The University of Arizona Press
Date: Friday, Saturday and Sunday, October 17-19, 2025
Time: 11 a.m. – 5 p.m., MST
Where: Tucson Meet Yourself, Pennington Street, Tucson, AZ
Michael Chiago, Sr. is a featured folk artist at Tucson Meet Yourself: A Folklife Festival, October 17-19, 2025. He will be painting at the Folk Arts area on Pennington Street. Chiago is co-author with Amadeo M. Rea of Michael Chiago: O’odham Lifeways Through Art. Chiago is a Tohono O’odham/Pima Maricopa watercolor artist and illustrator. He was born in the Kohatk Village on the Tohono O’odham reservation in Arizona. He performed as an Indian fancy dancer at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. Chiago also served in the United States Marines in Vietnam. Many of Chiago’s paintings provide a glimpse into the traditions of the O’odham, based in part on his recollections of growing up on the reservation, as well as the stories told by his tribal elders.
About the book:
Michael Chiago: O’odham Lifeways Through Art offers an artistic depiction of O’odham lifeways through the paintings of internationally acclaimed O’odham artist Michael Chiago Sr. Ethnobiologist Amadeo M. Rea collaborated with the artist to describe the paintings in accompanying text, making this unique book a vital resource for cultural understanding and preservation. A joint effort in seeing, this work explores how the artist sees and interprets his culture through his art.
A wide array of Chiago’s paintings are represented in this book, illustrating past and present Akimel O’odham and Tohono O’odham culture. The paintings show the lives and traditions of O’odham people from both the artist’s parents’ and grandparents’ generations and today. The paintings demonstrate the colonial Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American influences on O’odham culture throughout the decades, and the text explains how wells and windmills, schools, border walls, and nonnative crops have brought about significant change in O’odham life.
