The Sonoran Desert, situated at the bottom edge of Arizona, stretches out into the haze of a horizon, rippled with heat. It’s fed by thin tributaries of the river and, more often, watered by sparse rains. It’s a place that, in theory, could seem pretty inhospitable. But the Tohono O’odham nation has survived and thrived there, thanks in part to traditional agricultural practices that are more relevant than ever as a drought looms ahead. Tohono O’odham poet Ofelia Zepeda reads “Pulling Down the Clouds.” Her poem describes the treasured practice of Saguaro harvesting. It’s a practice Maria Francisco’s family has been taking part in for generations. Maria explains how the harvest is a celebration of rain. But now, climate change has caused the rains and monsoon seasons to shift, so the harvests are shifting too. Amy Juan is the manager of San Xavier Co-op Farm, an operation meant to revitalize traditional agricultural practices. They’re healing the ties to the past that have been severed by colonial practices, and mending the paths towards the future as the climate inevitably changes.
The Sonoran Desert, situated at the bottom edge of Arizona, stretches out into the haze of a horizon, rippled with heat. It’s fed by thin tributaries of the river and, more often, watered by sparse rains. It’s a place that, in theory, could seem pretty inhospitable. But the Tohono O’odham nation has survived and thrived there, thanks in part to traditional agricultural practices that are more relevant than ever as a drought looms ahead.
Tohono O’odham poet Ofelia Zepeda reads “Pulling Down the Clouds.” Her poem describes the treasured practice of Saguaro harvesting. It’s a practice Maria Francisco’s family has been taking part in for generations. Maria explains how the harvest is a celebration of rain. But now, climate change has caused the rains and monsoon seasons to shift, so the harvests are shifting too. Amy Juan is the manager of San Xavier Co-op Farm, an operation meant to revitalize traditional agricultural practices. They’re healing the ties to the past that have been severed by colonial practices, and mending the paths towards the future as the climate inevitably changes.
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Episode 5: The Rainwater
OFELIA ZEPEDA:
“Pulling Down the Clouds”
Ñ-ku’ibadkaj ’ant ’an old g cewagi.
With my harvesting stick I will hook the clouds.
’Ant o ’i-waññ’io k o ‘i-hudiñ g cewagi.
With my harvesting stick I will pull down the clouds.
Ñ-ku’ibadkaj ’ant o ’i-siho g cewagi.
With my harvesting stick I will stir the clouds.
With dreams of distant noise disturbing his sleep,
the smell of dirt, wet, for the first time in what seems like months.
The change in the molecules is sudden,
they enter the nasal cavity.
He contemplates that smell.
What is that smell?
It is rain.
Rain somewhere out in the desert.
Comforted in this knowledge he turns over
and continues his sleep,
dreams of women with harvesting sticks
raised toward the sky.
LEAH THOMAS:
It doesn’t take long, driving south out of cities like Phoenix or Tucson, to realize you’ve stepped foot into something so much larger than you can fathom. The Sonoran Desert stretches out into the haze of a horizon rippled with heat. It might swallow you whole, if you’re not careful.
While the Salton Sea was the result of continued attempts to control the Colorado River’s flow, that sort of manufacturing is nearly impossible out here. The Sonoran desert is fed by thin tributaries of the river and, more often, watered by sparse—and increasingly erratic—rains.
Towering overhead, arms outstretched, statuesque cacti dot the landscape. They often huddle in families of three or four. They might grow for nearly a century before they develop their first signature “arm.” Or before they grow their first season of ruby red fruits, perched on tops of their heads. An icon of the American Southwest: the saguaro.
The poem you heard at the top of the show was called “Pulling Down the Clouds” by Tohono O’odham poet Ofelia Zepeda. Her poem describes the treasured practice of saguaro harvesting. A practice that’s remained intimately connected with the O’odham for generations.
MARIA FRANCISCO:
Hello, my name's Maria Francisco. I am a member of the Tohono O’odham Tribe. I come from the village of Cofield in the Barbecue re district, and I have lived here in Tucson, um, most of my life.
The saguaro, which is also known as the Hashun in our language, they're in a lot of our traditional stories. We consider them like family. They're part of our culture. We have great respect for them. Uh, we talk to them, we appreciate them, you know, we, we especially, um, honor them to, for giving us this fruit that we're able to harvest. And long ago, that's what our ancestors, you know, that's what they lived off.
LEAH:
Maria’s been harvesting since she was a child. She was taught by her Aunt Shelley on O’odham land that is now considered part of Saguaro National Park.
For generations, Maria’s family has led a harvest. For about three weeks at the end of May, the red buds on the tips of the saguaros open. Often more than 40 feet off the ground. Maria and her cousins wind their way through the saguaros with a long pole in tow, constructed from saguaro ribs and creosote wood. They nudge the fruit—or bahidaj—off the plant, and collect it in buckets.
MARIA:
So you take the knife and you, and you open it up, and then when you open it up, the, the fruit is like real red with a bunch of, bunch of seeds. It's real sweet.
LEAH:
Like all agricultural pursuits in the desert, this traditional harvest is oriented around rainfall.
MARIA:
When you do your first harvest, you make sure you bless yourself. And we give thanks, um, for the harvest season. So when we usually do our first picking, our first, um, bahidaj, uh, we open it up, we take a piece of it and we usually, um, place some on our heart and place some on our forehead, and we each kind of say a little prayer, thanking, um, for the, for the harvest, for the, the saguaro for the season. And then we usually just kind of put it, put the pods, um, face up, and then just giving, um, thanks. I also, it, um, brings the rain and, you know, we live in the desert. We, we want it to rain, so, we uh pray for rain as well.
LEAH:
Maria explained that the saguaro harvest marks the New Year for the Tribe. The season’s fruit is processed into syrup and jam for the year ahead. A portion of that syrup becomes wine used for a rain ceremony later in the summer.
The harvest itself is a celebration of rain. But it’s also dictated by the rain. After the first monsoon, any remaining fruit on the cactus ferments, bringing the harvest to an abrupt end. With climate change, the rains and monsoon seasons have shifted. The harvests Maria grew up expecting in May have shifted to mid-June. The saguaros are changing, too. Some have started sprouting fruits on their sides, rather than their crown.
A lot of people are ringing the alarm after seeing these changes. But Maria, who's grown up alongside these saguaros, sees a different future—one where these stalwarts of the desert win out against unknowns of climate change.
MARIA:
Saguaros they, they're very resilient. They, they live for a long time, so some of those Saguaros that have been there, have been there before I was even born. Majority of them will still be there after I'm gone, so, you know, they’re and they never really change. We always see new ones. Even though the Saguaros, um, can survive on little water, it doesn't mean that they don't need the water. You know, a-a lot of people will see, oh, cacti, you know, they can survive without any water. But they do need that. Even if it's not a whole lot, they do need that for survival.
LEAH:
These desert plants thrive in a climate usually so harsh to those who wander into it: storing water season to season, rationing a scarce resource until the monsoons return. They understand the climate and its cycles—even as centuries-old patterns begin to shift in the face of the drought.
I’m Leah Thomas. I’m the founder of Intersectional Environmentalist, an organization dedicated to amplifying the voices of communities of color fighting against environmental injustice. From Wonder Media Network, this is As She Rises. For our third season, we’re traveling down the Colorado River, listening to stories of resilience.
Today, we’re in southern Arizona, near the US-Mexico border, on Tohono O’odham lands.
Where many communities have been surprised by the drought, here, in the Sonoran Desert, it’s been dry. When water has always been a scarcity, drought isn’t so much of change. If anything, it actually strengthens ancient ties to traditional water practices. Practices that have sustained a desert community through centuries—and have proven time and time again to yield crops where Western, colonial views fail in the face of climate change.
Like Maria, today we’re talking to a farmer who has been a life-long student of traditional food practices.
AMY JUAN:
Good morning, good day. My name is Amy Juan and I come from the Tohono O’odham nation. I come from the, uh, Buzzard clan, and my O’odham name is also Uhk, which means Milky Way Light.
LEAH:
Amy Juan grew up in the easternmost district of the O’odham nation, in a mountain village. She remembers looking down over the desert from above, watching storms as they swept across the cracked earth below. Most of her family lived at lower elevations, down in floodplain villages, where monsoons soaked the land, and rainwater collected in washes. Her paternal grandmother lived in one of those villages. Growing up, when Amy saw rain, she thought of her.
AMY:
She always liked to collect rainwater. My grandma would put out a tub or, or, you know, bowls or a bucket or something out when it would rain, and she would collect that rainwater to wash our hair. My grandma would say that rainwater would keep our, our hair healthy and soft. I knew when it rained that my grandma was going to be collecting water and washing our hair, you know, to take care of us in that way.
LEAH:
Amy’s connection to food and the land she now harvests today came from the diligent teachings of her other grandmother, Grandma Mary.
AMY:
She was really, um, strict. She was strict on her instruction on how to take care of people so, you know, when someone comes to your house, you know, make sure you offer them water and food and what have you. As we were in her kitchen, as we were cooking, she was instructing, but it, she was also supervising, uh, over our shoulders, you know, making sure we were doing things right. And that was also her thing was, do it right the first time. It's not just food. There's also the culture that comes with it and the teachings that come with it.
LEAH:
Amy’s Grandma Mary was a traditional medicine person in their community. Which meant the house was often filled with gifts visitors brought as payment: burlap sacks filled with corn, jars of deep, red saguaro fruit jam… One of the most common gifts she’d receive were tepary beans.
AMY:
So a tepary bean is probably the most beautiful, smallest, humblest delicious bean that you will eat. Tepary beans became like, uh, a passion of mine because my O’odham name is, um, is Milky Way light, and tepary beans are in our stories. We relate them to the Milky Way. We relate them to the stars. I had like this, my own, you know, relationship with them, and they hold a special place in my heart.
When people see them, I think they don't get excited. They don't get excited, especially if they don't know too much about them. Um, so I, I like to think that that also is a characteristic of us, you know, O’odham. Not, not too many people know about, um, Tohono O’odham. And we joke around about, um, you know, us as O’odham or desert people, that we are pretty much left alone throughout our history because nobody wanted to, you know, come conquer the desert. You know, it's a harsh life. It's a resilient, you know, tough life. Um, but I think, again, that relates to us in our, our relationship with, with our tepary beans.
LEAH:
The tiny tepary bean, in many ways, has a history similar to the O’odham people. It’s an ancient seed, drought-resistant, and it can withstand a whole lot of sunlight. It’s also a case study in the ways traditional foods and farming have been changing in the Sonoran desert.
We’ll hear more after a quick break from our sponsor.
[MIDROLL]
LEAH:
Just off the I-10 freeway heading south toward the border is a thousand-acre farm. Fields of alfalfa, oat, and wheat spread across the landscape. A staff of thirty farmers, the majority Tohono O’odham, bustle between stalks of golden corn and sunflower. The meandering Santa Cruz River, or Baby River in O’odham, winds its way around the back of a small orchard. It boasts ripe peaches, apricots, plums, and apples. In the distance, mountains rise up, enormous, over the back of an old-school, white stucco mission—like a crown settling over the crops.
This is San Xavier Co-op Farm. It lays on low ground, one of the floodplains Amy used to watch overflow with rainwater. The land where the O’odham have always grown food. And in many ways, the farm still grows the same type of food, in the same way it’s been grown for thousands of years.
The San Xavier Co-op goes by the motto, “Strengthening our Roots, Planting our Traditions.” It practices a commitment to healthy farming practices, and growing traditional crops to support both cultural and environmental development. The farm is thriving. But it wasn’t always like this.
Historically, the Tohono O’odham were communal farmers tending to large areas of land as a collective. In 1887, President Grover Cleveland passed the Dawes Act, which allowed the federal government to break up tribal lands.
AMY:
Basically what that did was, was to, um, take what was already communal land and community, and say, okay, as a, as by, by a way of assimilation, we're going to give you a plot of land. And so that, again, was a needs of like colonization and assimilation. Um, you know, let's give you a job, let's give you a role, let's give you your own piece of land, which, you know, sounds nice to some people. But again, we already had a community here who was sharing the resources, sharing work, sharing food, you know, livelihood as a community. So to have the Dawes Allotment Act come in and, and fragment and individualize land, um, was definitely a shift in how our community functioned.
LEAH:
That communal structure, and most O’odham traditional ways, were disrupted for close to a century. For instance, in the early 1900s, O’odham communities were growing about a million pounds of tepary beans a year. By the early 2000s, that number had shrunk to just a couple hundred. But in 1979, Tohono O’odham landowners renewed their commitment to collective farming. They combined their allotments and created a new entity: the San Xavier Co-operative.
AMY:
I think it was like a great act of resistance. It was a great act of, of love and a great act of, of acting out of our own values, um, for the landowners to say, Hey, you know, this isn't working for us, you know, to, to operate individually. And now we, now we're here, um, with the San Xavier Cooperative Farm. So it definitely has its roots in O’odham values, definitely has its roots in family. Um, that's what this, this farm was based off of, and now into 2023, it's a full-fledged business. And we, as the staff and myself, um, as an O’odham, have taken on this responsibility to be caretakers of this, this land and make sure that it continues.
LEAH:
At every turn, the work of the San Xavier Co-op is led by its community for its community. The descendants of those original 1979 landowners today make up the Co-op’s Farm Board. Most of the people on staff are the children of people who sowed the first generation of seeds they’re caring for now.
The farm supports the Tohono O’odham nation, and southern Arizona more broadly, with countless programs, like packing up traditional foods for elders and giving people starter gardens to cultivate in their own backyards.
The co-op is also making sure this knowledge is passed down to the next generation. Amy leads youth programming to reintroduce traditional agriculture practices to young kids on the O’odham Nation. The farm has classes on medicinal plants. It sets up school gardens with ancient seeds, and provides food from the Co-op for school cafeterias. They’re even creating new recipes with ancient foods to basically make them cool again.
The farm itself is open to the public. Amy says they get visitors from all over the world coming in just to see how the co-op functions.
AMY:
They're looking to places like the San Xavier Co-op Farm to, as an example of how an indigenous community has created an, an enterprise or, or a business that is based, out of our, our teachings, our culture. But doing it in a way that keeps the integrity of who we are. We wanna make sure that, uh, our people have access to these foods to maintain our health, you know, and the health of future generations. Especially elders, because, you know, a lot of these foods are a part of their diet. It's part of their, you know, their memory and their, um, their connections too, you know, the past and what have you. So there's also the responsibilities, you know, past, present, and future of, um, maintaining a good stewardship of, of the land here.
LEAH:
The San Xavier Co-op also deploys traditional O’odham farming practices to grow their crops. As is the case across the Southwest, a lot of their focus is on irrigation.
AMY:
We are, uh, natural engineers of water. So before irrigated water or irrigation systems, O’odham have utilized, uh, rainwater. So we're rainwater harvesters. We're learning how to observe and harvest water during the monsoons and other different parts of the year. Learning how to read and navigate the land, um, the mountains, where the water flows, how it flows. I think when people think about, um, rainwater harvesting or, or engineering water, that you kind of, people kind of assume that you are controlling water. And I think the biggest lesson there is that we're not trying to control water. You know, I think that's a big, um, difference between like western and Indigenous or O’odham views of, of how we're using our resources is that we're not trying to control anything. We're working with the elements. And so when we talk about engineering water, we're studying how it flows and learning how we're going to catch some of that water, that- and, and just enough water for us to use, and what we need, uh, for our capacity to grow and then let that water continue on its natural flow to where it needs to go.
LEAH:
Yes, there’s not much water in the desert. But the water that does reach the San Xavier Co-op comes from many places: from the rain, from streams up in the mountains. The farm also uses traditional practices like rainwater harvesting and floodplain irrigation.
And, like many, many farms in the area, it uses CAP water.
A quick rewind here. Centuries of overuse by white settlers dried up the Santa Cruz, the river that runs along the farm. Around the time the initial O’odham landowners incorporated the San Xavier Co-op, they also sued the state of Arizona for rights to water to actually irrigate the area. They won, and the water allotted to them came from something called CAP or, the Central Arizona Project.
In the early 20th century, southern Arizona was growing—fast. Cities were springing up in the middle of the desert, so state leaders went looking for a solution and found it in the Colorado River… more than 300 miles north of Phoenix. In the 1970s, the Central Arizona Project was born. A 336-mile water system that brings water from the Colorado down to southern Arizona.
A water system which—like so many other sources along the Basin—is quickly drying up.
Cuts happen pretty much every season to CAP recipients. The unavoidable future here is that the rapidly depleting Colorado River cannot provide enough water to meet these promised allotments. And when CAP water eventually dries up, communities like Amy’s will have to change the way that they work. Fortunately, the Tohono O’odham already know how to navigate a world without water.
AMY:
We're planning for a future without water, and what does that look like? It looks like a return to our original practices of rainwater harvesting. When it rains, um, we're using that rainwater to our best advantage. So the way that our fields are laid out, um, are meant to, you know, saturate as much of the rainwater as we can. So that saves us a lot, especially in the summertime, um, when we have the monsoon rains come. When it comes to our seeds, um, we think about our seeds as our, our, our children, our babies. And so when we think about the best way to, to start growing our seeds, it's with rainwater, because we also look at the rainwater as breast milk. It's the best type of water for these seeds to start on with, um, you know, these natural nutrients and what have you. Wherever the water's coming from, you know, it's gonna bring, uh, leaves, it's gonna bring different nutrients from the different places that it travels to, and it's gonna settle in these, in these fields. So that's also our natural way of fertilizing the land.
LEAH:
Climate change is adding extra pain to the already challenging task of farming in the desert. Amy’s seen its effects firsthand. First, missing flowers, insects… things you don’t always notice until they’re gone. Then, the plants suffered. Water ran low. The heat in the summers of 2019 and 2020 were nearly unbearable.
Often, when we’re talking about drought and food scarcity, we focus a lot on the crops. The crops will wither. The food will run out. The ecosystem will fail. And the funny thing about talking to someone who farms in the desert is the seeds are the last thing they’re worried about. Amy’s pretty confident that one way or another, the seeds out there in the sun will take care of themselves, as they’ve done for thousands of years. And what we really should do is try and learn from them. Because what really falls to us, as people, is to take care of each other.
AMY:
And even though there might have been some loss of food, I think the, the pro, um, about it is that whatever seed survived, those hottest summers are very, very resilient seed. You know, the seeds, they're, they're out there. They're taking care of themselves. But, something added to that is really making sure we're taking care of ourselves um, as, as humans, you know, out there doing this work, um, making sure that everyone's hydrated, that everyone's healthy, um, that everyone is also just, you know, as resilient as those seeds.
You know, we're all facing the same future, so how are we, how are we gonna help each other? Is the big question. It's always important for me to remind people of that. Sometimes our instincts cause us to act out of fear. When we're acting out of panic, um, it can be harmful. Historically, our culture, our community, um, was always acting out of love and sharing, and that's more beneficial than acting out of fear.
LEAH:
Love and sharing are two values we don’t always see reflected in the way community responds to a crisis. Certainly not in the face of climate change. Often, even if we’re not hoarding resources, or battling it out over the fine print of policy language, we’re falling short of what actually needs to be done.
That tension is something Amy’s seen a lot of. She travels to her fair share of climate gatherings, where communities, countries, and organizations get together to try and plan for a changing world.
This past November, Amy attended the UN Climate Change Convention, COP-27, in Egypt. She went as a representative of Indigenous farmworkers, to talk about climate adversity, food, seeds, and, of course, tepary beans. When Amy finished her talk, the next presenter went up. A man from Namibia.
AMY:
And when it's his turn, the first thing he does is he turns to me and he says, “I really want to thank your people for your seeds.” He said in 2004, there was a Navajo friend, um, who brought them some tepary beans and told them where they came from, and told them that they grow very well in the heat, and very little water. And he just said that, um, since they received the seed, that this beautiful little bean has helped their community survive.
I'm sitting there listening to him and I'm crying because this is, you know, I didn't expect to hear this, uh, in Egypt. You know, we're at a big, big political convention, in front of hundreds of people, and we're talking about such a huge issue—climate change—and everyone's looking for solutions. But I was so thankful that we could show and share with people and remind people that sometimes the simplest act can have the most benefit. And the act of sharing, um, and sharing seed and sharing knowledge helped a community survive.
This is a humble little bean that has so much weight on it in terms of, um, of how it has helped, um, our community survive and other communities survive, and, um, I think that's what makes it so special. Again, it's a little unassuming bean with a lot of power.
LEAH:
In many ways, Amy’s work at the San Xavier Co-op is a success story. But that work isn’t easy. Desert life isn’t easy. It takes energy, time, generational knowledge. Each skill that Amy knows, brings to her own work, and passes on, is the work of a generation before her.
AMY:
In O’odham, there's a saying, we say [phrase in O’odham], you know, our culture is our strength. And I think that I'm an example of that, um, because of the work that I've done and have been able to do. It takes time, and it's really a commitment. It's a lifelong commitment. It's not just a job. It's our way of life. It's, it's our, it's our himdag. We do this for our future generations, you know, just as our ancestors did for us. You know, we're here because of them and we want to make sure that we're doing, um, as best as we can to also prepare for our future, you know, especially if it's gonna look a little harder in terms of being able to survive. And, um, I think, you know, what better way to do that than, than food? It requires you to be outside. It requires you to be observant, it requires you to be responsible, it requires you to be accountable. Um, and it requires you to continue these lessons, you know? Cause you can't keep it all to yourself ‘cause then the work stops. It has to be passed on.
LEAH:
That work, today, looks like revitalization. It also looks like innovation. Healing the ties to the past that have been severed by colonial practices. Mending the paths towards the future, so they can adapt, resist, grow as the world inevitably changes.
There’s not a lot of water in the desert. It’s a place that, in theory, could seem pretty inhospitable. But Maria, Amy, and the O’odham nation have survived and thrived because of the desert’s cycles.
When we spoke, Maria told us she found hope in the saguaros. That no matter how dry it gets, the saguaros will do what they need to do to produce fruit for the harvest—even if it means growing fruit on the side of their head. It’s a lesson we could stand to learn from: to live in accordance with the environment we’re handed. Instead of siphoning water hundreds of miles off a drying river, to live in the cycle the rains lay out before us. Instead of trying to change a river to fit our needs, to fit ourselves into its flow.
All season long, we’re traveling down the Colorado River and listening to stories of resilience. In our next, and final, episode, we finish our journey down the Colorado River Delta, where the river used to flow into the Gulf of Mexico.
You can support San Xavier Cooperative Farm at sanxaviercoop.org. That’s Xavier with an “X.” You can read more of Ofelia’s poetry in her book, “Ocean Power: Poems from the Desert” or “Earth Movements: O’odham Poems.”
Around the world, people like Amy are reconnecting with food, agriculture, and sustainable farming practices. If you want more of these inspiring climate stories, you can find them with the Imagine5 community. Sign up for their newsletter through the link in our show notes so you can get a regular dose of inspiration and bold ideas.
As She Rises is a Wonder Media Network Production. Our creator and editor is Grace Lynch. Our executive producer is Jenny Kaplan. Emily Rudder is our Head of Development. The show is produced by Carmen Borca-Carrillo, Ale Tejeda, Brittany Martinez, Adesuwa Agbonile, and Sara Schleede. Original music by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Jessica Jarvis.
Until next time.