Voices from the Ancestors brings together the reflective writings and spiritual practices of Xicanx, Latinx, and Afro-Latinx womxn and male allies in the United States who seek to heal from the historical traumas of colonization by returning to ancestral traditions and knowledge.
The editors and contributors want to share these practices from the book that relate to the online discussion on dreaming, one and two; on house blessings; on spiritual limpias; rituals and remedies; and honoring the Four Directions.
More information on Voices editors and contributors:
Berenice Dimas shared information on herbs and wellness practices. Dimas is a queer writer, community-based herbalist, health educator, wellness promotora, and full-spectrum birth doula. Find out more about Berenice’s work by visiting her website and her Instagram pages @hoodherbalism y @brujatip.
Martha R. Gonzales, whose partner is currently battling COVID-19, shared her experience caring for her partner and turning to traditional ways to help him fight the virus and heal. Gonzales was raised in East Los Angeles, earned her bachelor’s degree in philosophy and literature from University of California, Santa Cruz, and her doctorate in literature from University of California, San Diego. She lectures in the Ethnic Studies Department at Glendale Community College, Glendale, California.
Marta López-Garza, shared information on how to do a blessing for a house or sacred space. López-Garza is a professor in gender and women’s studies and Chicana/o studies departments at California State University, Northridge. She co-facilitates Revolutionary Scholars, an organization of formerly incarcerated students and is a cofounder of Civil Discourse and Social Change, a campus-wide initiative combining education, community involvement, and sustained activism. Her scholarship focuses on formerly incarcerated womxn.
Lara Medina (Xicanx) was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, earned an MA in theology from Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and a PhD in history from Claremont Graduate University. She is a professor in the Chicana/o Studies Department at California State University, Northridge.
Sandra M. Pacheco is a professor and independent scholar. Her teaching and research focuses on Chicana/Latina/Indígena feminisms and spirituality. Sandra cofounded Curanderas sin Fronteras, a mobile clinic dedicated to serving the health and well-being of Chican@/Latin@/Indígena communities through the use of curanderismo.
Based on fifteen years of archaeological and historical research in the two regions, Narratives of Persistence charts the remarkable persistence of the Ohlone and Paipai alongside a synthesis of Native Californian endurance over the past five centuries. Lee M. Panich draws connections between colonial events and processes of the deeper past and the way the Ohlone and Paipai today understand their own histories and identities, offering a model for how scholars of Indigenous histories may think about the connections between the past and the present.
Below, read an interview with Lee M. Panich about his new book.
What inspired you to embark on this research?
Narratives of Persistence has its origins in my dissertation research in Baja California,
back in 2005, for which I conducted an archaeological excavation at the site of
Mission Santa Catalina, in the heart of the Paipai reserve of Santa Catarina.
The initial idea for my dissertation was to compare the Dominican mission
system of Baja California to the contemporaneous Franciscan missions of Alta
California. However, Paipai community members quickly convinced me to change my
research questions to center on the tribe’s long-term history. They downplayed
the importance of the mission, saying in effect, “We’re still here, while the
mission is just ruins now.”
This idea became the central focus of my dissertation and stuck with me when I shifted my research to the San Francisco Bay area about ten years ago. I saw a similar situation with local Ohlone groups, who had persisted in different ways during and after the mission period. Given the variables involved—different Indigenous cultural traditions, different missionary orders, differences between the U.S. and Mexico—I thought the two case studies would make an interesting comparison. I hope readers agree.
Why do the Ohlone people lack popular recognition and official acknowledgement from the U.S. government, even though they share a similar colonial history to the Paipai people?
That’s a great question and one of the key issues I try to
address in the book. There are, of course, a lot of reasons for this
discrepancy. One reason has to do with differences in how central California
and northern Baja California were colonized by the United States and Mexico,
respectively. Despite maintaining community cohesion, the Ohlone lost ancestral
lands and were demographically outnumbered in the Bay Area shortly after the
Gold Rush. The Paipai, in contrast, were able to hold onto portions of the
ancestral homelands at the same time that Mexican settlement in the region
remained relatively small well into the twentieth century.
But, for the Ohlone in particular, I think the biggest issue is simply that outsiders have always had essentialized notions of what Native people should be like. This can be seen in the early twentieth century when anthropologists and government officials alike pronounced the Ohlone extinct. The people were still there, but they didn’t fit rigid stereotypes about American Indians. One of the arguments I make in the book is that expectations about authenticity continue to do harm to Native Californian communities today.
A portrait of Inigo, taken in 1860. Inigo was an Ohlone man who joined the missions as a child, rose to the rank of alcalde, and eventually received part of the former mission lands as a grant from the Mexican government in the 1840s. Use of this image is courtesy of the Santa Clara University Archives & Special Collections.
What do you think the biggest lasting changes colonialism brought to the Ohlone and Paipai peoples are? How do those changes manifest today?
Perhaps counterintuitively, people in both
communities are quick to acknowledge how their ancestors incorporated aspects
of colonial lifeways into their own. For example, Paipai men are well regarded vaqueros,
or cowboys, and my hosts in Santa Catarina credited the mission system for
teaching their ancestors how to rides horses and drive cattle. Here in the Bay
Area, many members of the Ohlone community remain practicing Catholics, another
direct legacy of missionization. In both cases, people today are adamant about
the fact that their communities have suffered unjustly under different colonial
regimes, but they also recognize that the issues are not always black and
white.
Certainly, one of the biggest changes has been a long process of social and political coalescence. Prior to colonization, people in both regions were organized into myriad autonomous communities – communities that have come together in various ways over the past 250 years. What I think most people misunderstand about that process is that it was both intentional and shaped by enduring cultural practices. In the missions, for example, Ohlone and Paipai people drew on existing marriage patterns to expand the pool of potential spouses amid devastating population losses. Later, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Ohlone and Paipai communities opened their doors to other Native people seeking refuge from violence and exploitation. These changes look dramatic when one compares the situation in 2020 to that in, say, 1780. But when you view it from the perspective of lived experience, the overall picture is one of individuals and families striving for community continuity. That’s the perspective I hope readers take away from the book.
Could you please tell us more about the persistent Indigenous traditions of the Ohlone and Paipai peoples? What do those traditions and traditional ways of knowing look like in contemporary life in California?
There is so much amazing work that is happening across Native California, and especially in the Ohlone and Paipai communities. Here in the Bay Area, for example, you can get a meal of acorn bread and venison at Cafe Ohlone in Berkeley. Run by Vincent Medina (Chochenyo Ohlone) and Louis Trevino (Rumsen Ohlone), the café honors traditional knowledge, serves as a hub for Native cultural events, and simultaneously educates the non-Native public about continued Ohlone presence. There is also an active program of language revitalization. In addition to reintroducing Chochenyo Ohlone language to everyday usage, the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe regularly renames important ancestral sites in order to undo the processes of erasure that have written them out of their homelands for the past two centuries.
South of the border, the Paipai are similarly working to maintain Native languages – there are several spoken in Santa Catarina today, including Paipai and Ko’alh. Paipai artisans are also renowned for their pottery, as Santa Catarina is the only Native Californian community with an unbroken ceramic tradition stretching from precontact times to the present. The potters, nearly all of whom are women, and other Paipai artisans are in high demand at workshops and cultural events throughout northern Baja California and southern California. In fact, many Native artisans from Baja California regularly connect with tribal communities in the United States—ranging from Kumeyaay groups in San Diego County to the Hualapai, Yavapai, and Havasupai in Arizona—to share knowledge and to rekindle connections.
The Paipai community of Santa Catarina in Baja California, taken in 2005. Use of this photo is courtesy of Lee M. Panich.
What are you working on now?
For
the past year or so, I’ve been involved in several interrelated projects
focused on bringing Ohlone perspectives to a wider audience, particularly at
Santa Clara University where I work. Our campus is on the site of Mission Santa
Clara, where thousands of Ohlone people lived and labored during the colonial
period. To date, their descendants have been largely left out of the public
interpretation of the mission and the ways we teach the history of the SCU
campus to our students and visitors.
This is all changing rapidly, and we’ve been working closely with the Bay Area Ohlone community — particularly those groups who trace their ancestry through Mission Santa Clara, including the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe and the Ohlone Indian Tribe. This work is both top-down and bottom-up. We’re working with the University administration, for example, to assess official monuments and markers on our campus and to make sure we do a better job of acknowledging Ohlone history and continued presence. Along with faculty colleagues and undergraduate students, we’re also working with the Ohlone community to build pedagogical resources that instructors here at Santa Clara and elsewhere can use and that feature Ohlone voices and perspectives. The coronavirus situation has obviously put these efforts on the back burner for the time being, but the story of the Ohlone—like that of the Paipai—is one of overcoming obstacles big and small.
Lee M. Panich is an associate professor of anthropology at Santa Clara University, specializing in the archaeology and ethnohistory of colonial California, particularly the Spanish mission system.
In a new video, Reel Latinxs authors Frederick Aldama and Christopher González discuss why Latinx pop culture matters inside and outside of the classroom with Sor Juanaauthor Ilan Stavans. Below, watch their discussion, or view the video on YouTube here.
Don’t forget,Sor Juana is available as a free e-book download until Wednesday, April 8, 2020! Use the code AZJUANA when you check out on our website.
Sor Juana: Or, the Persistence of Pop encapsulates the life, times, and legacy of Sor Juana. In this immersive work, essayist Ilan Stavans provides a biographical and meditative picture of the ways in which popular perceptions of her life and body of work both shape and reflect modern Latinx culture.
Latinx representation in the popular imagination has infuriated and befuddled the Latinx community for decades. These misrepresentations and stereotypes soon became as American as apple pie. But these cardboard cutouts and examples of lazy storytelling could never embody the rich traditions and histories of Latinx peoples. In Reel Latinxs, a grand sleuthing sweep of Latinx representation in mainstream TV and film, pop culture experts Frederick Luis Aldama and Christopher González call us all to scholarly action.
Happy National Poetry Month from the University of Arizona
Press!
National Poetry Month was launched by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996 to remind the public that poets have an integral role to play in our culture, and that poetry matters. Over the years, it has become the largest literary celebration in the world!
We always look forward to celebrating National Poetry Month because we have so much incredible Indigenous and Latinx poetry to share with the world. We are grateful and proud every month of the year to publish the work of truly phenomenal poets, and we hope you will take this month to dive into some of our poetry collections in the award-winning Sun Tracks and Camino del Sol series from the comfort of your home. Below, find a look our recently published collections, along with a few of our favorite new poems to kick-start the poetry celebration.
Our Bearings is a collection of narrative poetry that examines and celebrates Anishinaabe life in modern Minneapolis. Crafted around the four elements—earth, air, water, and fire— the poems are a beautifully layered discourse between landscapes, stories, and the people who inhabit them. Throughout the collection, McGlennen weaves the natural elements of Minnesota with rich historical commentary and current images of urban Native life. Reverence for wildlife and foliage is pierced by the sharp man-made skylines of Minneapolis while McGlennen reckons with the heavy impact of industrial progress on the souls and everyday lives of individuals.
BEARINGS IV
When we were water we joined as we needed, were protected, we knew to come back around
When we were water we were patient for rain and knew its arrival forecasted by purple sky.
When we were water days worked in circles and years concentrically until we knew our beginnings.
When we were water we dove and scouted like loons, swallowed pebbles by night.
When we were water we turned into ourselves leaving behind what was no longer essential.
When we were water we turned into ourselves claimed by heart circles that have never washed away.
Click here to read five questions about Our Bearings with Molly McGlennen.
With images that taunt, disturb, and fascinate, Aurum captures the vibrantly original language in Santee Frazier’s first collection, Dark Thirty, while taking on a completely new voice and rhythm. Each poem is vivid and memorable, beckoning to be read again and again as the words lend an enhanced experience each time. Frazier has crafted a wrought-iron collection of poetry that never shies away from a truth that America often attempts to ignore.
ORE BODY
The shine off the streets reflects the coming bustle of dawn, of plastic and bolted steel, neon and industry caught in the asphalt. And as the grass sweats—the groan of machinery echoing off masonry—the dust rises, sewing itself in the fat of trees, shining the faces of men in the ditch under hard hats, shoveling dirt, whose language rolls the tongue of digging. The clank and song of Mimbres, a music hidden in the busting rock and soil. This ritual of sunrise, of shovel, and the gearing mechanisms of progress reminds me of a man in unlaced high-tops finger-painting a wall. Smearing gold into brick. His face shined like gunmetal, and when he sucked the gold from a paper bag, I knew his ritual had something to do with time travel, with brick, before mineral, polygon, the invention of wheel, story of flat, firing of clay. And now making my way through this city whose streets are named by numbers and minerals— the sunlight breaking the haze of dust and exhaust— I realize the oldest thing in this city is thirst.
Click here to dive deeper into Aurum with Santee Frazier.
The poems in Meditación Fronteriza are a celebration of culture, tradition, and creativity that navigates themes of love, solidarity, and political transformation. Written by Norma Elia Cantú, the award-winning author of Canícula, this collection carries the perspective of a powerful force in Chicana literature—and literature worldwide. Deeply personal yet warmly relatable, these poems flow from Spanish to English gracefully. With Gloria Anzaldúa’s foundational work as an inspiration, Meditación Fronteriza unveils unique images that provide nuance and depth to the narrative of the borderlands.
THE WALL Written on a visit to Nuevo Progreso, Tamaulipas, Méjico, May 15, 2009
No one believed it would happen here en el Valle where the birders find such joy in spotting unique exotic birds. No one believed they would build it here. “Just talk,” someone said, “puro puedo, Not to worry, they’ll never get the money.”
But the wall went up, and hardly anyone noticed the way the land was rent in two the way the sky above seemed bluer against the brown metal jutting up and up like soldiers saluting a distant god sentinels silently guarding… what?
Perhaps a way of life incongruent with their dreams, a pastiche of broken people crossing their quotidian desires from one side to the other.
All legal and safe, sipping margaritas in el mercado or shopping at Walmart living.
Best of both worlds, a friend tells me. But you gotta be legal to live it. Not for everyone the fruits of gringolandia. Not everyone sees the wall.
Walls make good enemies: suspicious, defensive, fearful, who hide behind a wall solid as a heart hardened by fear. Who would’ve believed it would happen here?
Stephen J. Pyne and the University of Arizona Press have just completed an 11 book opus series that explains the fire history of the United States. The series started with Between Two Fires and concludes this month with To the Last Smoke: An Anthology. In between are nine regional looks at localized fire history. Together, Steve has captured the environmental and human history of wildfire in America. In this short video Steve discusses his approach.
Stephen J. Pyne is an emeritus professor at Arizona State University. He is the author of more than 30 books, mostly on wildland fire and its history but also dealing with the history of places and exploration, including The Ice, How the Canyon Became Grand, and Voyager. Most recently, he has surveyed the American fire scene with a narrative, Between Two Fires: A Fire History of Contemporary America, and a suite of regional reconnaissances, To the Last Smoke, all published by the University of Arizona Press.
A single seed is more than just the promise of a plant. In rural south India, seeds represent diverging paths toward a sustainable livelihood. Development programs and global agribusiness promote genetically modified seeds and organic certification as a path toward more sustainable cotton production, but these solutions mask a complex web of economic, social, political, and ecological issues that could be as dire as death.
Below, anthropologist and University of Arizona Press author Andrew Flachs discusses topics that are covered in his new book, Cultivating Knowledge.
Andrew Flachs is an assistant professor of anthropology at Purdue University. Trained as an environmental anthropologist, his research spans sustainable agriculture, food studies, the anthropology of knowledge, and political ecology.
The book release celebration for The Saguaro Cactus: A Natural History, brought together more than 80 people to El Crisol on Sunday, February 23 to hear scholar-authors David Yetman, Alberto Búrquez, and Kevin Hultine talk about their research, admiration, and share folklore of the Sonoran Desert’s iconic cactus.
The evening, first in the new Arts and Letters series presented by the University of Arizona Press and hosted by El Crisol, was also co-hosted by The Southwest Center. A live-stream of the author conversation is on the Center’s YouTube channel available here. The Saguaro Cactus is part of a book series published in partnership with the The Southwest Center and the University of Arizona Press that focus on a variety of fields, especially history, anthropology, geography, natural history, ethnobiology, and borderlands studies.
Kristen Buckles, University of Arizona Press editor-in-chief, welcomed guests and authors, explaining the importance of books such as The Saguaro Cactus, and the ongoing relationship with The Southwest Center. Buckles introduced The Southwest Center director, Jeffrey Banister, to talk further and introduce the authors.
Co-authors Hultine and Yetman will be at the University of Arizona Press tent at the Tucson Festival of Books for book signing on Sunday, March 15, 12-12:30 p.m. Books will be available for purchase at the tent. Other upcoming events for The Saguaro Cactus: March 5 at Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix and March 16 at the 2020 Libraries Annual Luncheon in Tucson.
Special thanks to El Crisol owners Amy and Doug Smith for welcoming us and creating a special space for our authors; La Indita restaurant for always going that extra mile for our events; and Carlos Quintero, outreach coordinator with The Southwest Center.
The Saguaro Cactus: A Natural History co-authors Alberto Búrquez, Kevin Hultine, and David Yetman, discuss their research and knowledge of the beloved cactus of our Sonoran Desert.El Crisol owners Amy and Doug Smith.Savannah Hicks, University of Arizona Press marketing assistant, ready for all things saguaro at the book celebration event.
Literary Arts‘ Oregon Book Awards program honors the state’s finest accomplishments by Oregon writers who work in genres of poetry, fiction, graphic literature, drama, literary nonfiction, and literature for young readers. In addition to financial support, the program produces the Oregon Book Awards Author Tour to connect local writers and literary organizations in all parts of Oregon. Each year, Oregon Book Awards finalists and winners travel to towns across Oregon for readings, school visits, and free writing workshops.
Through the stories of twenty individuals, and informed by interviews with more than seventy people, Voices from Bears Ears captures the passions of those who fought to protect Bears Ears and those who opposed the monument as a federal “land grab” that threatened to rob them of their economic future. It gives voice to those who have felt silenced, ignored, or disrespected. It shares stories of those who celebrate a growing movement by Indigenous peoples to protect ancestral lands and culture, and those who speak devotedly about their Mormon heritage. What unites these individuals is a reverence for a homeland that defines their cultural and spiritual identity, and therein lies hope for finding common ground.
Portland-based journalist Rebecca Robinson provides context and perspective for understanding the ongoing debate and humanizes the abstract issues at the center of the debate. Interwoven with these stories are photographs of the interviews and the land they consider sacred by photographer Stephen E. Strom. Through word and image, Robinson and Strom allow us to both hear and see the people whose lives are intertwined with this special place.
Congratulations to all of the finalists! The winners will be announced live at the Oregon Book Awards Ceremony on Monday, April 27 at the Portland Center Stage at the Armory.
Inside Higher Ed featured an opinion piece on the value university presses offer their parent institutions, and how that value uplifts scholarship, and community.
Written by Kathryn Conrad, director of the University of Arizona Press and president of the Association of University Presses, and Jennifer Crewe, associate provost and director of Columbia University Press and the association’s immediate past president, the editorial points out that some institution leaders are unfamiliar with the role their presses play in scholarly publishing, and the important role presses play in advancing the values of their home institutions.
More than 100 North American universities choose to invest in a university press, including nearly 70 percent of leading research institutions and almost 80 percent of Association of American Universities members. Publishing scholarship of the highest quality in an environment driven by mission, and not profit, is an endeavor that top universities heartily endorse. Our daily work as scholarly publishers is firmly grounded in the foundational beliefs and goals of our parent institutions. While the publishing mix of individual university presses may vary, as do our universities’ areas of strength, our purpose is the same: the advancement of knowledge.
Looking back on a year that has included soul-searching at both Stanford University, an elite private institution, and the University of Western Australia, a vital public university, we are reminded that leaders at our home institutions sometimes are unfamiliar with what university presses do or with their own integral role in supporting scholarly publishing. Misunderstanding can lead to hasty or inaccurate judgments. …
As an academic press situated near the Arizona-Mexico border, when a flash point like the American Dirt controversy occurs, it’s hard to ignore voices from the books that line the University of Arizona Press bookshelves.
After all, as some University of Arizona Press authors have explained recently in national interviews and op-eds, university presses have long been home to many Latinx and Indigenous authors of fiction, poetry, and scholarship focused on social justice, anthropology, popular culture, gender studies, and the borderlands.
Chicano author David Bowles, who translated the late beloved Francisco X. Alarcón’s poems in the University of Arizona Press’s 2019 edition of Snake Poems: An Aztec Invocation, pointed this out in an NPR interview on Monday, January 27 —that indie and university presses have committed to publishing authors and scholars of color. Bowles offered further analysis in the New York Times.
In the University of Arizona Press’s sixty years, publishing Latinx and Indigenous authors was purposeful and remains a priority. The Sun Tracks series, which publishes work by Indigenous authors, began in the early 1970’s as a journal and then individual titles. The first book, When it Rains: Tohono Oodham and Pima Poetry was edited by University of Arizona professor and linguist Ofelia Zepeda, a Tohono O’odham poet who remains editor of the series.
Camino del Sol, a series dedicated to Latinx authors, started in 1994, two years before Oprah’s Book Club kicked off. The series, initiated by author Ray Gonzalez, its first editor, has had a number of awards bestowed on its titles: the PEN/Beyond Margins Award to Richard Blanco’s Directions to the Beach of the Dead; Before Columbus Foundation American Book Awards to Diana Garcia’s When Living Was a Labor Camp and Luis Alberto Urrea’s Nobody’s Son; International Latino Book Awards to Pat Mora’s Adobe Odes and Kathleen Alcalá’s The Desert Remembers My Name; the Premio Aztlán literary prize to Sergio Troncoso’s The Last Tortilla; and the PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles National Literary Award to Kathleen de Azevedo’s Samba Dreamers. The first National Book Critics Circle Award for a Chicana/o went Juan Felipe Herrera’s Half of the World in Light, also published by the University of Arizona Press.
University of Arizona Press authors who have weighed in on the controversy:
Wiping windows clean of roadkill, let me focus attention on this point about a non-Mexican or non-Latinx author writing this book. Of course, authors different from her run deep, including D.H. Lawrence, Valle Inclán, Kerouac, Nabokov, Boyle, and Theroux, among many others. Here, however, we return to Sánchez Prado’s point that a non-Mexican author can create fictions about Mexico, if they do the work for it to represent and cohere well. In other words, none of this cutting corners to get away with caca because you know your main audiences will be white and not be Mexican or Latinx.
University of Arizona author Daniel A. Olivas offered further perspective in an opinion piece published recently in The Guardian:
American Dirt is an insult to Latinx writers who have toiled – some of us for decades – to little notice of major publishers and book reviewers, while building a vast collection of breathtaking, authentic literature often published by university and independent presses on shoestring budgets. And while the folks who run Flatiron Books have every right to pay seven figures to buy and publish a book like American Dirt, they have no immunity from bad reviews and valid criticism.
And that’s why more than ninety Latinx and other writers signed an open letter to Oprah Winfrey asking her to rethink the much-publicized inclusion of American Dirt in her renowned book club. I signed on to this letter with the hope Winfrey will do the right thing.
You can read the letter Olivas refers to here. Another University of Arizona Press author, poet Vickie Vértiz, signed the letter. Her collection, Palm Frond with Its Throat Cut, won the 2018 PEN America Literary Poetry award. Other authors who signed the letter include Luis Alberto Urrea (also a University of Arizona Press author), Wendy C. Ortiz, and Vanessa Angélica Villarreal.
Near the top of the University of Arizona Press website are the words: Books that make a difference, enrich understanding, and inspire curiosity. The exceptional Latinx and Indigenous voices from University of Arizona Press books accomplish that, and guide us through an entire universe, too.
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