“Listening to the Land: Sound Ecologies in O'odham Words, Stories, and Songs”
O'odham have been keen observers of life in the desert from time immemorial. Naturally, these observations engage all of the senses, accumulating knowledge about particular species and also relationships between them. This roundtable explores some aspects of O’odham Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) by considering some of the ways in which sound ecology is encoded in the onomatopoetic aspects of the O'odham language, stories about listening to voices in the land, and bird songs that map routes of travel and record history.
Ofelia Zepeda is a MacArthur Fellow and a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona. She is well-known scholarly for her work on the O'odham language in linguistics, her advocacy for indigenous language revitalization and maintenance, and her poetry in both English and O'odham.
David Martinez is Associate Professor of American Indian Studies at Arizona State University. He specializes in American Indian intellectual history, art and aesthetics, and folklore studies.
Simon Lopez is a cowboy, curer, and traditional singer.
Seth Schermerhorn is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Hamilton College. He specializes in the interdisciplinary study of the indigenous religious traditions of the southwest, particularly O'odham pilgrimages to Magdalena, Sonora.
