front cover of We Will Secure Our Future
We Will Secure Our Future
Empowering the Navajo Nation
Peterson Zah
University of Arizona Press, 2012
Nearing graduation from  Phoenix Indian School, Peterson Zah decided he wanted to attend college. He was refused the reference letters needed for college admission by teachers who told him he would fail and thus embarrass them. Several years later, these instructors would receive invitations from Zah to a party celebrating his graduation from Arizona State University.

And so began a career that took Zah to the presidency of the Navajo Nation. His life and accomplishments have exemplified the ongoing efforts by American Indian communities to gain greater control over their lives and lands. He has made important contributions in many areas, but education has always been one of his main priorities. Perhaps  no one in the Southwest has done more than Peterson Zah to increase the recruitment, retention, and graduation of American Indian students from colleges and universities.

Zah's presentations to Peter Iverson's classes at Arizona State University,  employed  examples drawn from his own experiences. Students praised his thoughtful, honest and direct observations.  He reinforced a central theme in Iverson's classesthat Indian history encompasses triumph as well as tragedy and victory as well as victimization.

This book grew out of  Iverson's determination to share Zah's insights  with a wider audience. The two met every few months to consider many subjects related to Zah's life.  These sessions formed the foundation for this volume.

Part autobiography, part interview, and part conversation, Zah and Iverson's account touches on a wide range of overlapping topics, but two central themes prevail: education and empowerment. We Will Secure Our Future is a fascinating look into the life of a man who  became a respected visionary and passionate advocate for his people. 
 
[more]

front cover of Ambitious Rebels
Ambitious Rebels
Remaking Honor, Law, and Liberalism in Venezuela, 1780-1850
Reuben Zahler
University of Arizona Press, 2013
Murder, street brawls, marital squabbles, infidelity, official corruption, public insults, and rebellion are just a few of the social layers Reuben Zahler investigates as he studies the dramatic shifts in Venezuela as it transformed from a Spanish colony to a modern republic. His book Ambitious Rebels illuminates the enormous changes in honor, law, and political culture that occurred and how ordinary men and women promoted or rejected those changes.

In a highly engaging style, Zahler examines gender and class against the backdrop of Venezuelan institutions and culture during the late colonial period through post-independence (known as the “middle period”). His fine-grained analysis shows that liberal ideals permeated the elite and popular classes to a substantial degree while Venezuelan institutions enjoyed impressive levels of success. Showing remarkable ambition, Venezuela’s leaders aspired to transform a colony that adhered to the king, the church, and tradition into a liberal republic with minimal state intervention, a capitalistic economy, freedom of expression and religion, and an elected, representative government.

Subtle but surprisingly profound changes of a liberal nature occurred, as evidenced by evolving standards of honor, appropriate gender roles, class and race relations, official conduct, courtroom evidence, press coverage, economic behavior, and church-state relations. This analysis of the philosophy of the elites and the daily lives of common men and women reveals in particular the unwritten, unofficial norms that lacked legal sanction but still greatly affected political structures.

Relying on extensive archival resources, Zahler focuses on Venezuela but provides a broader perspective on Latin American history. His examination provides a comprehensive look at intellectual exchange across the Atlantic, comparative conditions throughout the Americas, and the tension between traditional norms and new liberal standards in a postcolonial society.
[more]

front cover of Radical Territories in the Brazilian Amazon
Radical Territories in the Brazilian Amazon
The Kayapó’s Fight for Just Livelihoods
Laura Zanotti
University of Arizona Press, 2016
Indigenous groups are facing unprecedented global challenges in this time of unparalleled environmental and geopolitical change, a time that has intensified human-rights concerns and called for political and economic restructuring. Within this landscape of struggle, the Kayapó, an indigenous nation in the central Brazilian Amazon, emerge as leaders in the fight.

Radical Territories in the Brazilian Amazon sheds light on the creative and groundbreaking efforts Kayapó peoples deploy to protect their lands and livelihoods. Now at the front lines of cultivating diversified strategies for resistance, the Kayapó are creating a powerful activist base, experimenting with nontimber forest projects, and forging strong community conservation partnerships. Tracing the complex politics of the Kayapó’s homeland, Laura Zanotti advances approaches to understanding how indigenous peoples cultivate self-determination strategies in conflict-ridden landscapes.

Kayapó peoples are providing a countervision of what Amazonia can look like in the twenty-first century, dominated neither by agro-industrial interests nor by uninhabited protected landscapes. Instead, Kayapó peoples see their homeland as a living landscape where indigenous vision engages with broader claims for conservation and development in the region.

Weaving together anthropological and ethnographic research with personal interactions with the Kayapó, Zanotti tells the story of activism and justice in the Brazilian Amazon, and how Kayapó communities are using diverse pathways to make a sustainable future for their peoples and lands. The author interweaves Kayapó perspectives with a political ecology framework to show how working with indigenous peoples is vital to addressing national and global challenges in the present time, when many environmentally significant conditions and processes are profoundly altered by human activities.
 
[more]

front cover of Sourcing Prehistoric Ceramics at Chodistaas Pueblo, Arizona
Sourcing Prehistoric Ceramics at Chodistaas Pueblo, Arizona
The Circulation of People and Pots in the Grasshopper Region
María Nieves Zedeño
University of Arizona Press, 1994
For decades archaeologists have used pottery to reconstruct the lifeways of ancient populations. It has become increasingly evident, however, that to make inferences about prehistoric economic, social, and political activities through the patterning of ceramic variation, it is necessary to determine the location where the vessels were made. Through detailed analysis of manufacturing technology and design styles as well as the use of modern analytical techniques such as neutron activation analysis, Zedeño here demonstrates a broadly applicable methodology for identifying local and nonlocal ceramics.
[more]

front cover of Ocean Power
Ocean Power
Poems from the Desert
Ofelia Zepeda
University of Arizona Press, 1995
The annual seasons and rhythms of the desert are a dance of clouds, wind, rain, and flood—water in it roles from bringer of food to destroyer of life. The critical importance of weather and climate to native desert peoples is reflected with grace and power in this personal collection of poems, the first written creative work by an individual in O'odham and a landmark in Native American literature.

Poet Ofelia Zepeda centers these poems on her own experiences growing up in a Tohono O'odham family, where desert climate profoundly influenced daily life, and on her perceptions as a contemporary Tohono O'odham woman. One section of poems deals with contemporary life, personal history, and the meeting of old and new ways. Another section deals with winter and human responses to light and air. The final group of poems focuses on the nature of women, the ocean, and the way the past relationship of the O'odham with the ocean may still inform present day experience. These fine poems will give the outside reader a rich insight into the daily life of the Tohono O'odham people.
[more]

front cover of A Tohono O'odham Grammar
A Tohono O'odham Grammar
Ofelia Zepeda
University of Arizona Press, 1983
This first pedagogical grammar of the Papago language features twenty chapters on grammatical constructions and five sample dialogs—plus abbreviations, symbols, summary of grammatical elements, and two glossaries. Classroom-tested for teaching both native and non-native speakers, the text also offers linguists an overview of the Papago language not available elsewhere.
[more]

front cover of When It Rains
When It Rains
Tohono O'odham and Pima Poetry
Ofelia Zepeda
University of Arizona Press, 1982
When it was first released in 1982, When It Rains was one of the earliest published literary works in the O’odham language. Speakers from across generations shared poems that showcased the aesthetic of the written word and aimed to spread interest in reading and writing in O’odham.

The poems capture brief moments of beauty, the loving bond between family members, and a deep appreciation of Tohono O’odham culture and traditions, as well as reverent feelings about the landscape and wildlife native to the Southwest. A motif of rain and water is woven throughout the poetry in When It Rains, tying in the collection’s title to the importance of this life-giving and sustaining resource to the Tohono O’odham people. With the poems in both O’odham and English, the volume serves as an important reminder of the beauty and changeability of the O’odham language.

The themes and experiences expressed by the language educators in this volume capture still-rural community life: children are still bussed for miles to school, and parents still have hours-long daily commutes to work. The Sonoran Desert also remains an important part of daily life—seasons, rain on desert plants, and sacred mountains serve as important markers.

In a new foreword to the volume, Sun Tracks editor Ofelia Zepeda reflects on how meaningful this volume was when it was first published and its continued importance. “Things have changed but many things remain the same,” writes Zepeda. “The pieces in this collection will be meaningful to many still.”
[more]

front cover of Where Clouds Are Formed
Where Clouds Are Formed
Ofelia Zepeda
University of Arizona Press, 2008
Ofelia Zepeda is a Native American poet who possesses a kind of double vision. She sees the contemporary world through her own highly observant eyes and, at the same time, through the eyes of her Tohono O’odham ancestors. Seeing this way infuses her poetry with a resonance and depth that makes it a delight to read—and re-read.

Zepeda is as clear-eyed about the past as she is about the present. She recalls waiting for the school bus on a cold morning inside her father’s truck, listening to the sounds of the engine, the windshield wipers, and the “soft rain on the hood.” She remembers celebrating Mass on the “cold dirt floor of the Winter Solstice.” In the present, she sees both the frustration and the humor in a woman she observes trying to eat pancakes with one hand while her other resides in a cast: “Watching her, I realize eating pancakes is a two-handed job.”

Whatever she sees, she filters through her second set of eyes, which keep the past always present. She tells of traveling to Waw Giwulig, the most sacred mountain of the Tohono O’odham, to ask for blessings—and forgiveness. She writes that one should always bring music to the mountains, “so they are generous with the summer rains.” And, still, “the scent of burning wood / holds the strongest memory. / Mesquite, cedar, piñon, juniper, . . . / we catch the scent of burning wood; / we are brought home.” It is a joy to see the world afresh through her eyes.
[more]

front cover of Huichol Mythology
Huichol Mythology
Robert M. Zingg
University of Arizona Press, 2004
Best known for their ritual use of peyote, the Huichol people of west-central Mexico carried much of their original belief system into the twentieth century unadulterated by the influence of Christian missionaries. Among the Huichol, reciting myths and performing rituals pleases the ancestors and helps maintain a world in which abundant subsistence and good health are assured.

This volume is a collection of myths recorded by Robert Zingg in 1934 in the village of Tuxpan and is the most comprehensive record of Huichol mythology ever published. Zingg was the first professional anthropologist to study the Huichol, and his generosity toward them and political advocacy on their behalf allowed him to overcome tribal sanctions against divulging secrets to outsiders. He is fondly remembered today by some Huichols who were children when he lived among them. Zingg recognized that the alternation between dry and wet seasons pervades Huichol myth and ritual as it does their subsistence activities, and his arrangement of the texts sheds much light on Huichol tradition. The volume contains both aboriginal myths that attest to the abiding Huichol obligation to serve ancestors who control nature and its processes, and Christian-inspired myths that document the traumatic effect that silver mining and Franciscan missions had on Huichol society.

First published in 1998 in a Spanish-language edition, Huichol Mythology is presented here for the first time in English, with more than 40 original photographs by Zingg accompanying the text. For this volume, the editors provide a meticulous historical account of Huichol society from about 200 A.D. through the colonial era, enabling readers to fully grasp the significance of the myths free of the sensationalized interpretations found in popular accounts of the Huichol. Zingg’s compilation is a landmark work, indispensable to the study of mythology, Mexican Indians, and comparative religion.
[more]

front cover of Rim to River
Rim to River
Looking into the Heart of Arizona
Tom Zoellner
University of Arizona Press, 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.

In Rim to River, Zoellner does for Arizona what Larry McMurtry did for Texas in In a Narrow Grave and what Wallace Stegner did for Utah in Mormon Country: paint an enduring portrait of a misunderstood American state. An indictment, a love letter, and a homecoming story all at once.
 
[more]

front cover of Population, Contact, and Climate in the New Mexican Pueblos
Population, Contact, and Climate in the New Mexican Pueblos
Ezra B. W. Zubrow
University of Arizona Press, 1974
The Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona is a peer-reviewed monograph series sponsored by the School of Anthropology. Established in 1959, the series publishes archaeological and ethnographic papers that use contemporary method and theory to investigate problems of anthropological importance in the southwestern United States, Mexico, and related areas.
[more]

front cover of Downcanyon
Downcanyon
A Naturalist Explores the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon
Ann Zwinger
University of Arizona Press, 1995
Every writer comes to the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon with a unique point of view. Ann Zwinger's is that of a naturalist, an "observer at the river's brim."

Teamed with scientists and other volunteer naturalists, Zwinger was part of an ongoing study of change along the Colorado. In all seasons and all weathers, in almost every kind of craft that goes down the waves, she returned to the Grand Canyon again and again to explore, look, and listen. From the thrill of running the rapids to the wonder in a grain of sand, her words take the reader down 280 miles of the "ever-flowing, energetic, whooping and hollering, galloping" river.

Zwinger's book begins with a bald eagle count at Nankoweap Creek in January and ends with a subzero, snowy walk out of the canyon at winter solstice. Between are the delights of spring in side canyons, the benediction of rain on a summer beach, and the chill that comes off limestone walls in November.

Her eye for detail catches the enchantment of small things played against the immensity of the river: the gatling-gun love song of tree frogs; the fragile beauty of an evening primrose; ravens "always in close attendance, like lugubrious, sharp-eyed, nineteenth-century undertakers"; and a golden eagle chasing a trout "with wings akimbo like a cleaning lady after a cockroach."

As she travels downstream, Zwinger follows others in history who have risked—and occasionally lost—their lives on the Colorado. Hiking in narrow canyons, she finds cliff dwellings and broken pottery of prehistoric Indians. Rounding a bend or running a rapid, she remembers the triumphs and tragedies of early explorers and pioneers. She describes the changes that have come with putting a big dam on a big river and how the dam has affected the riverine flora and fauna as well as the rapids and their future.

Science in the hands of a poet, this captivating book is for armchair travelers who may never see the grandiose Colorado and for those who have run it wisely and well. Like the author, readers will find themselves bewitched by the color and flow of the river, and enticed by what's around the next bend. With her, they will find its rhythms still in the mind, long after the splash and spray and pound are gone.
[more]

front cover of John Xántus
John Xántus
The Fort Tejon Letters, 1857–1859
Ann Zwinger
University of Arizona Press, 1986
John Xántus was a bit of a charlatan; of that there is little doubt. He lied about his exploits, joined the U.S. Army under an assumed name, and managed to alienate most of the people he met. Yet this Hungarian immigrant became one of the Smithsonian Institution’s most successful collectors of natural history specimens in the mid-nineteenth century, and he is credited with the discovery of many new species in the American West.
 
From his station at Ft. Tejon in California’s Tehachapi Mountains, Xántus carried on a lengthy correspondence with Spencer Baird at the Smithsonian, to whom he shipped the specimens he had trapped or shot in the surrounding sierra and deserts. A prolific letter writer, Xántus faithfully reported his findings as he bemoaned his circumstances and worried about his future.
 
Working from Smithsonian archives, natural history writer Ann Zwinger has assembled Xántus’s unpublished letters into a book that documents his trials and triumphs in the field and reveals much about his dubious character. The letters also bring to life a time and place on the western frontier from which Xántus was able to observe a broad panorama of American history in the making.
 
Zwinger’s lively introduction sets the stage for Xántus’s correspondence and examines the apparent contradictions between the man’s personal and professional lives. Her detailed notes to the letters further clarify his discoveries and shed additional light on his checkered career.
[more]

front cover of The Nearsighted Naturalist
The Nearsighted Naturalist
Ann Zwinger
University of Arizona Press, 1998
Seeking out wildflowers and whitewater, Ann Zwinger has called many places home. The Nearsighted Naturalist brings together work from more than two decades in her career as one of our most distinguished natural history writers. From the Indiana landscape of her youth to her Colorado mountain retreat, from Arizona's Aravaipa Canyon to New Zealand's Kapiti Island, Zwinger leads an ever-widening armchair tour of natural places both ordinary and astonishing. Whether anticipating the first day of spring or seeing the elegance of the subtle hues of a moth's papery wings, Zwinger's trademark eye for detail brings the landscape alive. Her travels trace her evolution from a home-centered wife and mother to a wandering adventurer, an evolution that has taught her to be at home in nature no matter where she is. Sprinkled with Zwinger's own charming pen-and-ink drawings, The Nearsighted Naturalist reminds us of the power of the very best nature writing. It is an invitation to wander, to travel to faraway places, to revisit your own backyard, to chase dragonflies, and to experience the healing power of a sea-smoothed pebble. With the author, readers will embark on a fascinating exploration into distant deserts of the mind and hillsides of the heart.
[more]

front cover of Run, River, Run
Run, River, Run
A Naturalist's Journey Down One of the Great Rivers of the West
Ann Zwinger
University of Arizona Press, 1984
The Green River runs wild, free and vigourous from southern Wyoming to northeastern Utah. Edward Abbey wrote in these pages in 1975 that Anne Zwinger's account of the Green River and its subtle forms of life and nonlife may be taken as authoritative. 'Run, River, Run,' should serve as a standard reference work on this part of the American West for many years to come." —New York Times Book Review
[more]

front cover of Wind in the Rock
Wind in the Rock
The Canyonlands of Southeastern Utah
Ann Zwinger
University of Arizona Press, 1978
Lively, readable nature writing. As she details several treks through the beautiful, rocky canyons, [Zwinger's] feel for the animals and plants native to this arid region enhances the precise sketches which punctuate the text. Readers interested in ancient Indian cultures of the Southwest will also find fascinating reading, as Zwinger describes their campsites and lifestyles. —Library Journal
[more]

front cover of The Hanford Reach
The Hanford Reach
A Land of Contrasts
Susan Zwinger
University of Arizona Press, 2004
The desert country along the Columbia River is one of the West’s least-known desert places—one that most people don’t even drive through unless they are unusually curious travelers. The Hanford Reach is the last free stretch of the river between the McNary and Priest Rapids Dams, a place boasting a varied landscape of floodplains, wetlands, deserts, orchards—and nuclear reactors. This is not a place that people think to visit. Known primarily for hosting the country’s most toxic nuclear outpost, it is public land that barely exists in public consciousness. But because the Reach has been posted off-limits by the military since 1943, this book offers readers a little-seen glimpse into what the Pacific Northwest’s arid east was like before the postwar boom. Susan Zwinger has kayaked the Columbia through Hanford Reach with scientists and activists who are helping to restore it, and in this book she outlines the geographical extent of the Reach, reviews its history, and takes readers through the terrain by foot, on road, and on the river. Here is a land of dark lava flows and basalt cliffs interspersed throughout subtle, pale shrub-steppe, a table of aridity cut through by one of the country’s most prodigious rivers. Zwinger’s sparkling text, enhanced by Skip Smith’s striking photos, captures the subtleties of the contrasting vistas, just as it makes clear the depth of the radioactive poisoning within the soil and wildlife. We have only just begun to unfold the land’s treasures—petroglyphs, ancient village sites, new species, and geological wonders—and in 2000, President Clinton protected 560 square miles of land as the Hanford Reach National Monument. This book celebrates what is preserved in that buffer zone at the dawn of a new era of environmental responsibility.
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter