Peoples of a Sonoran Desert Oasis: Recovering the Lost History and Culture of Quitobaquito

by Jared Orsi

In the southwestern corner of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, on the border between Arizona and Mexico, one finds Quitobaquito, the second-largest oasis in the Sonoran Desert. There, with some effort, one might also find remnants of once-thriving O’odham communities and their predecessors with roots reaching back at least 12,000 years—along with evidence of their expulsion, the erasure of their past, attempts to recover that history, and the role of the National Park Service (NPS) at every layer.

The outlines of the lost landscapes of Quitobaquito—now further threatened by the looming border wall—reemerge in Peoples of a Sonoran Desert Oasis as Jared Orsi tells the story of the land, its inhabitants ancient and recent, and the efforts of the NPS to “reclaim” Quitobaquito’s pristine natural form and to reverse the damage done to the O’odham community and culture, first by colonial incursions and then by proponents of “preservation.”

Quitobaquito is ecologically and culturally rich, and this book summons both the natural and human history of this unique place to describe how people have made use of the land for some five hundred generations, subject to the shifting forces of subsistence and commerce, tradition and progress, cultural and biological preservation. Throughout, Orsi details the processes by which the NPS obliterated those cultural landscapes and then subsequently, as America began to reckon with its colonial legacy, worked with O’odham peoples to restore their rightful heritage.

Tracing the building and erasing of past landscapes to make some of them more visible in the present, Peoples of a Sonoran Desert Oasis reveals how colonial legacies became embedded in national parks—and points to the possibility that such legacies might be undone and those lost landscapes remade.
 

205 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 17, 2023

Reviews

[David Martínez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jared Orsi is a longtime historian of the Sonoran Desert as both an ecological and a cultural region. For those who are acquainted with Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument (ORPI) and the International Sonoran Desert Alliance (ISDA), Orsi's name is as familiar as Gary Nabhan, Richard and Sandy Martynec, and Lorrainer Eiler.

In 'Peoples of a Sonoran Desert Oasis', Orsi focuses his attention on the history of Quitobaquito Springs as not only public land but also, more importantly, as ancestral Hia Ced O'odham land. Recognizing the Hia Ced O'odham as endemic to Quitobaquito Springs, or A'al Vaippia (Little Wells), is essential to understanding Orsi's criticisms of National Park Service management of this Indigenous heritage site and his recommendations for future management reform.

Unsurprisingly, given Orsi's NPS background, 'Peoples of a Sonoran Desert Oasis' reads like an NPS report, meaning dispassionately, objectively, and lacking any sense of urgency for the Indigenous rights that are at the heart of the issues confronting this sacred place. The reference to Trump's Wall late in the book notwithstanding, the Hia Ced O'odham concern for their homeland feels more historic than contemporary.

A'al Vaippia is a culturally and environmentally important part of the Hia Ced O'odham Jeved, meaning homeland. Its waters not only sustain the delicate ecosystem around the wells but also has provided life-saving relief for countless generations of travelers, including O'odham on the Salt Pilgrimage to Ge'e Shuthagi, Big Water, and the sand dunes at Puerto Peñasco. In between is Chuk Doag, Black Mountain, or the Sierra Pinacate, which is where I'itoi landed after the great flood recounted in O'odham teachings about the Creation. Chuk Doag is also where I'itoi Ki, Elder Brother's House, is located.

On the one hand, Orsi makes a cogent argument about including the O'odham in any effort to develop a land management plan for Quitobaquito Springs. Like many, he cautions environmentalists from pursuing a pristine landscape completely free of human intervention. On the other hand, Orsi stops short, way short, of advocating for returning the land to the O'odham. Instead, he makes the all-too-familiar recommendation for including Hia Ced O'odham in the consultation process.

Because the Hia Ced O'odham are a non-federally acknowledged tribe, Orsi is obliged to explain why this discrete part of the O'odham community ought to be treated with the same respect as their federally acknowledged cousins, such as Tohono O'odham Nation. On this point, this book has value. Unfortunately, what Orsi does not appreciate--or what he is unable as a writer to evoke in his prose--is the fact that the Hia Ced O'odham are not simply in a different legal category than the O'odham with federally-mandated reservations, they are victims of America's genocidal Indian policy, which presumed through its reservation system and acknowledgement policy who has the right to exist as Indigenous people and who does not. Consequently, making Hia Ced O'odham voices a vital priority is imperative if one truly wants to affirm that they have been here--that we have been here--since time immemorial, and that no colonizer entity has a right to tell us otherwise. On this point, this book is weak.

In the end, I am glad this book is in print. I am grateful to Orsi for adding to the scholarship on the Hia Ced O'odham. Despite its reticent treatment of Hia Ced O'odham history and peoplehood, I hope people read this and learn that A'al Vaippia is much more than just a recreation site for tourists. It is where my huhugam, my ancestors, sustained our himdag, our way of doing things. We still do.

[Brendan Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scholars of national parks have long studied how violent dispossession of indigenous and other marginalized peoples was intimately entangled with the creation and maintenance of these public lands. Karl Jacoby and Mark Spence took the first forays into this "hidden history of American conservation" with their pioneering works over two decades ago. Given the breadth and depth of scholarship on this topic, then, it would be easy to imagine that there is little left to mine from the ongoing relationships between settler colonialism and public lands, but Jared Orsi shows this is not so. In this book, Orsi traces the long history of land use at Quitabaquito Springs, an isolated area of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument on the Arizona-Sonora border. Orsi shows how park service efforts to "preserve" Quitobaquito have in fact erased a complex human landscape in the name of wilderness, furthering Indigenous erasure and dispossession. He also shows, however, how these efforts have never really succeeded. Despite federal efforts to wall off Quitobaquito both literally and metaphorically, this is a region defined by mobility. For thousands of years, Native people, white people, and now Latinx migrants from Central America have moved across this landscape, used it, and shown how efforts to border it, separate it from the outside world, are fruitless. He also critically offers a new means of considering how these park landscapes, defined as they are by Indigenous dispossession, can become powerful sites of reconciliation, democratic access, and even, in his words, decolonization. While this is kind of a fuzzy and overused term, Orsi does have a point. In recent years, O'odham people in Arizona and Mexico, as well as local people of various ethnic communities, have played a vital role in trying to maintain and develop the springs to allow them to stay a vital space of culture--Native and otherwise--into the twenty-first century. In his closing pages, Orsi narrates how the park might become a model for other parks facing climate change and volatile geopolitical terrain in the coming decades.