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

Amerind Free Online Talk: Navajo Traditional Stories and the Science of Geology with Henry Haven

Yaalnii Neé Yani (Navajo Creator) blowing air into the small earth: image by Henry Haven
photo: Spider Rock in Canyon de Chelly

Amerind Free Online Talk

Saturday, February 15, 2025

11:00 am (AZ time)

Navajo Traditional Stories and the Science of Geology, with Henry Haven 

To register, visit: https://bit.ly/Amerindonline02152025Haven

Join us on Saturday, February 15, 2025 at 11:00 am (AZ time) for an online talk with Geologist Henry Haven (Diné).

Henry will be giving a talk on his knowledge of traditional Navajo stories and oral history and the connection to the history and science of geology. Henry compares the four geological eras and geological events in the Four Corners region and lands of the (Diné Biknéyah) to traditional oral stories of the four worlds, four sacred elements, and other cultural concepts, where appropriate. They are not based on science as we know it but reflect an awareness of past geological events. Henry also draws on his education and experience as a geologist. This talk is based on his book entitled “Navajo Traditional Stories and the Science of Geology”, which he co-authored with J. Dale Nations, PhD, Geologist, and Max Goldtooth, Sr., a Navajo Medicine Man. (Innovative Ink Publishing, 2023).

Henry Haven is a geologist from the Navajo Nation. He received his master’s in Geology from Northern Arizona University. He retired after many years from the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency. Previously, he worked for the Oil and Gas industry in Texas and the Four Corners area, exploring for oil and gas. Henry continues to consult for the Navajo Nation EPA, helping value and care for the land and water.

If you are unsure if you will be able to watch live at 11 on February 15th, register with an email, and you will be sent the recording of the talk after the talk.

Vintage Basketry and Weavings with Terry DeWald

Vintage Basketry and Navajo Weavings show with Terry DeWald

Saturday, January 25, 2025

10:00 am – 4:00 pm

Talk at 1:00 pm

Please join us on Saturday, January 25, 2025, when we host Terry DeWald for a Vintage Basketry and Navajo Weavings Show at the Amerind Museum. The show will feature vintage Navajo weavings and baskets from California, the greater Southwest, and contemporary Tohono O’odham baskets.

DeWald has been a prominent dealer, lecturer, appraiser, and author of Native American art for more than 40 years.

Come and learn all about this beautiful art, have questions? Terry’s the one to ask! Also, remember that you do not pay sales tax on purchases from the Amerind Museum. Your purchases directly support Amerind’s work with Indigenous artists, museum collections, and public programming.

Terry will give a talk at 1:00 PM

This event is included with regular Museum admission.

Book-Signing and Talk with Authors Henry Haven, Dale Nations, PhD and, Max Goldtooth, Sr.

Saturday, November 23, 2024

11 am – 12 pm

Join us for a book signing with authors Heny Haven and Dale Nations, PhD & Max Goldtooth, Sr., who will be signing their book “Navajo Traditional Stories and the Science of Geology” by Dale Nations, Henry Haven & Max Goldsmith, Sr.

Geologist Henry Haven (Dine’) will also give a talk.

The three authors of this book vary greatly in backgrounds and experience but share in the love of the land and a desire to impart their knowledge of it. Comparisons are made of the rock record of geologic events known to geologists, to the legends in stories known to traditional Navajos. Ages and environments of deposition of stratigraphic units progress from the two billion-year-old rocks that are exposed in the Inner Gorge of the Grand Canyon to succeeding rock units known to exist on and under the lands of Dine ‘Bikeyah across the Colorado Plateau that were formed a few million years ago or less. Geologists use observed fossil records and other geologic events to establish a Universal Geologic Time Scale that consists of four Eras of geologic time: the Precambrian, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic eras. Navajo medicine men tell stories of their vision of the First Dark World, the Second Blue World, the Yellow Third World, and the Fourth White World. The stories show a major cycle of life beginning and extinction of variety of different species in the four worlds as does the geologic history in the four geologic eras.

*This event is included with Museum admission

Amerind Free Online Talk: “Rio Abajo Cultural Traditions during the Late Prehistoric-Early Colonial Periods: A View from Goat Spring Pueblo (LA285), New Mexico” with Suzanne Eckert, PhD

Amerind Free Online Talk

“Rio Abajo Cultural Traditions during the Late Prehistoric-Early Colonial Periods: A View from Goat Spring Pueblo (LA285), New Mexico” with Suzanne Eckert, PhD

Saturday, October 26, 2024, 11:00 am – Arizona time

“Rio Abajo Cultural Traditions during the Late Prehistoric-Early Colonial Periods: A View from Goat Spring Pueblo (LA285), New Mexico”

Located at a little over 6,000 feet in elevation along the eastern edge the Cibola National Forest, Goat Spring Pueblo overlooks the Plano San Lorenzo of the Rio Abajo floodplain. It has been suggested that Rio Abajo villages played a major role in late Ancestral Pueblo Period (A.D. 1300-1680) social dynamics. For example, a major trail between the Western Pueblo and Rio Grande regions passed near Goat Spring Pueblo before ending near modern day Socorro. Given this known trail, the Rio Abajo may have been a gateway for the movement of people, cosmological ideas and ritual practices, as well as goods between the Rio Grande and Western Pueblo regions. This lecture considers recent excavations at Goat Spring Pueblo that have contributed to a much better understanding of cultural change and continuity in this region during this time.

Suzanne L. Eckert is the Head of Collections at the Arizona State Museum.  She earned her doctorate in 2003 from the Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University.  Dr. Eckert’s research focuses on how late Ancestral Pueblo cultures organized ceramic technology. She is especially interested in how this technology integrated with other aspects of society, including migration, political and social organization, religious practice and ideology, and gender and ethnic relations.

Register here: https://bit.ly/Amerindonline10262024Eckert