Arizona Is Everywhere

When I first learned that ATHE would be here in Arizona I felt my heart rise, then plummet, then rise again. Rising: My favorite people in the world, coming to be here with us, after so many years of political struggle! Plummeting: Oh, Lord, what they must think of us, given how all our dirty laundry has been hung on the clotheslines of media and social networks. Rising: I know we are more, much more than what you may have heard, and this is a chance to share some of that. You are here, and that is the important thing. You are the smartest, most creative people I know. We are so grateful you have joined the smart and creative people who live here to dream together these next few days. I know that it perhaps was not the easiest choice for many of you to make, and I want to start by thanking you for making it. And I hope that when you leave us, your time here in this complicated place will enrich your work at home in ways that only Arizona could have given you.

What does it mean for ATHE to dream together in this place, at this time? Here, in Scottsdale, originally home to the Hohokam people, who lived here from more than 2,000 years ago up until about 1450. It is likely that they traveled here to southern Arizona from what is now Mexico, and maintained ties to their original homeland. Many contemporary Pima, Tohon Chul, and Tohono Oodam peoples, three of some twenty Arizona tribes, consider the Hohokam to be their ancestors. So when we hold an event in this space that was theirs, it is appropriate to acknowledge their contributions to our future. To give just one example: without their irrigation canals, which are the basis of the ones we still use, it is unlikely that Tempe or Phoenix or Scottsdale or Mesa would ever have been settled by anyone else. And it is useful to recall that, when this land was first occupied, the notion of geopolitical borders as we understand them today simply did not exist. Thus, Native communities to the south are divided by what to them is an artificial border; some are activist in denying its existence or calling for its transcendence; others defend it against crossers for a variety of reasons—some ecological, some territorial, some idiosyncratic. There is no unified Indigenous front here, but there is, as Patricia Ybarra will point out later in this issue, a chance to learn from perspectives that do not often receive national media attention.

We also acknowledge the ongoing and deep ties to Mexico that this growing urban area continues to have. After the big land-grab that resulted in this area becoming US territory, about half of the residents of this area were Hispanic families. During the Mexican Revolution, they identified themselves as Latin or Spanish Americans, to distinguish themselves from the new immigrants, because even though they had been here for generations, by now they faced significant discrimination from the Anglo settlers seeking their fortunes on Hohokam land.

And yet, the Latino presence remains strong here: when, during the second half of the last decade, law after law after law was passed restricting access to higher education, Latina/o youth—documented and undocumented alike—were at the forefront of the public critique against it, putting their bodies on the line in street protests and theatre performances on the lawn of the capitol—in one case, literally chaining themselves to the steps of that capitol in support of the DREAM Act. We have one such DREAM activist with us today, Dulce Juarez.

More recently, with the passage of Arizona law HB 2281, we have been made newly aware of the importance of public schools in creating an “imagined community” of Americans. A hundred years ago in Tempe, where I work, half of its young people could not attend public school with the other half. Today in Tucson, history seems to be repeating itself, as many young people are prohibited from learning their own history in their own public schools...