History Is in the Land: Multivocal Tribal Traditions in Arizona's San Pedro Valley (review)

The San Pedro Valley of southeastern Arizona has an eleven-thousand-year history of settlement. Hopis, Zunis, San Carlos Apaches, and the Tohono O'odham have histories that include the San Pedro Valley as part of their respective tribal histories, cultural evolution, and metamorphoses. The San Pedro Valley Ethnohistory Project set out to record indigenous-centered oralities and incorporate them with ethnohistorical and archaeological information. The multivocal nature of the indigenous past offers not only a critique of a tribal past but also an alternative perspective to a Western, social-scientific past that has often overlooked native voices and their levels of historical authoritativeness.

The cacophonous history and relationships between natives and social scientists has resulted in much effort to retain and maintain indigenous sensibilities when deciphering the past. NAGPRA legislation has done much to bring about tribal authoritativeness and this book seeks to avoid the colonial and imperialistic enterprises that plagued much of the research on Native Americans. Therefore, each tribe (Hopi, Zuni, San Carlos Apache, Tohono O'odham) was consulted in the project and offered information on the site, material artifacts, and past research, which effectually became the multivocal aspect of this project. Each tribe offered a reinterpretation of the materials and also provided keen insights into the historical, linguistic, cultural, and environmental contexts of the San Pedro Valley.

The author's theoretical orientation of this site is based on how different tribes used the environment in order to survive. Their research themes of migration, warfare, social identity, subsistence ecology, and population dynamics, and how each tribe interacted with these themes over time in the San Pedro Valley is the focus of the book. "Cultural Landscapes" is the conceptual framework that seeks to "understand how land is perceived by individuals given their particular values and beliefs" (6). Cultural landscapes are developed in relation to the environment, and the material past is a direct reflection of the relationship to the past, which includes aspects of time and space that are culturally dependent and independent of the environment. The project began in 1999 when the Center for Desert Archaeology in Tucson met with several tribes in order to gain their interest in the project.

Amid the voices of archaeologists, ethnohistorians, anthropologists, and tribal members, there exists an important point, which Leroy Lewis (Hopi) brings up. Since much of the division between the oral tradition and science is based on the scientifically observed and verifiable, Lewis notes that people who lived in these villages had their own names, "although today we no longer know those names. Even though the original names of the places we visited have been lost in time, the sites themselves remain salient to people who consider themselves to be descendents of the people who lived there" (121). These salient features are exactly what scientists seek to prove or disprove. This study places native reckonings of the past into a dialogue with scientists.

By examining artifacts, visiting sites, and recalling tribal history, the San Pedro Valley becomes a connection to tribal pasts for both tribal members and scientists. Native participants interrogate ceramics, architecture, petroglyphs, and other material artifacts about their significance within a contemporary and historic frame of reference. On numerous occasions, tribal members commented on the migratory themes associated with different clan symbols. Water, agriculture, and the physical environment represent the reasons tribes settled the valley. The indigenous voices offer interpretations and reinterpretations of what the San Pedro Valley had to offer those who lived there and, more importantly, how tribal pasts are connected to the present. Within this context, alternative historical texts are created that reflect a contemporary view of the past.

Though the book used indigenous expertise, much of the information is archaeologically oriented. Native voices revolve around a tribal history that is steeped in the symbols and concrete artifacts of the San Pedro Valley. The authors adhered to what tribes say about the research of...