photographs and other affects, were almost tossed out. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to ask for them. I’m keeping them now. Collectively, my grandfather’s archives provide a window onto the Gila River Indian Community as a minister at the Gila Crossing First Presbyterian Church, which began in the 1950s. Granted, I have yet to turn these items into an article or book, but the archival record is there when I am finally ready. In the meantime, what is important to know is that Indigenous histories cannot be preserved without a conscientious effort at preserving our own archival records. We should never underestimate our own worth, including the heritage items that we leave to our descendants. Simply relying on mainstream institutions like the National Archives and Library of Congress, or even local historical societies, is not enough. Fortunately, there are many people working in libraries and archives today, many of whom are Indigenous professionals, who are aware of these issues, and are working diligently at increasing awareness and setting an agenda for more digital sovereignty in Indigenous communities. In fact, the current director of the Labriola is Tohono O’odham and, I am proud to say, a former student of mine, Alex Soto.

How does your own family history inform your work as a scholar?

Someday I should write a memoir, so that I can answer this interesting and important question more thoroughly than I can here. With respect to my book on Montezuma, when I think about the work that he did for the Salt and Gila River reservations during the 1910s, I think about the world that my maternal grandparents were born into. My grandfather, Simon Lewis, was born in 1911. My grandmother, Margaret Lewis (née Childs), in 1913. During the 1930s and 1940s, my grandparents worked their allotment in the Gila River Indian Community. According to my mom, Marilyn, and her older siblings, my grandfather was a pretty good farmer. His allotment, like others, was created during Montezuma’s time, when the superintendent for the Pima Agency, with the help of an allotment agent, surveyed the Gila and Salt River reservations. While the Akimel O’odham and Piipaash, who share these two reservations, lost a lot of land because of allotment, what we retained as a community was in large part due to Montezuma’s willingness to work tirelessly at defending his Yavapai people at Fort McDowell (keeping them from being forcibly relocated to Salt River) and, by turns, preempting a land and water rights crisis at Salt and Gila River from getting worse.

What are you working on now?

Now that the Montezuma book is out, making for my fourth major work in the field of American Indian intellectual history, I am finally turning all of my attention to O’odham culture, history, and politics. Specifically, I am working on a history of the Hia-Ced O’odham, which is a small but vibrant part of the O’odham homeland. I am related to them through my maternal grandmother. As for the book-length project that I am researching—tentatively titled Elder Brother’s Forgotten People: How the Hia-Ced O’odham Survived an Epidemic to Claim a Place in Arizona’s Transborder History—it covers the period from 1848-1936. Recently, I completed a 53-page chapter on the 1851 yellow fever epidemic that swept across ancestral Hia-Ced O’odham land in southwestern Arizona, and down toward the Sierra Pinacate, which compelled people to flee from the region to take refuge in Ajo, Quitobaquito, and Sonoyta. Unfortunately, because of the US-Mexico border, the creation of Arizona Territory, and restraints set by US federal Indian policy—most significantly, its reservation system—the Hia-Ced O’odham saw their presence reduced to “extinction”—or so anthropologists and the Indian Bureau assumed. My book is ultimately about Hia-Ced O’odham resilience, as they endured the indignity of being overlooked as the four O’odham reservations were drawn without them. My historical narrative will conclude with the 1936 Papago Tribe (now Tohono O’odham Nation) Constitution, when eleven reservation districts were enumerated, complete with the omission of any reference to the Hia-Ced O’odham. In the end, I hope my work brings the Hia-Ced O’odham all of the recognition they deserve as a discreet part of the O’odham Jeved, the O’odham homeland.

***

David Martínez is professor of American Indian studies at Arizona State University and is enrolled in the Gila River Indian Community.

Five Questions with Tim Hunter

Posted on by Abby Mogollon

February 7, 2023

In his new book The Sky at Night avid stargazer and astronomy columnist Tim Hunter covers all the basics—from the Moon, planets, and stars to the history and origins of constellations and selected famous astronomers and events. The book emphasizes naked-eye viewing with an occasional reference to using a pair of binoculars or a small telescope. Hunter encourages beginners to explore the skies while giving them a solid understanding of what they see. Building on his writings for the long-running Sky Spy column, Hunter defines and outlines astronomical terms and how they relate to locating objects in the sky. He weaves in his personal experiences of what he learned about astronomy as a columnist for more than a decade, detailing his mistakes and triumphs to help other would-be astronomers excel in this heavenly hobby. Today, he answers our questions.

What inspired you to write this book?

I am an avid amateur astronomer whose hobby has run amok.  I have always wanted to do an astronomy book but never had good idea or subject matter for such a book until I started writing the weekly “Sky Spy” column for the Arizona Daily Star.  I have written three academic radiology books and was familiar with putting together a book.  After writing Sky Spy columns for ten years, I realized the material in the columns would be ideal for a book on easy observing of the night sky.

You’ve been a columnist about astronomy for more than a decade.  What were the challenges in turning your column into a book?

When I began thinking about turning my columns into a book, I had more than 750 weekly columns that had been published.  There are many books where authors have combined their weekly or monthly columns into a book.  A lot of these are simply thrown together and renamed as a book without any major editing or condensation of the material.  My columns ranged from 250 to 300 words, frequently covering the same topic from year to year like the equinoxes or the solstices.  The columns were often Tucson or Arizona centric and very often date specific describing an astronomical event.

If the book were to have any worth, it could not just be columns thrown together and called a book.  There had to be a consistent whole and most Tucson and Arizona centric material had to be removed as well as most of the date specific material.    

Having to explain a concept to someone else means you must understand it as well.  I have often been chagrined to discover how little I knew about an astronomical topic when I first sat down to write a column about it.  When I finally got done with the column, the column might not be any good, but I sure learned a lot.

I picked important points from the columns and collated them, I hope, into an intelligible whole to be enjoyed by the reader.  I describe what I learned about astronomy and about being a columnist over the years.  I tell about my mistakes and occasional triumphs, advising other would-be astronomy columnists what to emphasize and what to avoid.  This book really is “the adventures of a sometimes astronomy columnist.”

Much of the best material for the Sky Spy columns has come from its readers through questions or complaints.  Constant reader feedback is essential for keeping a column fresh and relevant. 

Traditional newspaper columns are fading from public view due to the challenges facing print media in today’s digital world.  Even so, a blog or digital column needs as much input as possible from interested persons, readers and editors.  The sky is a wonderful draw.  It interests everyone in some fashion.  Put a telescope on a busy corner in the heart of a metropolis.  You will draw a crowd no matter the light pollution or surrounding urban chaos.  It is hard to beat the glory of Saturn’s rings or the craters on the Moon in a small telescope.  The summer Milky Way overhead on a clear night at a dark sky site rivals any digital trick available to the modern movie industry.  A total eclipse of the Sun is such a stunning experience that it has no serious rival in nature. 

What first brought you to astronomy?

I have been an amateur astronomer since 1950 when Miss Wilmore my first-grade teacher showed me a book of the constellations.  I was fascinated by a drawing of Cygnus the Swan and wondered whether I could ever see that in the sky.  That book has been published in the 1920s and did not list Pluto.  When I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, Pluto was a planet.  Today, Pluto is now longer a planet, but that is a story for another time.  It turns out the book I though was outdated when I was in first grade is now back in style.

You advocate naked-eye viewing, and your book discusses objects easily viewed this way.  Why do you like this approach?

The sky is wonderful.  It is to be enjoyed day and night with easy viewing of the night sky the focus of the book.  All one has to do is step outside and look up.  I assume the reader is literate and interested in the sky but not particularly knowledgeable.  It assumes one is not familiar with most of the constellations, but it is hoped the descriptions provided and the directions given are good enough to find one’s way around the sky.  

There are many things you can easily see from your backyard even if you live in the city: the Moon, the planets, bright stars, bright satellites, the Earth’s shadow, conjunctions of the planets and Moon, eclipses, and bright constellation.  At a darker suburban location, you can even see a few star clusters and at least one galaxy with your naked eye.  If you add a good pair of easily held binoculars, you extend your viewing many times further. 

I will have succeeded if you enjoy the sky as much as I do and make friends with the Moon, planets, and stars. 

What are you working on now?

I have an observatory in my front yard in Tucson, the 3towers Observatory, and an observatory out of town near Sonoita, Arizona, the Grasslands Observatory (see: http://www.grasslandsobservatory.com ).  The Grasslands Observatory sits on a high 5000-foot altitude grasslands between distant mountains in all directions.  It has three telescopes that can be controlled remotely from Tucson and are used for astrophotography projects.  An ongoing project is to image all the 370 Barnard Objects in color.  These are regions of dark nebulosity which were first described and photographed in black and white more than 100 years ago by the famous astronomer E. E. Barnard (1857-1923).

***

Tim B. Hunter, MD, MSc, is a professor emeritus in the Department of Medical Imaging at the University of Arizona College of Medicine and has been the author of the Sky Spy column in the Arizona Daily Star for more than fifteen years. He is a co-founder of the International Dark-Sky Association and has received multiple awards for his work addressing light pollution.

Five Questions with Myrriah Gómez

Posted on by Abby Mogollon

October 18, 2022

Nuclear Nuevo México recovers the voices and stories that have been lost or ignored in the telling of U.S. nuclear history. By recuperating these narratives, Myrriah Gómez tells a new story of New Mexico, one in which the nuclear history is not separate from the collective colonial history of Nuevo México but instead demonstrates how earlier eras of settler colonialism laid the foundation for nuclear colonialism in New Mexico. Today, Myrriah answers our questions about her new work.

What was your intention in writing this book?

There have been a lot of histories written about the Manhattan Project and Los Alamos, in particular. However, the presence of Nuevomexicanos, or the Spanish-speaking peoples of New Mexico and their descendants, is always an afterthought. The history books like to repeat a line that New Mexicans “gave up their land for the good of the nation,” and that just isn’t true. I originally wanted to write this book to tell the story about the takeover of the Pajarito Plateau, but the deeper I went, the more I realized how Nuevomexicanos across New Mexico have been affected by the nuclear industry. It is difficult to write a contemporary history, especially when things are still evolving, particularly the efforts to amend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) and the HOLTEC proposal to bring a high-level nuclear waste facility to southern New Mexico, but I needed to get this out there. There was an urgency in this project from the time I began and it may be even more urgent now. I want people to get this book in their hands so that they can assist in some of the efforts that Nuevomexicanos are currently engaged.

People often think they know the story of nuclear New Mexico. But that just isn’t the case. Why has the impact the nuclear program had on Nuevomexicanas/os and Indigenous people been overlooked for so long?

Put simply, New Mexico finds itself in a precarious situation because we are in the federal government’s stranglehold. The number of jobs that the Los Alamos National Laboratory (and Sandia National Laboratory) creates for Nuevomexicanas/os and Indigenous people is undeniable, and people are afraid of what would happen to northern New Mexico, especially, if the Labs “shut down.” I always tell people I am not outright advocating for the Labs to shut down, but they need to stop creating nuclear weapons. Also, Nuevomexicano and Indigenous perspectives have not always been represented accurately even when they have been discussed. For example, the recent WGN show Manhattan portrays both Indigenous people and Nuevomexicanos in a poor light. The only Nuevomexicano who appears in the show is depicted as a rapist. This show aired in the last decade. These racist depictions of our peoples are despicable. I think it has been easy to overlook or incorrectly depict our communities in these ways in part because people have been asking the wrong questions. For a long time, they wanted to know what the scientists were like who the Nuevomexicanas and Indigenous women worked for instead of asking the women about their own work on the Hill. Those themes (colonialism, racism, and others) resonate throughout the examples I discuss in the book.

You grew up in New Mexico, intimately aware of the impacts of the nuclear industrial complex had on everyday people. Was there anything that surprised you in researching this book?

There were many things that surprised me, but the magnitude of people who are sick with cancer and other illnesses associated with radiation exposure as the result of the Trinity test was shocking to me. I took a break from working on this manuscript to work on the Health Impact Assessment project for the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, which we released in February 2017. As we met with people from communities between Socorro and Tularosa, especially, I was saddened and angered by the high incidences of cancer and the total disregard for New Mexicans by the federal government. The fact that RECA has not been amended to include New Mexico downwinders (and others, like people in the Marshall Islands, for example) and that the government has not even issued an apology to the people of New Mexico should be shocking to all Americans.

Another thing that shocked me, in a good way, is the amount of coalitional work that occurs around anti-nuclear issues in New Mexico, across the country, and throughout the world. That is why I dedicate the book to the activists. There is a large network of people doing grassroots organizing, who have dedicated their lives to seeking justice around these issues. I respect and admire these people, many whom know far more about these issues than I do. I have never called myself an activist, but one day I hope I can dedicate all my time to working on these issues and be more than an advocate. Only then would I dare call myself an activist.

How could instructors teaching about colonialism and racism incorporate this work into their classes?

I wrote the introduction to this book to stand on its own, but also, the chapters illustrate the points I lay out in the introduction, especially in terms of settler colonialism and environmental racism. Each individual chapter is a case study of sorts. I also wrote it for a wide audience, meaning that high school teachers could use this in addition to the college professors that I hope will assign it. As I have already mentioned, much of this is contemporary history, meaning that these are ongoing issues and the battles against the nuclear industrial complex are still being fought. I would hope that those reasons alone would encourage instructors to teach this book to try to engage students in community-engaged research or participatory action research. What is the point of reading about all this twenty years from now if you have the chance to engage in what is happening right now to try to make an impact.

What are you working on now?

I am working on a new manuscript on nuclear literature written by and about people of color, tentatively titled Atomic Bomb Culture. This continues some of the testimonio work that I started with this project, only now I’m removing myself as interlocuter to analyze work that has already been published. What I hope to demonstrate is how the “fiction” is actually nonfiction and is modeled after what happened or is ongoing in communities of color affected by the nuclear industrial complex, and anything nonfiction, especially memoir and poetry, reflects intense experiences that remain mostly unfamiliar to the general public.

Vox.com Features Interview with John Fleck

Posted on by Savannah Hicks

October 14, 2022

Vox.com recently featured Science Be Dammed and an interview with author John Fleck and Benji Jones in their article “How a 100-year-old miscalculation drained the Colorado River”.

“…this was a stunning revelation for me. The very bottom of the river, where it leaves the United States and enters Mexico, used to be this vast delta — wild and wet and full of beavers and marshes and estuaries. But the river now stops at a place called Morelos Dam, on the US-Mexico border. Downstream from the dam there’s a little trickle of water that’s maybe 10 to 15 feet wide, and then it peters out into the sand. Then you just have dry riverbed. That’s because we’ve taken all the water out of the river upstream to use in our cities and farms.”

John Fleck

Read the entire article here.

Watch: Robert Davis Hoffman Discusses and Reads from New Poetry Collection ‘Raven’s Echo’

Posted on by Savannah Hicks

October 3, 2022

We are thrilled to be joined by Robert Davis Hoffmann for a discussion about and a reading from his new poetry collection, Raven’s Echo.

In Raven’s Echo, Tlingit artist and poet Robert Davis Hoffmann calls on readers to nurture material as well as spiritual life, asking beautiful and brutal questions about our individual positions within the universe and within history. The poems in this collection are brimming with an imaginative array of characters, including the playful yet sometimes disturbing trickster Raven, and offer insights into both traditional and contemporary Native life in southeast Alaska.

Robert Davis Hoffmann imagines the mythical and historical life of his Tlingit people. He addresses historical and cultural loss, confused identity as the result of growing up in two cultures and being half-Native, and ultimately moving toward catharsis and integrity. He now enjoys retirement in Sitka, Alaska, where does his artwork and helps his wife, Kris, with her fantastical garden. His latest work is Village Boy: Poems of Cultural Identity.

Four Questions with Author Devon A. Mihesuah

Posted on by Mari Herreras

September 6, 2022
Today marks the publication of Devon A. Mihesuah’s newest release Dance of the Returned. In this newest work, the disappearance of a young Choctaw leads Detective Monique Blue Hawk to investigate a little-known ceremonial dance. As she traces the steps of the missing man, she discovers that the seemingly innocuous Renewal Dance is not what it appears to be. After Monique embarks on a journey that she never thought possible, she learns that the past and future can converge to offer endless possibilities for the present. She must also accept her own destiny of violence and peacekeeping.

To celebrate the new release, we’ve republished our interview with Devon, where she discusses writing life and even gives us a glimpse at Dance of the Returned. Enjoy!

April 20, 2021

In Devon A. Mihesuah’s new novel, The Hatak Witches, readers are introduced to Detective Monique Blue Hawk and her partner Chris Pierson when they are summoned to the Children’s Museum of Science and History in Norman, Oklahoma, where one security guard is dead and another wounded. Her uncle, the spiritual leader Leroy Bear Red Ears, concludes that the stolen remains from the museum are those of Hatak haksi, a witch and the matriarch of the Crow family, a group of shape-shifting Choctaws who plan to reestablish themselves as the powerful creatures they were when the tribe lived in Mississippi.

In a recent review from Publisher’s Weekly: “As informative as it is gripping, this supernatural mystery from Mihesuah—the 88th installment of Sun Tracks: An American Indian Literary series—is rooted in Choctaw cosmology and contemporary Native American life. Readers looking for intelligent, diverse supernatural fiction will be captivated.”

Below, Mihesuah answers several questions on writing life and what’s next for Detective Monique Blue Hawk:

You have a wonderful reputation as an Indigenous Studies scholar, what brought you to fiction?

I write and teach about racism, colonization, genocide, boarding schools, repatriation, bias in the academy, stereotypes, violence against Natives, activism, and ethnic fraud. These are heavy topics and any Native in the academy will tell you that we don’t stop thinking about them when the work day is over. We carry around a lot of emotional baggage. I don’t care for downer themes in fiction and I have a hard time watching movies that reenact past horrors. That trauma trope is not entertaining to me. Writing stories is a way to create endings that I want. Writing fiction is also a way to express myself in ways that I can’t in non-fiction. I prefer off-beat, odd stories with strong Native protagonists who could be role models.

Have you ever had any concerns sharing Choctaw culture and cosmology in your fiction?

I first wrote about Choctaw creation stories, witches, shampes, Kowi Anukasha (Little People), and time travel in Roads of My Relations. That was published in 2000 and no one has voiced concerns. I explain in the epilogue of that novel and in Hatak Witches that I never write about real ceremonies and that the entities in my stories are profiled on multiple online sites and even on the Choctaw Nation site. I’ve written a lot about Choctaw culture, foodways, and politics. My great-great-grandfather was murdered in 1884 by men from the rival political party. Many Choctaws don’t want the world to know that we have a complex history of violent intertribal factionalism based on cultural differences, wealth inequities, and religious adherences. They become more upset with the truth telling in my book Choctaw Crime and Punishment: 1884-1907 (2010) than they have with my fiction.

What do you hope your readers get from The Hatak Witches and Detective Blue Hawk?

I try to create inspirational characters. My other novels feature strong females. Monique is traumatized from the death of her brother and frustrated with tribal factionalism. She might be slightly addicted to her beer and has a hair-trigger temper, but she doesn’t wallow around in angst. In two future books she most certainly puts that anger to use. She is proactive and I am hopeful she can serve as a role model.

Can we say this will be an ongoing series? (wink wink, nudge nudge)

Yes! I have completed the next Monique story, Na Yukpa-The Blessed. It picks up a thread in Roads of My Relations and explores the possibilities of Indigenous futurisms. Here is the synopsis:

The disappearance of a young Choctaw leads Detective Monique Blue Hawk to investigate a little-known ceremonial dance. As she traces the steps of the missing man, she discovers that the seemingly innocuous Renewal Dance is not what it seems to be. After Monique embarks on a journey that she never thought possible, she learns that the past and future can converge to offer endless possibilities for the present. And that she must accept her destiny of violence and peacekeeping to become one of the Blessed. 

Five Questions with Nielsen and Heather on ‘Finding Right Relations’

Posted on by Mari Herreras

May 18, 2022

In Finding Right Relations: Quakers, Native Americans, and Settler Colonialism, Marianne O. Nielsen, and Barbara M. Heather explore the contradictory position of the Quakers as both egalitarian, pacifist people, and as settler colonists. This book explores major challenges to Quaker beliefs and resulting relations with American Indians from the mid-seventeenth century to the late nineteenth century. Below, Nielsen and Heather get to a bit of the heart of their new book in five questions:

In your book you set out to shed light on the real history between Quaker settlers and Native Americans. In doing so, you offer the chance to change a modern perspective on Quakers and Friends overall. Was that your intention?

That was not quite our intention. Our focus initially was on peacemaking among Quakers and, because there were strong similarities between Quaker and Indigenous decision-making practices, on whether Penn incorporated any Lenape principles or practices of peacemaking into his form of government. During this period of our research, we came across inconsistences in Penn’s time as Governor of Pennsylvania, such as the limits on his respect for, and understanding of, Indigenous cultural practices related to land use. There were also passages in his documents that were clearly paternalistic in tone. Penn is not documented as objecting to the requirements of Charles II that he Christianize and civilize the Lenape, although he did object vociferously to the suggestion, he needed a militia. In fact, a second thread was Penn’s insistence on having no militia. Rhode Island, which also had a mix of Quaker and non-Quaker settler-colonists, chose to fund a militia but include a right to conscientious objection. We wondered why Penn did not choose this for Pennsylvania, even as he was soliciting non-Quaker and non-pacifist settlers for his province? He failed to address the potential for violence. He needed plenty of settlers to make back the money he spent on negotiations with the Lenape but adding non-pacifists to the list inevitably caused an issue when settler-colonists and Lenape came into conflict.

Our intention therefore shifted to a focus on a broader issue, that of conflicts of faith, especially the Peace testimony and the Testimony to Equality. This Testament emerged as a belief in spiritual equality, i.e. that in the eyes of God all are equal.  We quickly realized that in the eyes of settler-colonists, the Indigenous Peoples were not equal. That allowed many settler-colonists, including Quakers, to cheat and defraud the Lenape, primarily of their lands. When this led to war, the Peace Testimony challenged the Quaker response. Penn had not set up any alternatives to a militia, such as Rhode Island’s law allowing conscientious objection. Quakers lost control of the government and never regained political power.   

Do you find that it is difficult for modern Quakers and others to rectify this history with how they may see themselves today?

On the surface we think many Friends accept that some Quakers have acted badly, whether with good intentions or knowingly to reach their own goals, but in practice we sense that our findings go deeper, bringing out resistance. Quakers have long been known for their aversion to conflict and we wonder if this also is behind their responses. It was painful to confront the reality that Quakers quite often did not live up to their beliefs and even more so to find some Friends protesting our descriptions of that behavior.  

Quakers such as the very active Boulder Colorado Friends Meeting have accomplished much toward reconciliation and reparation, as has the Canadian Friends Service Committee. Sometimes it seems easier to blame all those non-Quakers who do not question their assumptions, and to think of Quakers as behaving better than those others. Academically and personally both sides of this equation are hard to accept. How could a religious sect with such a strong belief in their Truth and such strong Testimonies, especially to Peace and to Spiritual Equality of peoples, commit cultural genocide? We hope that some readers of our book will understand why we became so involved with the contradictions of the Quaker faith and with the practical expressions of it, but also saw the potential of the Testimony to Peace and its corollary, peacekeeping. The cost of harms caused by all forms of colonialism to Indigenous Peoples are untenable. Can peacekeeping contribute to a beginning of reparation and reconciliation? 

The damage all forms of colonialism have cost the Indigenous of this land is often untenable, how can documenting this one area help further change or reconciliation?

Colonialism was and still is all-encompassing and insidious. By documenting this one situation, it may help raise awareness among readers of the continuing impacts such as high Indigenous mortality rates, poverty, and political suppression, and the need for resolutions. Quakers believed themselves to be above colonialism because of their beliefs, but they also fell victim to the greed and arrogance caused by colonial ideologies. They are the seeming exception that wasn’t an exception. By reinterpreting their history and showing the accumulating impacts of colonialism on their beliefs and behavior, we are providing a warning story, but also an example of hopeful change, as many Quakers accept the guilt of their predecessors and are working to further change and promote true reconciliation. Indigenous Peoples are working hard to overcome the impacts of colonization that still affect their communities and citizens, but there are many actions that non-Indigenous individuals, organizations and governments could take to offer reparations and assistance, if such are desired by Indigenous Peoples. We give some examples in this book.

How do you think we begin to put Indigenous knowledge into practice now with climate change and other issues at our heels?

Until the advent of colonialism, Indigenous Peoples world-wide practiced sustainable economies, that recognized that humans are just an interconnected part of creation, and a not very important one at that. Human activities are hurting Mother Earth and if we continue, she may become uninhabitable for us and many of our fellow beings.

Indigenous knowledge is the property of Indigenous Peoples and it is their choice if they wish to share it with non-Indigenous peoples. If they so choose, there is a lot the knowledge-holders could teach us about our role on this planet—how to end exploitation of natural resources, how to rebuild our damaged ecologies, and how to live sustainable lives that help our planet thrive, in other words, to have right relations with all those with whom we share the planet. The question is, will non-Indigenous people, organizations and governments listen and be willing to pay the high short-term costs to put us on the right path?

Ultimately, what do you hope readers, scholars, and others get from this book?

We hope that they will understand that colonialism has not stopped and that it continues to have serious impacts on Indigenous Peoples world-wide. Second, we hope our readers will gain a stronger understanding of colonialism’s impacts on the descendants of settler-colonists, its ability to become part of our lives, our ideologies, and our language – to permeate all that we are, even those whose strong religious faith should mitigate against such beliefs. Finally, we hope they understand that it is possible to counteract these impacts as non-Indigenous people become more aware and take action to assist Indigenous peoples in their efforts, as Indigenous Peoples so choose.

Five Questions on ‘Latinx Teens’ with Trevor Boffone and Cristina Herrera

Posted on by Mari Herreras

May 11, 2022

In Latinx Teens: U.S. Popular Culture on the Page, Stage, and Screen, Trevor Boffone and Cristina Herrera explore the diverse ways that contemporary mainstream film, television, theater, and young adult literature invokes, constructs, and interprets adolescent Latinidad. Here are five questions from the authors on teen Latinidad, pop culture, and defeating white supremacy:

How is regular Latinidad different from teen Latinidad? Is it as simple as generational or is it more nuanced? 

It’s more nuanced. Teenagers have long been at the forefront of social change. Whether it’s slang, fashion, dance, music, or social media, teenagers set the tone. As they go, we go. Teenagers today have grown up as digital natives. They’ve only lived in a world in which access to social media and technology is a given. While us viejitxs may have had to adapt to digital media, teenagers today feel right at home on any number of platforms. Latinx teens influence intergenerational Latinx communities in much of the same way. Take, for instance, In the Heights’ Nina Rosario who, as a second generation immigrant, forces her parents to accept that her dreams aren’t necessarily their dreams. As someone who grew up in New York City, Nina sees the US (the good, the bad, the ugly) from her parents and, as such, pushes them to expand their preconceived notions of what it’s like to be Puerto Rican in the mainland US. Or, look no further than the ways that teenagers in the US were using TikTok years before most adults joined the app in 2020. While adults dismissed TikTok as “child’s play,” teenagers (many of them Latinx!) were setting the culture, the same culture that adults today engage with and mimic on the app. We see this same phenomenon play out in fictional media. Teens are setting the tone, and it’s up to adults, whether we like it or not, to keep up.

Pop culture has always influenced all teen behaviors, consumer habits, and how teens see themselves in the world. What ways do you think the growing Latinx characters and pop culture icons influence non-Latinx teens?

One of the major points we make in Latinx Teens is that Latinx teen representation is not merely enough to influence mainstream popular culture. We could argue that Latinx teens have always been present in popular culture, but how were they represented? In the twenty-first century, what we see is that Latinx teens are not only pushing for more representation and recognition, but they’re doing it in ways that have major influences on all teens, Latinx or not. For example, even a fictional character like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’s Miles Morales is enormously significant in challenging monolithic understandings of Latinidad that erase Afro-Latinxs. Moreover, his Afro-Latinidad is intrinsic to his superhero qualities; one doesn’t cancel the other out. 

Do you think one benefit will be the creative work of today’s Latinx teens and what they give to future generations? What will that look like?

Absolutely! This creative work has long term, positive benefits. Latinx teen popular culture provides the mirrors and windows, as Rudine Sims Bishop famously argued, for Latinx teens and other teens of color. We can’t underestimate the importance of seeing oneself on TV, film, or in literature. When young people watch Diary of a Future President, for example, it’s entirely possible for this viewing experience to spark their interest in student council, activism, and politics, to take a stand on issues they find relevant. In years to come, we have no doubt Latinx teens will continue to watch series like On My Block because shows like that, we argue, will always be relevant in capturing the lives of Latinx youth and all the messiness, joy, and complexities that come with it. 

How much further do you think we need to go when we will see fuller representation in the pop culture landscape?

Just as Latinx representation at large has room to grow in US popular culture, nuanced depictions of teenage Latinxs merit a deeper dive. One of our goals with Latinx Teens was to showcase the breadth of Latinx identities. The spectrum of Latinidad is expansive, but this isn’t always reflected in popular culture. Where are the intersectional stories about Afro-Latinx, indigenous, queer, disabled, neurodiverse, and/or Spanish-speaking teens? Of course, many of these stories exist (and in our book we made every effort to highlight them), but how many nuanced depictions of Latinx teens exist on Netflix, in Hollywood films, on Broadway, and on the New York Times Best-Seller List? Until these stories are commonplace in US popular culture then there is still work to be done to achieve fuller representation of Latinx teenagers in the pop culture landscape.

Ultimately is pop culture how Latinx teens can be part of defeating white supremacy?

Our book’s conclusion shifts the focus from fictional teens to real-life teens. This wasn’t by chance. We wanted to use this space to highlight just how badass Latinx teenagers can be! Even fictional representations of super cool, critical Latinx teens, like Lucía Acosta from Party of Five, who is an activist and who speaks out against unlawful detainment and deportation of Latinx residents, can bring about change. But this requires those in powerful positions to back these creative productions so they make it to the small and big screens and into our lives. So when we see real life activists like Emma González, we might think of characters like Lucía Acosta, and we’re reminded that there are Lucía Acostas throughout the US who are fighting for their communities and using their voices in admirable ways.  

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