Connections
Come together, gather, listen: connections with the Tohono O’odham Nation
This region is home to the Tohono O’odham people today, and has been for thousands of years. We honor this when building ongoing connections with the nearby O’odham community. The Tohono O’odham Nation, currently the 2nd largest Native land holding in the United States at 2.8 million acres, is 40 miles away from the Land With No Name.
For generations, O’odham families have come to this region to collect moho (O’odham name for bear grass), for their basketry. We welcome families to LWNN for grass gathering, and often host grandmother, mother, and grandchild teams who come to harvest together.
LWNN is home to one of the largest undisturbed moho habitats remaining in the region, and is also one of the few protected spaces for harvesting moho with dignity. Harvesting is a vital practice that sustains Native culture, creating an environment where ancestral stories, language, history, and traditional teachings are shared, ensuring the transmission of cultural knowledge across generations.
The moho gathering days are open to Native peoples from any tribe. To date we have served Tohono O’odham, Ak-Chin, Gila River, and Salt River Indian Communities, as well as participants from Pascua Yaqui, Apache, Shoshone, Diné, and Hopi tribes and Nations.
We are now going on 13 years of partnership with Native families and artists, who have returned to lead workshops here at LWNN so we can all learn about this ancient, beautiful, and living culture. Our role is to create connection, to become part of a community beyond borders and categories, as we work to offer low-cost programming and scholarships that foster co-existence and personal discovery in nature.
We now offer workshops in basketry and clay handbuilding, each led by a local Native artist and open to adults of all ages and backgrounds. Read on for more info:
Workshops in
Basketry and Clay Handbuilding
At LWNN workshops, we preserve Native lifeways through experiential learning, and take participants beyond the making of an object and into opportunities for cultural exchange and interconnection. Here, we sit among moho and yucca, the materials used for weaving, which are collected on site. We look out at the Baboquivari Mountains of the O’odham Nation nearby, where clay is respectfully collected from the earth.
As we weave baskets and form clay artworks, we move into a fuller ecological awareness and appreciation for the land and share cultural knowledge, social concerns, and personal memory. Depending on the season, certain stories about animals and plants are shared. Border issues are discussed. Elements of the language and different dialects are discussed. Experiences about life in the small Tohono O’odham towns are shared.
LWNN brings people to the land to restore and revitalize connections with nature, as well as create an expansive space for making and sharing art in the desert, and our work has continued to evolve to meet community needs. These workshops bridge social circles and provide opportunities for people of distinctly different backgrounds to come together to create and learn. There is something deeply human about this, and necessary for building tolerance and understanding in an otherwise overwhelming world.
Tohono O’odham Conversations with Thomasa Rivas: Sculpture Tour with group discussion to follow
This workshop begins with a sculpture tour, led by Ted, Kate, and Thomasa. Ted and Kate point out the sculptures and their stories, and Thomasa points out medicinal plants and offers knowledge about the mountain ranges from a Tohono O’odham perspective.
After the sculpture tour, we gather in the straw bale house and open-up the conversation about Tohono O’odham life, both past and present.
No question is too small. We share our curiosities, learn about issues on the nation, and discuss how we can work together to understand current events and cultural perspectives.
