Waila Music

            While eating lunch with Angelo Joaquin at the Desert Rain Café I asked him about the origins of Waila music. This style of dance music created by the Tohono O’odham is a unique style of polka featuring horns, bass, guitar, and drums. Angelo said Waila is a blend of three different cultures. Underlying it all is the traditional Tohono O’odham folk dances and rhythms. These traditional forms blended with Spanish music when missionaries like Father Kino introduced the O’odham to horns and stringed instruments. Waila truly developed into its current style in the mid 19^th century when the O’odham were introduced to the polkas and mazurkas of German immigrants. Drum sets and electric guitars were introduced in the mid 20^th century and helped shape Waila into the form we recognize today.

            The way Waila combines a multitude of cultures well represents the history of the Tohono O’odham’s interactions with different groups. In our studies we often focused on the negative outcomes of these interactions but Waila is different. Instead of showing the domination of one group or culture over another Waila represents a true melting of cultures into something that can be enjoyed by all. Waila thus serves as something that reminds Americans, Europeans, Mexicans, and Tohono O’odham of our similarities rather than our differences.

Diabetes

Watching Bad Sugar in class and reflecting on the diabetes epidemic was particularly sobering since diabetes- related conditions account for 19.5 percent of Pima deaths (“Reducing Diabetes in Indian Country: Lessons from the Three Domains Influencing Pima Diabetes” by Carolyn Smith-Morris). The complex interplay between genetics, political-economic, and cultural domains make a simple solution seem unlikely if not impossible. However, certain considerations such as cultural sensitivity, political-economic transformation, financially stable and sustainable models of care that reflect community values and promote access, along with community participation and buy in are helpful considerations. The fact that the tribe is now running the health clinic may be a step in the right direction despite setbacks and administrative difficulties. Admittedly, health considerations and treatment tend to be palliative rather than preventative. The most sustainable solutions may be lifestyle changes involving diet and exercise. Unfortunately, due to the high poverty rate on the reservation and food desert situation that may be difficult to change. Of course, Bash’s cannot suddenly begin to stock healthy food if that food is unlikely to sell due to cost and cultural changes which now prioritize fry breads and certain junk foods over traditional O’odham staples. In addition, with farming no longer being a primary activity for the O’odham, exercise levels have decreased further contributing to obesity and the onset of diabetes.

Nonprofits such as Tohono O’odham Community Action are working to address multiple food-related issues on the reservation to “create a healthy, culturally vital and sustainable community” (TOCA Website). TOCA runs the Desert Rain Café, which serves some traditional and healthier foods while the TOCA store sells tepary beans and other ingredients.  TOCA also works to preserve the history and cultural knowledge of the tribe by promoting the work of local artists. According to their Facebook page, they even hosted an oral storytelling event earlier this year. These types of grassroots efforts by and for tribal members might be the most sustainable solution yet to reducing the diabetes epidemic among the O’odham. 

The Ocean and O’odham Salt Pilgrimage

In Joe Joaquin’s interview (Markowitz 2000) about the Tohono O’odham Salt Pilgrimage he said, “The salt was always a part of us. We needed the salt in order to sweat. When you eat salt, you sweat. This made it good for the health also.” Joaquin asserted the importance of salt to the health of the O’odham people, and he reaffirmed the O’odham idea of being intimately connected to their food, which was a part of them. He mentioned that it was a place where a young person would “come here to obtain a vision from the sea. As I was saying about the sea, everything is about the ocean. So they would come with that in mind to request to the sea for some kind of a vision that would be beneficial to him and his people back home…” The desire for a vision was both a personal quest and desire to learn how one might use one’s life, and a community mission so that one could help one’s people.

 Joaquin emphasized the necessity of coming “with a clear mind, clear conscious as to what you want to achieve by this trip.” This imperative mirrors the mindset with which one must go to other revelatory places such as I’itoi’s cave on Baboquivari, where one must go without negative thoughts but with reverence and respect. One also takes offerings to I’itoi’s cave just as offerings were taken to the ocean (Bernard Siqueiros).

The journey was three days, but was a “journey of endurance” (Joe Joaquin). The travelers had to “always sleep with their heads toward the direction of the ocean and must not spill a drop of water from their canteens or they would be punished by floods. Pilgrims were not allowed to talk while on the road” (“History of the Puerto Penasco Area” by Andrea Addison-Sorey). This type of fortitude reflected a cultural value of perseverance and strength, like that explained by Sterling Johnson when he described his experience working for two days straight in the 115-degree heat. Although the Salt Pilgrimage may not still be practiced, the traditional value of endurance remains.

From a personal standpoint, it was interesting visiting the biosphere, recognizing its vastness and imagining what it must have felt like to be walking through that terrain barefoot and in a straight line around giant craters. Then, of course, one could imagine arriving at the sea and seeing it for the first time to request a vision to help the community after days of difficult walking. Somehow being in that space, particularly the biosphere, helped me better understand the juxtaposition of different landscapes with which travelers would have been confronted. 

San Xavier, an old church everyone seems to love

San Xavier, the place we gotta go, was established by none other than Father Kino.  Named after the founder of the Jesuits—Father Kino’s order—the mission was one of the first European settlements in the West.  The current mission church there is the oldest European architecture and structure in Arizona.  While originally founded in 1692, the original church was burned in an Apache raid in 1770, with the current structure being built in 1784.  The White Dove of the Desert, as the church is nicknamed, is held in high esteem by both locals and the Tohono O’odham population.  The first person I spoke to in Arizona suggested that the first place we go should be San Xavier, and most people after had a similar sentiment.  However, while very old and beautiful, there are far better things to see in Arizona in my opinion. 

What the Mission does have is a link to the first Christian missionaries in the area.  In the 1820s, the Mexican government kicked all Spanish Priests out.  It was then abandoned until 1859, after the US acquired the area in the 1857 Arizona purchase.  Today, after faulty repairs damaged it in the 1980s, the church is maintained using traditional mortar made out of Prickly Pear Cacti. 





Used http://www.sanxaviermission.org as a source

O’odham Oral Tradition and Language

Bernard Siqueiros mentioned that “our culture is our language. It identifies us as a people. It's who we are. We know about our past and our beliefs because of language…Without the language, we are no longer O’odham.” This seems to be a particularly definitive statement about what it means to be O’odham. However, the sociolinguistic Sapir-Whorf hypothesis would support Siqueiros’ interpretation because it links cognition to the structure of the speaker’s language. Specifically, in relation to the O’odham, linguist William Pilcher “observed that the Papago discuss events in terms of their probability of occurrence, avoiding any assumption that an event will happen for sure… an element of surprise becomes part of almost everything…When rains do come, they’re a gift, a windfall, a lucky break” (The Desert Smells Like Rain by Gary Nabhan, 6-7). Hence, the worldview and values that define O’odham culture might, in fact, be inextricably linked to the language, therefore necessitating its preservation.

Regarding O’odham oral tradition, Siqueiros explained that listener attention was very important. One technique to gauge attention was to ask the listener whether they remembered the last word they had heard in a story. Siqueiros further said that stories about creation were only told during the winter, an admonition also acknowledged by Sterling Johnson, who alluded to a fear of ill consequences if the rule were violated.

Johnson was able to tell us the tepary bean story because it was still cold outside. Then he told us the story about “The Woman Who Loved Field Hockey,” and he asked us whether we wanted to hear the longer version or the Hollywood version. He decided to tell us the shorter one. Similarly, when Bernard was talking to us about how Baboquivari lost its peak, he also shortened the story, only mentioning that an earthquake had caused it. Admittedly, I wonder if these tribal members told us the shortened versions because we were outsiders, who might not have had the attention to listen at length to longer stories or to appreciate certain aspects of those stories and values that could only fully be conveyed in their longer versions. 

National Park Service: Chip Littlefield

Littlefield’s perspective was interesting because he was not originally from the area and is a non-native. He has worked hard to understand the Tohono O’odham culture, but he has learned that it is impossible to generalize or to categorize entire tribes. Instead, he discovered that building face-to-face relationships and showing respect for tribal members was very important. He mentioned that the Saguaro National Park is on ancestral O’odham lands and that the park works to ensure that the O’odham still have access.

One tribe member had mentioned that when he came to the park to pick cholla buds, he struggled to attain permission from the park service employees who did not understand the historic relationship between the park and the tribe and/or the fact that one could actually eat cholla buds in the first place. Littlefield was unfamiliar with the specific case but did mention that one way of building trust with the tribe was to recruit tribal members to intern or work for the park service. One of his staff members is O’odham; however, he cited transportation issues between the park and the reservation as a significant barrier to recruiting more tribe members.

Littlefield spoke of certain personal struggles and changes he experienced in himself as he learned more about the O’odham culture. He recounted an experience in which he was presenting to O’odham middle schoolers and did not realize the sacred aspect of a tortoise shell, which he encouraged the children to handle. He also remembered presenting to a group of elementary school children on the reservation and mispronouncing the name of the O’odham ancestral tribe as Hohokam, when the O’odham pronunciation referring specifically to the people is closer to Huhugam. Littlefield mentioned that he takes special effort not to step on saguaro that have fallen or to in any way disrespect the landscape. However, he acknowledged certain difficulties, remembering a time when one of the park employees was bitten by a snake because she was trying to step over a cactus. Overall, Littlefield was eager to increase tribal access to the park and to preserve the land, though he was admittedly skeptical of the current administration’s likely stance on preservation and on the future of national parks in the current political climate. 

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.