Aaron Michael Wright

The Sonoran Desert has been the traditional homeland of many Indigenous communities since time immemorial. Despite five centuries of settler colonialism, these communities—Cochimí, Cucapá, Kiliwa, Kumeyaay, Kwatsáan, O’Odham, Opata, Paipai, Piipaash, and Yoeme—persevere, in part because this desert embodies the material, emotional, and spiritual legacies of their ancestors. This seminar brings together anthropologists from both sides of the U.S./Mexico border, in collaboration with advisors from Indigenous communities, to examine and celebrate this desert’s deep history and the rich cultural fabric woven across it. We do so through the lens of rock imagery (i.e., petroglyphs and pictographs). Participants are experts in the study of Indigenous rock imagery at local scales, but geo-political and linguistic boundaries have all but siloed their scholarship to either side of the international border. Moreover, U.S. and Mexican scholars have rarely involved Indigenous collaborators in their research. This seminar aims to break through these impediments and bring Indigenous perspectives to the conversation and authorship to the page. In doing so, it offers a first-of-its-kind opportunity to address the nexus of rock imagery and cultural resilience at the scale of the entire Sonoran Desert and unencumbered by cultural and linguistic barriers.