Online Artist Talk with Mallery Quetawki (Zuni Pueblo)

Amerind Free Online Artist Talk
Thursday, September 3, 2026
12:00 pm (AZ time)
To register, visit: https://bit.ly/Amerindonline09032026Quetawki

Please join us on Thursday, September 3, 2026, 12:00 pm for a free online artist talk, with Mallery Quetawki (Zuni Pueblo) and learn more about this incredible painter and potter and what inspires her works.

Mallery Quetawki (Zuni Pueblo) is Artist-in-Residence and Communications & Outreach Specialist with the University of New Mexico’s Community Environmental Health Program.  She is also a current 2025 Bloomberg American Health Initiative Fellow at the prestigious Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health where she is in her first year as an MPH student.  Trained in biology and studio art (BS 09’, UNM), she specializes in translating complex environmental health research into culturally resonant visual narratives for Indigenous communities. Her work integrates Zuni symbolism with Western science to foster dialogue on topics such as uranium contamination, DNA damage, and immune health. Quetawki’s art has been exhibited nationally, including in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art’s Grounded in Clay exhibition, and is permanently displayed at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque.

We hope you will join us

Interested but not sure if you will be able to watch live? Register using an email and the recording will be sent to you later that evening.

Amerind Online Talk: “Tradition, Innovation, and Technology: Living Legacies of Juan Quezada and the Mata Ortiz Ceramic Community”

Amerind Free Online Talk 
Thursday, September 10, 2026 
12:00 pm (AZ time) 
To register, visit:  https://bit.ly/Amerindonline09102026Hopkins

Join us on Thursday, September 10, 2026 at 12:00 pm (AZ time) for an online talk, “Tradition, Innovation, and Technology: Living Legacies of Juan Quezada and the Mata Ortiz Ceramic Community”, with Maren P. Hopkins and Kelsey E. Hanson  

 Juan Quezada (1940–2022) is celebrated internationally for pioneering the modern pottery tradition of Mata Ortiz, Chihuahua, through his extraordinary experimentation with local clays, pigments, and firing techniques inspired by the ancient ceramics of Paquimé. In this presentation, we explore Juan’s stories, memories, and observations about the places where he gathered clay. We compare his lifetime of experience with scientific compositional analyses of those clay sources. Together, these perspectives reveal that Juan’s artistry was more than technical skill—it emerged from a deep relationship with the land, shaped by curiosity, exploration, experimentation, and lived experience. 

 Maren Hopkins is an archaeologist and ethnographer with more than 26 years of experience leading cultural resource, ethnographic, and heritage projects throughout the U.S. Southwest and Mexico. She specializes in collaborative, community-based, and place-based research, working closely with knowledge holders and other stakeholders to document history, cultural traditions, and the diverse ways people understand, experience, and sustain meaningful places. Her work integrates archaeology, ethnography, and heritage conservation to advance public history, cultural preservation, land stewardship, and informed natural and cultural resource management. 

Dr. Kelsey Hanson is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Arlington. Integrating interdisciplinary scientific methods with collaborative, community-based approaches to archaeology, her research explores the social roles of technology, materiality, and knowledge in the Greater Southwest and beyond. From compositional studies of pigments and ceramics to analyses of built environments and landscapes, her work examines how materials encode information about relationships to people, places, and knowledge. She draws from these connections in the past to contribute to contemporary efforts in cultural preservation and stewardship among diverse communities today. 

We hope you will join us!

*Unsure if you can watch the talk live? Register using an email and a recording of the talk will be sent later that evening.

Free Online Talk: “Collaboration in Practice: Transforming Community-Based Research in the Southwest,” with Octavius Seowtewa and Fumi Arakawa.

Amerind Free Online Talk
Thursday, February 11, 2027
12:00 pm (AZ time)
To register, visit: https://bit.ly/Amerindonline02112027

Join us on Thursday, February 11, 2027 at 12:00 pm (AZ time) for an online talk

“Collaboration in Practice: Transforming Community-Based Research in the Southwest,” with Octavius Seowtewa (A:shiwi (Zuni))  and Fumi Arakawa.

Focusing on the Chavez Cave collections in Las Cruces, New Mexico, this presentation examines the partnership between New Mexico State University and the Zuni Cultural Resource Advisory Team (ZCRAT). We will explore the collaborative process—including site visits, exhibition development, and the co-authorship of a book—as a model for ethical, reciprocal, and respectful research practice. The presentation will address both the challenges and transformative potential of collaborative scholarship, highlighting how such partnerships can reshape approaches to research, interpretation, and knowledge production. Through this project, we seek to demonstrate a path forward for community-based research that centers Indigenous voices, perspectives, and values while fostering meaningful relationships between academic institutions and Indigenous communities.

Fumi Arakawa, PhD is an associate professor of anthropology at Indiana University, Bloomington (IUB). Before joining I IUB, he served as director of the University Museum and professor of anthropology at New Mexico State University. In 2022, he published Correlative Archaeology, which introduced a new theoretical framework for interpreting archaeological data from multiple perspectives.

Octavius Seowtewa is the head medicine man for the Newekwe/Galaxy medicine society and also a member of the Eagle Down medicine society. He is a supervisor for the Zuni Cultural Resource Advisory Team (ZCRAT). Seowtewa has been involved with numerous museum projects, not only in the United States but also in Japan and the Netherlands. He has reviewed innumerable Zuni cultural remains at museums for more than 20 years.

Please remember, if you are unsure if you will be able to watch live, register using an email and the recording of the talk will be sent to you to watch at your leisure.

We hope you will join us!

Free Online Talk: The Shapes of Us: Salado Polychrome Pottery and the Kayenta Diaspora in the 1300s and 1400s,” with Kathleen Barvick.

Amerind Free Online Talk
Thursday, July 16, 2026
12:00 pm (AZ time)
To register, visit: https://bit.ly/Amerindonline07162026Barvick

Join us on Thursday, July 16, 2026 at 12:00 pm (AZ time) for an online talk, “The Shapes of Us: Salado Polychrome Pottery and the Kayenta Diaspora in the 1300s and 1400s” with PhD candidate Kathleen Barvick.

In the late 1200s, a massive drought hit the Southwest, causing political instability and sparking a massive migration as people left the Four Corners area and migrated south to settle along the rivers, which changed to social and political organization of the Southwest forever. One group of people, from the Kayenta region of northeastern Arizona, settled across a wide area of central and southern Arizona and western New Mexico, sometimes integrating into local settlements, sometimes setting up their own enclaves away from existing settlements. Dr. Barvick’s research focuses on Salado polychrome, a specific type of pottery that arose among these Kayenta immigrant communities and spread across Arizona and New Mexico. By looking at Salado polychrome pots across the Southwest, and specifically at the variation in their shapes, she investigates how the Kayenta immigrant diaspora shared technological practices regarding pottery creation across far-flung communities in the 1300s and 1400s, how the use of Salado polychrome spread, and how Kayenta immigrants negotiated their identities as Kayenta people and as immigrants in their new homes.

Dr. Kate Barvick is an archaeologist who studies pottery, migration, and community networks in the US Southwest. She grew up in Massachusetts and received a BA in Anthropology and Linguistics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2018. Her archaeology experience in Massachusetts focused on 18th- and 19th-century historic house sites, with a special emphasis on the Revolutionary War era. Her research in the Southwest is both older than that (she spent several summers in northern New Mexico near Taos, on a collaborative community project with Picuris Pueblo) and more recent (she spent several years researching the history of baseball and its connection to labor movements in the 20th century in Bisbee, AZ). She brings from this background a passion for public archaeology, community engagement, and the bridging of the past and the present. She currently lives in Tucson, recently defended her PhD at the University of Arizona, and is the Amerind Emerging Scholar-in-Residence in Summer 2026.

If you are unsure if you can watch live, register using an email and the recording of the talk will be sent to you following the program.

We hope you will join us!

Free Online Artist Talk with Colleen Bigman

Amerind Free Online Artist Talk with Colleen Bigman
Thursday, May 14, 2026
12:00 pm (AZ time)
To register, visit: https://bit.ly/Amerindonline05142026Bigman

Please join us on Thursday, May 14, 2026, at 12:00 pm (AZ time) for a free online artist talk, with Colleen Bigman. (Diné/Navajo).

Yá’át’ééh, my name is Colleen Bigman. I am a Navajo artist based in Tucson, Arizona, with over four decades of creative experience. For the past several years, I have specialized in the creation of intricate marionettes—a practice that began with a focus on Katsinas and has evolved into the Native American Pow-Wow Dancers. This work serves as a culmination of a lifetime of artistic disciplines; each piece seamlessly integrates woodworking, sculpting, painting, beadwork, and textile arts to bring these figures to life.

Meet multi-media artist Colleen Bigman and her incredible marionette creations. We hope you will join us to learn about her journey, what she has been working on, and what’s next in her artistic journey.

We hope you will join us!

Free Online Talk: “Cíbola in Chacoan & Post-Chacoan Times” with Keith Kintigh, PhD.

Amerind Free Online Talk

Thursday, May 28, 2026

12:00 pm (AZ time)

To register, visit: https://bit.ly/Amerindonline05282026Kintigh

Please join us on Thursday, May 28, 2026 at 12:00 pm (AZ time) for a free online talk “Cíbola in Chacoan & Post-Chacoan Times” with Keith Kintigh, PhD.

 Since 1896, the ruins in Chaco Canyon have been a focus of Southwest archaeologists’ attention. However, the recognition of Chaco as a regional system with outliers and roads only began about 50 years ago.  Drawing on our limited excavations and extensive surveys over the last 45 years, I will discuss both the nature of the Chaco world and the regional consequences of Chaco’s collapse in the Cíbola area.  I’ll start with a discussion of the H-Spear site, a Chaco outlier we located south of the Zuni Indian Reservation.  While one might expect a nearby residential community, we found no contemporaneous occupation within .5 km of the great house; within 2km we located only 4 possibly contemporaneous room blocks with fewer than 20 rooms total. In contrast, 2.6km northwest of H-Spear, the post-Chacoan Hinkson Site has 32 residential room blocks with 525 rooms immediately surrounding a great house complex that includes an unroofed, oversize great kiva, a nazha, and roads. Using our excavations at and surveys around those two sites and the post-Chacoan great house site of Los Gigantes in the El Morro Valley, I’ll look at applying John Stein’s important idea of ritual landscapes, and the problematic concept of “community” over a period from AD1000-1275.

Keith Kintigh is Professor Emeritus of archaeology at Arizona State University.  His field research focused on the organization of ancestral Pueblo societies in the Cíbola area. Throughout his career, Kintigh published on quantitative methods and developed computer programs to address unusual analytical needs of archaeologists. To enhance preservation and access to the digital records of archaeological investigations, Kintigh led a team of archaeologists and computer scientists in creating tDAR (the Digital Archaeological Record), a sustainable repository for the digital records of archaeological investigations. Over the last 10 years, Kintigh led a different team of archaeologists and computer scientist to develop SKOPE a web application that provides free, high resolution paleoclimatic data. In 2017 Jeffrey Altschul and Kintigh led the establishment of the Coalition for Archaeological Synthesis (CfAS) to promote synthetic research in archaeology. Kintigh continues to serve on the board of tDAR, has an active NSF grant for SKOPE, and serves, with Altschul, as co-president of CfAS. Kintigh is a past president of the Society for American Archaeology and, for SAA, has worked extensively on national law and policy regarding the repatriation of Native American human remains. Kintigh earned a BA in Sociology and an MS in Computer Science at Stanford University in 1974 and a PhD in Anthropology at the University of Michigan in 1982. He received ASU’s award for Outstanding Doctoral Mentor for 2004. He was a Fulbright Fellow in Ireland in 2011.

We hope you will join us!

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-Traceological Analysis of Turquoise Objects from Mesoamerica, Northern Mexico, and the American Southwest: Technological Styles and Interactions with Dr. Emiliano Ricardo Melgar Tísoc.

Amerind Free Online Talk

Thursday, December 4, 2025

12- 1 pm (AZ time)

To register, visit: https://bit.ly/Amerindonline12042025Tisoc

Traceological Analysis of Turquoise Objects from Mesoamerica, Northern Mexico, and the American Southwest: Technological Styles and Interactions with Dr. Emiliano Ricardo Melgar Tísoc.

There are thousands of turquoise objects found in different archaeological sites of Mesoamerica, Northern Mexico, and the American Southwest. Unfortunately, most of the researches about them had been focused on the symbolic meaning, its morphology, trade and use, but very few study their manufacturing traces. In this lecture, I will present a traceological approach to analyze and characterize their manufacturing techniques through the employment of Experimental Archaeology and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The comparison of the turquoise assemblages from more than fifty sites located in these regions showed specific patterns related with lapidary traditions and technological styles. With this new data of the geography of the manufacturing techniques, it is possible to appreciate new nodes of interactions and trends of circulation of the turquoise pieces (raw materials, blanks, and finished objects) among the sourcing areas, the workshops, and the final consumers.

Dr. Emiliano Ricardo Melgar Tísoc earned a BA in Archaeology from the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH) in Mexico and an MA and Ph.D. in Anthropology from National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Since 2004 he has been a full-time researcher at the Templo Mayor Museum. Dr Melgar’ research has been awarded the 2010 Alfonso Caso Award for best bachelor thesis in archaeology, the 2011 Teotihuacan Award for best essay on the materials of that city, and the 2019 Award of the Mexican Academy of Sciences for the best young researcher in the Mexican Humanities. He has written five books and more than 80 articles for domestic and foreign publications. His latest book, “Lapidary Objects from the Great Temple: Styles and Technological Traditions”, received the Honorable Mention in the 2024 INAH Prize for the best archaeological research in Mexico.

We hope you will spend your lunch with us learning about the incredible work of Dr. Melgar Tísoc!

*Unsure if you will be able to watch live? Register using an email and you will be sent a recording of the talk later that evening.

Online Artist Talk with Santiago Romero

Amerind Free Online Artist Talk

Thursday, November 20, 2025

12:00 pm (AZ time)

To register, visit: https://bit.ly/Amerindonline11202025Romero

Please join us on Thursday, November 20, 2025 at 12:00 pm (AZ time) for an online artist talk, with painter and potter Santiago Romero (Cochiti/Taos/Santa Ana Pueblos).

Santiago Romero was born in Santa Fe, NM but grew up between New Mexico and the heart of Los Angeles. After graduating High school, he attended Dartmouth College and received a degree in environmental science. He returned to Santa Fe, where he was working as a ceramic sculptor and painter, as well as actively participating culturally in four separate Pueblo communities. He is currently working on his Master’s degree in Texas and continues to work on his art.

Santiago comes from a legacy of artists; his dad, Diego Romero, is a renowned potter from whom he learned traditional polishing and linework. His uncle, painter Mateo Romero, taught him about layout and gestural technique in painting. His artistic influences are many, but he believes the true force behind his artwork lies within his great-grandmother, Teresita Romero. As an artist of many forms herself, he has found himself guided by her work and spirit.

He strives to integrate his background, education, and experience into all his work by incorporating different techniques, both traditional and contemporary, reflecting who he is and where he comes from.

Santiago has won many awards for his work, including, most recently, the coveted “Best of classification in Painting, Photography, drawing, and photography” at this year’s Indian Market. His work can be found in top collections and galleries. In early 2025, Santiago completed an artist-in-residence at the Amerind, where he spent a month painting and honing his artistic skills. Please note the smaller painting in the photo above was painted here on the Amerind grounds, during his residency!

We hope you will join us to learn more about this fascinating young artist.

*Unsure if you will be able to join us live, register using an email and the talk will be sent to all registrants later that evening.