O'odham Historical Relationships with Outsiders

1.      During my research for my paper about the impacts of colonization of O’odham lands on the O’odham people and their culture as a whole, specifically the Spanish missionaries’ and soldiers’ attempts to Christianize the O’odham, I learned a lot about the historical relationships the O’odham had with colonization, and I felt like we only touched on some of these points in class. I think it would be really interesting to delve further into both the Akimel and Tohono O'odham's relationships with the Spanish and other outsiders through time. It's interesting how the O'odham managed to retain so much of the core of their culture, yet were subtly impacted in other ways (e.g. religiously in the past), and very clearly strongly affected in yet other ways (economically in modern times). Furthermore, I think the distinction between intentional influence and unintentional influence is a crucial and sometimes difficult one to make, and I think that reading more direct sources by groups who had impactful relationships with the O'odham would be helpful reading, as it would provide more insight into their intentions and the nature of the relationships.