AZ Speaks

Originally conceived to celebrate Arizona’s Centennial in 2012, “The Ballad of Arizona” has been updated to provide a more complete survey of important, but often little-known, chapters of Arizona’s unique history. A blend of music, video, and lecture, “The Ballad of Arizona” is similar to “A Prairie Home Companion” but with an Arizona twist. The […]

A 1960 episode of The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, the first Western television series, immortalized China Mary as a strong, powerful and ruthless Asian female figure in American popular imagination. The legend of her as an infamous Dragon Lady who ruled Tombstone’s Chinatown with an iron fist cannot be substantiated by historical research. […]

We’re talking about Arizona women who were (sometimes) well-behaved while blazing trails. We aren’t a state where fragile means feminine. Suffrage was a century ago, and even though Arizona women already had the right to vote, they helped their sisters in other states obtain it. This is a colorful collection of our first female politicians, […]

During WWII a group of young Navajo men enlisted in the Marines without knowing that they would be called on to develop a secret code against the Japanese military. This select group of Code Talkers devised a Navajo language code that was accurate, quick, never broken, and saved many American lives. This talk profiles 4 […]

The agave plant was used by Native peoples for numerous utilitarian items. Mescal served as a valuable food source still being harvested and prepared to this day by many Indigenous groups. For millennia people have pit roasted the heart of the plant yielding a nutritious food staple rich in calcium and zinc. This talk includes […]

During the night of Christmas Eve in 1944, twenty-five Nazi German prisoners of war escaped from Papago Park POW camp on the outskirts of Phoenix and headed towards Mexico. These men were hardcore Nazis, ex U-boat commanders, and submariners, who had successfully dug a nearly 200-foot underground tunnel that took four months to complete. Many […]

Based on over 30 years of facilitating groups in conflict nationally and internationally, Dr. Krondorfer will talk about the dynamics of such work and how to bring groups together: Germans and Jews; Palestinians and Israelis; Christians, Jews, and Muslims; ethnically diverse students; Bedouins and indigenous people. This presentation is about responsibility: What it takes to […]

Roden Crater is a cinder cone volcano near Flagstaff, Arizona where, for the past 40 years, artist James Turrell has been working on his magnum opus. Here he has built dramatic ‘sky spaces,’ rooms and tunnels with openings oriented toward celestial and atmospheric events. The place invites visitors to explore perception itself, and to question […]

Consider the taco, that favorite treat, a staple of Mexican and Mexican American cooking and an old standby on an Arizonan’s plate. The corn in the tortilla comes from Mexico, the cheese from the Sahara, the lettuce from Egypt, the onion from Syria, the tomatoes from South America, the chicken from Indochina, the beef from […]

Turquoise has a long standing tradition amongst Native cultures of the Southwest, holding special significance and profound meanings to specific individual tribes. Even before the more contemporary tradition of combining silver with turquoise, cultures throughout the southwest used turquoise in necklaces, earrings, mosaics, fetishes, medicine pouches, and made bracelets of basketry stems lacquered with piñon […]