Free Online Talk: Devil’s Claw (Proboscidea spp.) in the Southwest and Beyond, with Dr. Ed Jolie.

Amerind Free Online Talk
Thursday, March 4, 2027
12:00 pm (AZ time)
To register, visit: https://bit.ly/Amerindonline03042027Jolie

 

Join us on Thursday, March 4, 2027 at 12:00 pm (AZ time) for an online talk Devil’s Claw (Proboscidea spp.) in the Southwest and Beyond, with Dr. Ed Jolie.

Often referred to as the devil’s claw or unicorn plant (family Martyniaceae, genus Proboscidea), the appearance of its seed pods with two jet-black curved beak-like extensions or “claws” that terminate in sharp hooks is eye-catching. These common names might be taken to imply cruelty, difficulty, and mischievousness, or something mythical and mysterious. However, the plant’s seemingly enigmatic character is arguably due to a lack of wider awareness about the plant’s venerable relationship with Indigenous peoples and some enduring gaps in scientific knowledge. Native to the Americas, the genus Proboscidea includes six species, most of which are annual and well-adapted to arid environments. More than thirty Indigenous groups have used (and still use) devil’s claw, primarily the fiber from the claws for basketry, but also its seeds and immature fruits for food and medicine. Drawing on recent archaeological and botanical research, this presentation invites you to open your heart to devil’s claw by considering questions about the plant that you were (maybe) afraid to ask.

Dr. Edward A. Jolie (Lakota/Muscogee) is the Clara Lee Tanner Associate Curator of Ethnology at the Arizona State Museum and an Associate Professor of Anthropology in the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. Ed is an anthropologist interested in the Indigenous archaeology and ethnology of the Americas. His research focuses on the study of organic material culture such as textiles, basketry, and related crafts to address a wide range of anthropological questions. His applied scholarship focuses on hands-on work with fiber plant collection, processing, and weaving as part of an effort to find solutions to problems posed by landscape change and raw material inaccessibility among contemporary Indigenous communities.

We hope you will join us!

Bird Walks at the Amerind with Homer Hansen

Friday, November 20, 2026
8:00 am to 10:00 am
Beginner’s Bird Walk with Homer Hansen

Enjoy a casual walk around the Amerind while spending time learning and practicing basic bird identification skills. Time will be spent at the ponds and along trails observing and identifying common bird species.  Homer will have a spotting scope. Please bring your own binoculars if you have them, and be sure to bring a hat, good hiking shoes, and water.

Friday, March 26, 2027
7:30 am to 9:30 am
Birdwatching for Early Spring Migrants with Homer Hansen

During the month of March, early spring migrants start passing through southeast Arizona.  Enjoy a casual walk around the Amerind while looking for returning birds.  Time will be spent at the ponds and along trails observing and identifying our migratory (and resident) bird species.  Homer will have a spotting scope. Please bring your own binoculars if you have them, and be sure to bring a hat, good hiking shoes, and water.

Homer Hansen grew up in Willcox, Arizona surrounded by Sandhill Cranes in winter and Cassin’s Sparrows in summer.  Homer has a passion for sharing bird watching with others and is a regular field trip leader for several festivals and has served as chairman of the Wings Over Willcox Birding & Nature Festival for over 25 years.  Homer loves working with youths and co-founded the Sulphur Springs Valley Young Birders Club and the associated Arizona Young Birder’s Camp, non-profits dedicated to educating youths about birds.  He instructs workshops on sparrows, raptors, flycatchers, warblers, birding by ear, and bird ecology, including the Advanced Bird ID courses for the Tucson Bird Alliance (formerly Tucson Audubon Society), the Southwestern Sparrows IFO for the American Birding Association, and educational workshops for a variety of public and private events.  Homer is a life member of the Cooper Ornithological Society (COS), Wilson Ornithological Society (WOS), and Western Field Ornithologists (WFO) and served for six years on the WFO board as chairman of the Student Programs Committee.

Amerind Guided hikes are limited to 20 participants on a first-come, first-served basis. You can sign up by calling the Amerind Museum Store at 520-586-3666.

Guided hikes are FREE for all Amerind Members. Guided hikes for non-members are $22 per adult, $20 for seniors (62+) and youth (10-17). This fee includes the guided hike and admission to the Amerind Museum and Art Gallery on the day of your hike.
Each program will involve 1-2 miles of hiking and last 2 hours. Participants should dress appropriately for the weather and hiking. Don’t forget your water and sun protection. As with all Amerind’s outdoor activities, participants will need to complete a recreational liability waiver just before the hike. All Texas Canyon Nature Preserve hiking rules apply.

If you love birding and the outdoors, a 1-year $50 Amerind Nature Club membership gives two adults and any children or grandchildren under 18 access to the hiking trails at no extra cost during our open hours. This membership will also give you access to guided hikes like these at no extra cost. Nature Club Members also receive four guest passes which you can use to visit the Amerind museum or give away to friends and family. Nature Club Members also get 10% off items in our Museum Store. For more information visit our Membership page.

Guided Hikes with Dr. Eric Kaldahl

Come and take a Guided Hike with Amerind’s CEO Dr. Eric Kaldahl.
Hikes are FREE to all Amerind Members.

Guided hikes for non-members are $22 per adult; $20 seniors (62+) and youth (10-17). This fee includes admission to the Amerind Museum & Art Galley on the day of your hike.

Guided hikes are limited to 20 participants on a first-come, first-serve basis. You can sign up by calling the Amerind Museum Store at (520)586-3666.

Each program will involve 1-2 miles of hiking and last 2 hours. Participants should dress appropriately for the weather and hiking. Don’t forget your water and sun protection (even in winter months). As with all Amerind’s outdoor activities, participants will need to complete a recreational liability waiver just before the hike. All the Texas Canyon Nature Preserve hiking rules apply.

Geology Hikes: Learn more about Texas Canyon’s unique geologic landscape and its formation.

Friday, October 30, 2026, 9-11 am

Saturday, January 9, 2027, 9-11 am

Friday, February 5, 2027, 9-11 am

Friday, March 5, 2027, 8:30-10:30 am

Friday, April 16, 2027, 8:30-10:30 am

Ethnobotany Hikes: Learn about the plants used to make beautiful baskets and other tools. Participants will begin in the classroom with objects from the museum’s collection of contemporary Indigenous baskets and then go on the trails to see the plants used by weavers.

Friday, November 6, 2026, 9-11 am

Friday, January 29, 2027, 9-11 am

Friday, February 12, 2027, 9-11 am

Friday, March 12, 2027, 8:30-10:30 am

Friday, April 2, 2027, 8:30-10:30 am

*Bird Walks at the Amerind with Ornithologist Homer Hansen

Friday, November 20, 2026
8:00 am to 10:00 am
Beginner’s Bird Walk with Homer Hansen

Enjoy a casual walk around the Amerind while spending time learning and practicing basic bird identification skills. Time will be spent at the ponds and along the trails observing and identifying common bird species. Homer will have a spotting scope. Please bring your own binoculars if you have them, and be sure to bring a hat, good hiking shoes, and water.

Friday, March 26, 2027
7:30 am to 9:30 am
Birdwatching for Early Spring Migrants with Homer Hansen

During the month of March, early spring migrants start passing through southeast Arizona. Enjoy a casual walk around the Amerind while looking for returning birds. Time will be spent at the ponds and along the trails observing and identifying our migratory (and resident) bird species. Homer will have a spotting scope. Please bring your own binoculars if you have them, and be sure to bring a hat, good hiking shoes, and water.

Fees and reservations are the same as above and again hikes are limited to 20 participants on a first-come, first-serve basis. Please sign up by calling the Amerind Museum Store at (520)586-3666.

Free to Amerind Members

If you love the outdoors, the most cost effective is a 1-year $50 Nature Club Membership gives two adults and any children or grandchildren under 18 access to the hiking trails at no extra cost during our open hours. This membership will also give you access to guided hikes like these at no extra cost. Nature Club Members also receive four guest passes which you can use to visit the Amerind museum or give away to friends and family. Nature Club Members also get 10% off items in our Museum Store.

Visit our Membership page to learn more.

Free Online Talk: “Our Home Is Not a Borderlands: A Book Talk” with Fantasia Shaw, PhD

Amerind Free Online Talk
Thursday, November 12, 2026
12:00 pm (AZ time)
To register, visit: https://bit.ly/Amerindonline11122026Shaw

Join us on Thursday, November 12, 2026, at 12:00 pm (AZ time) for an online talk, Our Home Is Not a Borderlands: A Book Talk, with Fantasia Shaw, PhD. 

Our Home Is Not a Borderlands revisits the history of the US–Mexico borderlands and the politics surrounding US–Mexico border, from an Indigenous vantage. Organized around O’odham Jeveḍ––O’odham are Indigenous Peoples of the Sonoran Desert, Jeveḍ is the O’odham word for homelands––based on 15 months of archival and ethnographic research, and driven by Shaw’s positionality as Onk Akimel O’odham, this book traces colonial boundary-making and Indigenous refusals throughout O’odham Jeveḍ, in what is today known as southern Arizona, from the 1600s to the present.

Fantasia Shaw (Formerly Fantasia Painter) is an Assistant Professor in Global and International Studies at the University  of California, Irvine. Her research, which has appeared in American Quarterly, Journal of Arizona History and  American Indian Culture and Research Journal aims to rethink global borders, boundaries, and migrations from Indigenous worlds. She is an enrolled member and citizen of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community.

Her current book project Our Home Is Not a Borderlands, forthcoming with Yale University Press, reveals how border politics in Southern Arizona are unfolding on O’odham (Indigenous) lands.

We hope you will join us!

*Please note this talk will be recorded and sent only to registrants. This talk will not be posted to our You Tube Channel. If interested in this talk and unable to watch live, please register using an email to be sent the recording, Thank you.

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 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!

The Amerind will be at Celebrate the San Pedro at San Pedro House

Join us at the San Pedro House

9800 E. Highway 90 Sierra Vista, AZ.

Saturday, April 25th. 9:00 am – 2:00 pm

Free Event

Come out for a fun day celebrating the San Pedro with activities, speakers, booths, and more to entertain and educate on Nature and History of the area.

Join the Amerind on Saturday, April 25th from 9:00 am – 2:00 pm for the annual Celebrate the San Pedro event. This event is FREE and open to all. There will be activities, displays and speakers to entertain and educate about the natural and historical wonders of the San Pedro Riparian Conservation Area, of SPRNCA.

Amerind will be one of many booths where you can come and learn about the Amerind, pick up some free passes, and participate in an all ages, art activity with us. There will also be the annual team bird count competition!

We hope you come out and learn about the natural and cultural history of the area with us. The San Pedro House is located eight miles east of Sierra Vista on Highway 90. 9800 E. Highway 90 Sierra Vista, AZ.

Come celebrate the San Pedro!

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.