The Valiant Desert Sharing People

Official O'odham Community Websites

Tohono O'odham Nation
Click http://www.tonation-nsn.gov/

Gila River Indian Community
Click http://www.gilariver.org/

Ak-Chin Indian Community
Click http://www.ak-chin.nsn.us/index.php

Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community
Click http://www.srpmic-nsn.gov/

San Xavier District of the Tohono O'odham Nation 
Click https://www.waknet.org/

Himdag Ki
Tohono O'odham Nation Cultural Center and Museum

O'odham Literature

Beautiful Traditional O'odham Songs

San Xavier Traditional Singers
Ivan Burrell and Antoinette Encinas

Videos of the performance of beautiful traditional O'odham songs set in Mission San Xavier del Bac.

Maisad Tholnig
The Creator Song
Minutes: 7.10
Click
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvvwRFUjX2s

Tohono O'odham Wo' Po
Running Song
Minutes: 4:57
Click
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zQs4NaJg8A&gl=US&hl=en

O’odham Dances
Ofelia Zepeda
Poetry Video

Ofelia Zepeda reads her video poem about the tradition of the O’odham people joining with the rest of the universe in singing for the summer rain that sustains all. The O'odham sing with the animals, saguaros and other plants of the desert together with the sky, wind and mountains to bring the rain down from the clouds. The video poem presents the stark and beautiful transformations of the Sonoran Desert during the summer season from sunset and the reviving coolness of starry nights to sunrise and the intense heat of day.

O'odham and English
Minutes: 4:45
For O'odham Dances poetry reading video, click
https://vimeo.com/198077138

O'odham History

Annotated Bibliography of the Tohono O'odham

Tohono O’odham Community College

Tohono O’odham Community College

The Tohono O’odham Community College (TOCC) is a public tribal land grant college. The TOCC with its main campus near Sells, Arizona, and 3 satellite campuses including one in Phoenix and its nationwide online courses serves 900 students representing 52 Native nations.

Free tuition is provided for all Native American students living in the United States who can provide proof of tribal enrollment. Other students desiring to pursue higher education are welcome to attend with the payment of tuition. For all students attending TOCC, both Native American and non-Native American, text books and other college fees are free - paid for by governmental grants.

The Tohono O’odham Community College truly lives up to its motto: “Ñia, oya g t-taccui am hab e-ju” ("Our Dream Fulfilled). More about TOCC at https://tocc.edu/.

Traditional Homeland Map
The O'odham People

Raising Hell as Well as Wheat - Papago Indians Burying the Borderline
Gary Paul Nabhan 

Isidro Saraficio is sitting in a dry irrigation ditch, under the shade of a Mexican elderberry tree, gazing out over a wheatfield wavering in the noonday heat. It's a fine stand of wheat for a desert field grown with just the rain that ran down the arroyos this winter. Isidro diverts floodwaters from a holding pond to the field through hand-dug ditches, letting gravity rather than machines do the work. Now that the grain is ripe, his friends have come to the rancheria to help with the harvest. ….

The quiet of noon is suddenly ruptured. Like a giant raptor, a Border Patrol plane breaks into sight and roars down across the land a few hundred feet over the field, causing quail and doves to flush out of the wheat. The patrolling plane zips westward, straight above the fence line and firebreak that stretches as a scar all the way to the far horizon. Sitting up as if awakening from a bad dream, Isidro's friends realize that the nightmare sound they heard is part of his everyday world. The field lies within a mile of the U.S./Mexico border.

Isidro planted the wheat not only for pinole and popovers, but also as a political protest. He was born here on the ranch in Sonora, Mexico, when the elderberry above him first came into bloom thirty-four years ago. Yet his family has never had a deed to this place, which they have probably farmed for hundreds of years. Isidro has planted wheat on land that another man "legally" owns. The field has been worked to show that the homestead has not been deserted.  …

In short, Isidro is raising hell as well as wheat. He is raising his sickle to question the existence of a boundary that his people have never acknowledged.

Isidro is a Papago Indian, sharing this borderland dilemma with 10,000-15,000 of his people who refer to themselves as the Tohono O'odham. …. In 1853, a political decision made thousands of miles away divided the Papago country between the United States and Mexico.

Gary Paul Nabhan
The Desert Smells Like Rain: A Naturalist in O'odham Country
Chapter 2
Raising Hell as Well as Wheat: Papago Indians Burying the Borderline 1982