AZ Speaks

The Colorado, the Gila, the Salt, the Verde, the Hassayampa, the Santa Cruz: Arizona’s rivers were lush green ribbons of life flowing through a desert landscape. They became sustaining paths for indigenous traders and immigrants leaving wagon tracks and settlements. The Hohokam built vast canals from the Salt to direct irrigation water for crops. European […]

Throughout the Southwest, tourists and locals encounter a range of Indigenous art, from manufactured and imported cultural appropriations to fine art in galleries and museums. The state’s creative Indigenous communities are sometimes lost in what is popularly featured as Native American Art. In this presentation, Diné jeweler Nanibaa Beck will highlight contemporary Native American Art, […]

Most Arizonans are not originally from Arizona, and most come from places that are far greener and milder of climate than our desert. For many of us, it takes a shift of eye and of attitude to appreciate this hot, dry place—but once it gets into one’s soul, there’s nowhere like it. This talk explains […]

Entrepreneurs offering assorted “get rich quick” schemes and “cure-alls” have visited Arizona since the early days. Benefitting from tales of abundant resources in the territory, limited law enforcement and communication, a scoundrel could create enticing promises of wealth and health without much external oversight. Newspapers often fanned the hysteria only to later denounce and expose […]

The Colorado, the Gila, the Salt, the Verde, the Hassayampa, the Santa Cruz: Arizona’s rivers were lush green ribbons of life flowing through a desert landscape. They became sustaining paths for indigenous traders and immigrants leaving wagon tracks and settlements. The Hohokam built vast canals from the Salt to direct irrigation water for crops. European […]

Throughout the Southwest, tourists and locals encounter a range of Indigenous art, from manufactured and imported cultural appropriations to fine art in galleries and museums. The state’s creative Indigenous communities are sometimes lost in what is popularly featured as Native American Art. In this presentation, Diné jeweler Nanibaa Beck will highlight contemporary Native American Art, […]

Many Arizonans call the Sonoran Desert and its striking landscapes home. Long before our urban centers and city lights lit up the dark desert skies, the Tohono O’odham were cultivating and shaping the land with abundant agriculture—from squash and beans to corn and cotton. For generations they passed down their rich knowledge and culture grown […]

The Colorado, the Gila, the Salt, the Verde, the Hassayampa, the Santa Cruz: Arizona’s rivers were lush green ribbons of life flowing through a desert landscape. They became sustaining paths for indigenous traders and immigrants leaving wagon tracks and settlements. The Hohokam built vast canals from the Salt to direct irrigation water for crops. European […]

It is one of the most uplifting – yet often forgotten – stories of Jewish survival during the Holocaust. In the early 1940s, the Dominican Republic was the only sovereign country to accept large numbers of Jewish refugees. About 750 German and Austrian Jews found a safe haven on an abandoned banana plantation in a […]

In June of 2021, Holocaust education became a required subject in Arizona public middle and high schools, making space for a discussion on the rise of antisemitic propaganda in 20th century Germany. This presentation will begin with a brief look at the early stages of antisemitic messaging in the 1890s, 09’s and WWI into the […]

There are only eleven designated national scenic trails in the United States. Our Grand Canyon State has one of them—the Arizona National Scenic Trail! In this discussion, participants will have opportunities to: explore the history of the creation of Arizona’s greatest volunteer project; enhance their knowledge of Arizona’s diverse geography, animals, plants, and especially people—from […]

There are only eleven designated national scenic trails in the United States. Our Grand Canyon State has one of them—the Arizona National Scenic Trail! In this discussion, participants will have opportunities to: explore the history of the creation of Arizona’s greatest volunteer project; enhance their knowledge of Arizona’s diverse geography, animals, plants, and especially people—from […]

This presentation covers humankind’s water use and food supply interactions with Arizona’s ecology from Clovis culture hunter-gatherers to prehistoric irrigation canals, contemporary Hopi and Tohono O’odham dry farming, and present-day American farmers. We will examine how overhunting and climate change affected the wooly mammoth populations and the agriculture experiments that followed. From early attempts to […]

There’s nothing like standing under a dark, star-spangled night sky to quiet the mind and reduce stress, share an experience of awe with family and friends, and to inspire creative thoughts. Yet such dark skies are a disappearing resource, with only 20% of the world living in a place where the center of our Milky […]

For many of us, the American Southwest is distinctive because of its landscape, culture, and history. We see, for instance, its mountains, deserts, and canyons. We are aware of its diverse cultures. And we have some understanding of the Indigenous, Mexican, and U.S. histories that have brought us to the present moment. But a careful […]

Farming has always been the way of life for the Tohono O’odham community in San Xavier, located just south of Tucson. Their way of life depended on access to the land and to the water, namely the Santa Cruz River, which nourished agriculture in the area for generations. But a history of division sown through […]