E-Books →Where the Red–Winged Blackbirds Sing The Akimel O'odham and Cycles of Agricultural Transformation in the Phoenix Basin

Author Jennifer Bess examines the Akimel O'odham's worldview, which links their origins with a responsibility to farm the Gila River Valley and to honor their history of adaptation and obligations as "world-builders"-co-creators of an evermore life-sustaining environment and participants in flexible networks of economic exchange. Bess considers this worldview in context of the Huhugam-Akimel O'odham agricultural economy over more than a thousand years. Drawing directly on Akimel O'odham traditional ecological knowledge, innovations, and interpretive strategies in archives and interviews, Bess shows how the Akimel O'odham engaged in agricultural economy for the sake of their lifeways, collective identity, enduring future, and actualization of the values modeled in their sacred stories.
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