Free Public Talk “Can Tomorrow’s AI Help Us Protect the Past?” with Dr. Jonathan Paige

Free Public Talk Saturday, March 7, 1-2 PM, Tucson
Can Tomorrow’s AI Help Us Protect the Past?
with Dr. Jonathan Paige
Presentation will be at the Tucson Museum of Art, 140 North Main Avenue
in the Alice Chaiten Baker Education Center

 

Archaeological sites are an irreplaceable part of our human heritage. How can we best protect them? How can we best find them? How can we learn from them?

The archaeological record represents over three million years of human behavior. However, it is challenging for us to integrate data and information from projects carried out by generations of researchers. The challenge of integrating data needs to be overcome if we are to synthesize information about the record, answer big questions about the human past, and protect the archaeological record itself.

Dr. Paige and a team of global researchers with the Coalition for Archaeological Synthesis are examining ways that Artificial Intelligence can help the archaeologists of tomorrow. Paige discusses the results of their group’s work, focusing on current approaches in using AI to protect and study the archaeological record, and their vision for how AI may be used in the future.

About the Speaker

Dr. Jonathan Paige is a Co-Director and Research Scientist with the Cultural Resource Sciences program, Center for Applied Fire and Ecosystem Science, New Mexico Consortium. He studies the evolution of technologies, the role they play in human evolution, and how groups adapt to new and challenging environments. He also works with federal agencies on advancing their capacity to perform comparative research through machine learning, developing models to identify archaeological sites on remote sensing imagery.

Photo Caption: Jonathan Paige analyzing material from Pitcairn Island at the Otago Museum, Dunedin, New Zealand. Photo courtesy of Jonathan Paige.

We hope you will join Amerind in Tucson!

Free Online Talk: “Life on the Edge of the Mimbres Region: Powers Ranch as a Mimbres Site” with Patricia Gilman & Mary Whisenhunt

Free Online Talk
Thursday, March 12, 2026
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm (AZ time)
“Life on the Edge of the Mimbres Region: Powers Ranch as a Mimbres Site” with Patricia Gilman, PhD & Mary Whisenhunt, PhD

To register, visit: https://bit.ly/Amerindonline03122026Gilman

Join us on Thursday, March 12, 2026 at 12:00 pm (AZ time) for an online talk, “Life on the Edge of the Mimbres Region: Powers Ranch as a Mimbres Site”, with Patricia Gilman, PhD and Mary Whisenhunt, PhD.

When people think of Mimbres archaeology, they picture beautiful black-on-white pottery with paintings of people and animals and large pueblo sites in the Mimbres Valley of southwestern New Mexico.  However, there were Mimbres sites beyond the Mimbres Valley, but they were different from those in the valley.  We explore what it meant to be Mimbres at the Powers Ranch site, a small settlement at the western edge of the Mimbres region. We conclude that the people at Powers Ranch were quintessentially Mimbres and were more closely affiliated with Mimbres settlements on the Gila River drainage in southeast Arizona and New Mexico than with those living in the Mimbres Valley core area.

Mary Whisenhunt received her anthropology doctorate in 2020, conducting her field work in southeast Arizona. Her research focused on the social resilience of precontact Indigenous people on the western boundary of the Mimbres region.

Patricia Gilman has done archaeological research in the Mimbres region for more than 50 years, retiring from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma. One of her research foci has been Mimbres beyond the Mimbres Valley.

We hope you will join us!

If you can’t join us to watch live on March 12th, register using an email and the recorded talk will be sent to you after the talk, to watch at your leisure.

 

Free Online Talk “Our Elder Brother Dwells There: How I’itoi Ki Moved from Mountain Peak to Basket Design.” with David Martinez, PhD.

Photo: Early 20th Century O’odham Basket with “Man in the Maze” design, 13 1/4″ dia., Amerind permanent collection

Amerind Free Online Talk

Thursday, February 12, 2026

12:00 pm (AZ time)

“Our Elder Brother Dwells There: How I’itoi Ki Moved from Mountain Peak to Basket Design.” with David Martinez, PhD. (Akimel O’odham/Hia-Ced O’odham/Mexican)

To register, visit: https://bit.ly/Amerindonline02122026Martinez

Join us on Thursday, February 12, 2026 at 12:00 pm (AZ time) for a free online talk, “Our Elder Brother Dwells There: How I’itoi Ki Moved from Mountain Peak to Basket Design.” with Dr. David Martinez.

“Learn about I’itoi, Elder Brother, who taught O’odham how to live well in their desert homelands. Learn where his home, his kih, is located, according to oral tradition. Most importantly, learn about how the symbol of this home, I’itoi kih, started appearing in O’odham baskets more than a century ago. What does it all mean?”

David Martínez (Akimel O’odham/Hia-ced O’odham/Mexican), Is a Professor of American Indian Studies and Transborder Studies at Arizona State University. He is the author of the forthcoming The Maze of History: Komal Hok, O’odham Teachings, and an Earth-Based Sense of Time (University of New Mexico Press, April 2026).

Martínez is also the author of Dakota Philosopher: Charles Eastman and American Indian Thought (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2009), Life of the Indigenous Mind: Vine Deloria Jr and the Birth of the Red Power Movement (University of Nebraska Press, 2019), My Heart Is Bound Up With Them: How Carlos Montezuma Became the Voice of a Generation (University of Arizona Press, 2023), and editor of The American Indian Intellectual Tradition: An Anthology of Writings from 1772 to 1972 (Cornell University Press, 2011).

Dr. Martínez is also the director and founder of the Institute for Transborder Indigenous Nations (ITIN), which is housed in the School of Transborder Studies at ASU, where it focuses on Indigenous nations impacted by the US-Mexico Border.

Interested but unsure if you will be able to join us live? Register using an email and the recording of the talk will be sent later that evening to all registrants.

We hope you will join us for this fascinating talk.

 

Amerind Free Online Talk: O’Odham Pottery: Prehistoric, Historic, and Contemporary Native American Ceramic Production in the Phoenix Basin of Southern Arizona with Linda Morgan, M.A., (Akimel O’Odham, Dinè), and Katrina Soke, (Akimel O’Odham)

Amerind Free Online Talk

O’Odham Pottery: Prehistoric, Historic, and Contemporary Native American Ceramic Production in the Phoenix Basin of Southern Arizona

with Linda Morgan, M.A., (Akimel O’Odham, Dinè), and Katrina Soke, (Akimel O’Odham)

Thursday, October 30, 2025

12:00 pm – 1:00 pm (AZ time)

Within the last three decades, Native communities in the United States have taken on the management of their own archaeological resources, including the establishment of Cultural Resource Management Departments.  These developments have resulted in increased interactions between archaeologists and Native people, which has led to a better understanding of indigenous material culture, especially more recent remains, which for obvious reasons are more concentrated within extant Native American reservations, such as the Gila River Indian Community (GRIC).  This presentation discusses research by the GRIC Cultural Resource Management Program (GRIC-CRMP), focusing on their recent contributions to the indigenous ceramic analysis process.

Linda Morgan, M.A., (Akimel O’Odham, Dinè), is from Blackwater, AZ. and a member of the Gila River Indian Community (GRIC). She has worked for the GRIC’s Cultural Resource Management Program (CRMP) since 1994 and is currently Director of the CRMP. She has been a ceramic analyst for the department since 1994 specializing in the analysis of prehistoric Hohokam and Historic O’Odham indigenous ceramics. She has a BA in Anthropology and a Master’s Degree in Museum Studies from Arizona State University.

Katrina Soke, (Akimel O’Odham), is from Gila Crossing, AZ. She is an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Community (GRIC), where she was born and raised. She has worked for the GRIC’s Cultural Resource Management Program (CRMP) since 2016 as a Laboratory Technician.  She is a ceramic analyst with extensive experience studying prehistoric and historic Indigenous ceramics.

Please note our day and time change- Hoping you can grab your lunch and join us for lunchtime learning at the Amerind!

If you are not able to join us live, register using an email and the recording of the talk will be sent to you later that evening and available to watch on our You Tube Channel: Amerind Foundation at your leisure.

 

Amerind Free Online Talk-One Sherd at a Time: Seriating Ceramics from Paloparado, an Important Precolonial Site Near the Arizona/Sonora Border with Hunter Claypatch, PhD

Amerind Free Online Talk

Saturday, September 27, 2025

11:00 am (AZ time)

To register, visit: https://bit.ly/Amerindonline09272025Claypatch

Join us on Saturday, September 27, 2025 at 11:00 am (AZ time) for an online talk One Sherd at a Time: Seriating Ceramics from Paloparado, an Important Precolonial Site Near the Arizona-Sonora Border with Scholar Hunter Claypatch, PhD

The archaeological site of Paloparado is located within present-day Santa Cruz County, Arizona. It was excavated in the 1950s by Charles Di Peso and the Amerind Foundation. Although fundamental for reconstructing the occupational history of the Arizona-Sonora borderlands, the excavation was conducted with little prior knowledge of regional ceramics and many of Di Peso’s original interpretations have long been refuted. Through Amerind’s Emerging Scholar Residency, Claypatch applied ceramic insights that were unknown in the 1950s to conducted a systematic reanalysis of Paloparado’s pottery. Coupled with previously unpublished site data, this research reconstructs the occupational history of Paloparado and demonstrates the presence of largely unmixed Pre-Classic (pre-1150 CE) house deposits.

Hunter M. Claypatch received his Ph.D. from Binghamton University in 2022. He is a ceramicist who has worked extensively with precolonial pottery on both sides of the U.S. and Mexico international border. He specializes in Trincheras tradition of northern Sonora and the precolonial inhabitants of present-day Santa Cruz County, Arizona. His research applies traditional seriations, practice theory, and models for cultural connectivity to reconstruct Indigenous lifeways. He currently serves as president-elect for the Arizona Archaeological Council and as a professor at Pima Community College, in Tucson, Arizona.

We hope you will join us!

Amerind Free Online Talk: Indians and Energy Transition: Green New Deal to ‘Drill, Baby, Drill!’ with Scholar Andrew Curley, PhD (Diné).

Free Online Talk

Saturday, July 26, 2025 

11:00 am (AZ time)

Indians and Energy Transition: Green New Deal to ‘Drill, Baby, Drill!’ with Scholar Andrew Curley, PhD (Diné).
To register, visit: https://bit.ly/Amerindonline07262025Curley

Please take this opportunity to join us on Saturday, July 26, 2025 at 11:00 am (AZ time) for an online talk Indians and Energy Transition: Green New Deal to ‘Drill, Baby, Drill!’ with scholar Andrew Curley, PhD (Diné) as he discusses his research on the implications of energy transitions on Indigenous nations.

Energy in the United States is a topic of extreme importance. It is foundational to the U.S. economy, infrastructure, development in local communities, and accelerating processes of climate change. In political rhetoric, energy conversations oscillate between broad ideas of clean energy technology to opening more and more protected spaces for oil and gas drilling. Tribal communities are often caught in the middle of these political movements. Native leaders, planners, and workers must anticipate energy headwinds while shoring up their sources of development and revenue while at the same time thinking through the politics of climate change and the negative environmental impacts of energy projects, such as new kinds of contamination, threatening limited water sources or climate change. In this presentation, I will offer new research focused on the perspectives of Diné, Southern Ute Indian Tribe, and Jicarilla Apache community members in places with long histories of fossil fuel production, primarily oil & gas as well as coal and uranium.

Andrew Curley (Diné) is an Associate Professor in the School of Geography, Development & Environment at the University of Arizona. He is the author of Carbon Sovereignty: Coal, Development, and Energy Transition in the Navajo Nation (2023), UofA Press.

Not sure you can watch live on Saturday? Register using an email and a recording of the talk will be sent to you to watch at your leisure.

We hope you will join us!

America Meredith – Artist Talk & Exhibit Celebration

“Extremis Malis Extrema Remedia”, 2010, acrylic/canvas, America Meredith
America Meredith
Artist/Editor of First American Art Magazine
Artist Talk/Exhibit Celebration
Saturday, April 5, 11 am to noon, at Amerind
Artist, curator, art critic, and editor America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) is a celebrated contemporary artist of international stature. She is currently holding a mid-career retrospective at Amerind

Woman of Her Word: Art and Text of America Meredith. Come learn about her art and work as editor of the highly influential First American Art Magazine.

As an artist, she explores the intersections between language and image, between Native and non-Native cultures, and between humans and other living beings.

America Meredith earned her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and BFA from the University of Oklahoma. She has exhibited in the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia. She was the 2018 Sequoyah Fellow at Northeastern State University, won the 2018 Cherokee National Historical Society Contemporary Achievement Award, was a 2009 Artist Fellow of the National Museum of the American Indian, and won the Institute of American Indian Art’s Distinguished Alumni Award for Excellence in Contemporary Native American Arts.

Her Amerind talk will be on Saturday, April 5, 11 am to noon
at Amerind’s Fulton-Hayden Memorial Art Gallery

This is a FREE Event

(Detail of the painting) “St. Brendan: He Came, He Saw, He Went Back Home”, 2002, acrylic/canvas, America Meredith