Escapes WEEKENDER
a farm on the Tohono O’odham Nation, Adrienne and I meet with Duran Andrews, the farm manager. He shows us around the property (San Xavier o ff ers tours for visitors), pointing out all the parts of this large operation, including their focus on feed and traditional crops like 60-day corn and O’odham peas. For Andrews, Indigenous food sovereignty, especially that of the O’odham people, is why he does this work. “We—Native people—are the foundation of Tucson, of all Arizona,” he says. “A lot of the traditional seeds were provided by the community members when we established the farm,” Andrews continues. “These seeds are unique. They’re not something you can just buy. We have to understand how to grow [the crops] and meet the demands for sales, but also have enough seeds to preserve them for the future and for the community.” Andrews takes us to the store on the property, where Adrienne and I buy mesquite flour, honey, saguaro seeds, and dried cholla buds, which Andrews tells us are powerhouses of calcium. The night before we leave Tucson, Adrienne and I go to Café Santa Rosa, a dive bar and community hub owned by members of the Yaqui and Tohono O’odham communities. We share a red chili popover, nearly moaning over the flakiness of the frybread and the smooth, umami flavor of the red chili. After a long drive back to Phoenix, Adrienne and I say goodbye. She heads to the airport, while I go to my downtown hotel, Kimpton Hotel Palomar. Later, I meet Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz, a curandera (healer), author, and Indigenous food activist, at her home for co ff ee. She gives me some advice for my article: Rather than viewing everything I am seeing through the lens of the past, I must understand that this is Indigenous future and present, as well. “So often we’re treated as something only ancient and that makes it easier to ignore us,” she says. “But we are ancient and we are also here, now.” With Ruiz’s advice to look towards the future, I finally go to Ramona Farms in the Gila River Indian Community. I wait outside the farm o ffi ce until Ramona and Terry pull up in a big pick-up truck. Terry tells me how Indigenous elders taught him to hunt with a bow and arrow. He recalls all the things he used to catch with it: rabbit, quail, even bigger game like elk in South Dakota. We talk for hours, mostly about their beginnings. Ramona’s father was a seedsaver, a person who preserves vital heritage seeds for the community, as well as a farmer, tailor, and cobbler. He never spoke English, just Pima and O’odham.
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