During WWII a select group of young Navajo men enlisted in the Marines with a unique weapon. Using the Navajo language, they devised a secret code that the enemy never deciphered. For over 40 years a cloak of secrecy hung over the Code Talker’s service until the code was declassified and they were finally honored […]
Archaeology Café – Phoenix Underground. Knowledge seekers of every kind are welcome at Archaeology Café, where experts share their latest research on Phoenix’s deep and diverse history in a jargon-free zone. Former City Archaeologist Todd Bostwick kicks off the series with an exploration of Archaeology Under the Freeways. Learn more about what was found under the […]
For centuries, Hopi men grew cotton and wove the fibers into blankets and clothing. In the 1880s, with the arrival of Anglo missionaries and government officials, quilting was introduced to the Hopi people and it quickly became integrated into Hopi culture and ceremony with quilts being used in every Hopi household. Hopis today are 4th […]
For a state that has been home to Geronimo, Wyatt Earp, César Chavez and Wonder Women, you would think Arizona earned some respect. Yet achieving statehood was a 50-year struggle, which finally ended on February 14, 1912. Jana borrows from both her work for True West Magazine and her work for Phoenix Magazine to put […]
Weaponized Narrative: Information Warfare as the New Battlespace Dr. Braden Allenby, Arizona State University, President’s Professor of Civil, Environmental, and Sustainable Engineering, and Lincoln Professor of Engineering and Ethics Weaponized narrative is the latest term for information warfare, focusing specifically on the role of new media in shaping opinion. Weaponized narratives attack the shared beliefs and […]
Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid and John Wayne: what do these famous characters have in common? They are not who we think they are because of the legends that have grown up around them. From the 1860’s dime novels to the books, movies, and television shows, writers have altered, exaggerated and sometimes lied about these […]
In 1989, Alan Day lobbied the United States Congress and was granted approval to create our country’s first government-sponsored wild horse sanctuary on his South Dakota ranch. At the time, the government housed roughly 2,000 horses in feedlots. Fifteen hundred of those wild mustangs came to live at Mustang Meadows Ranch where, for four years, […]
Throughout history, the ability of a people to survive and thrive has been tied to environmental conditions. The skill to predict the climatic change of the seasons was an essential element in the ability to “control” those conditions. Seasonal calendars thus became the foundation of early cultures: hunting and gathering, planting and harvesting, worshiping and […]
For decades, thousands of Navajos worked the railroads maintaining the trans-continental network. Metal Road enters the world of Navajo families amid the history of railroad work through the lens of one workday on the 9001 Heavy Steel Gang.The Metal Road documentary project was supported by several Project Grant awards. Filmmaker and Director Sarah del Seronde shared, “I wanted to […]
Although history tries to tell us ONLY men settled the Old West, that is shattered by Jana’s verbal tour through some of the amazing women who made all the difference. Any woman who came West in the 1800s had to be full of grit and spit to survive and Jana has collected the stories of […]