Peoples of a Sonoran Desert Oasis - (Public Lands History) by Jared Orsi

About the Book

"Tells the human history Quitobaquito, the second-largest oasis in the Sonoran Desert, which lies in the southwestern part of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, close to the US-Mexico border. Remnants of landscapes ancient and recent testify to Quitobaquito's once thriving communities, the expulsion of O'odham people, the erasure of their pasts, the remembering of their stories, and the role of the National Park Service in all of this"--

Book Synopsis

In the southwestern corner of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, on the border between Arizona and Mexico, one finds Quitobaquito, the second-largest oasis in the Sonoran Desert. There, with some effort, one might also find remnants of once-thriving O'odham communities and their predecessors with roots reaching back at least 12,000 years--along with evidence of their expulsion, the erasure of their past, attempts to recover that history, and the role of the National Park Service (NPS) at every layer.

The outlines of the lost landscapes of Quitobaquito--now further threatened by the looming border wall--reemerge in Peoples of a Sonoran Desert Oasis as Jared Orsi tells the story of the land, its inhabitants ancient and recent, and the efforts of the NPS to "reclaim" Quitobaquito's pristine natural form and to reverse the damage done to the O'odham community and culture, first by colonial incursions and then by proponents of "preservation."

Quitobaquito is ecologically and culturally rich, and this book summons both the natural and human history of this unique place to describe how people have made use of the land for some five hundred generations, subject to the shifting forces of subsistence and commerce, tradition and progress, cultural and biological preservation. Throughout, Orsi details the processes by which the NPS obliterated those cultural landscapes and then subsequently, as America began to reckon with its colonial legacy, worked with O'odham peoples to restore their rightful heritage.

Tracing the building and erasing of past landscapes to make some of them more visible in the present, Peoples of a Sonoran Desert Oasis reveals how colonial legacies became embedded in national parks--and points to the possibility that such legacies might be undone and those lost landscapes remade.

Review Quotes

"Peoples of a Sonoran Desert Oasis gets to the heart of one of the great debates in the history of conservation: whether there are any true 'wildernesses'--pristine natural areas untouched by human hands--and, when we set aside protected areas like national parks, whether we should remove evidence of human occupation. The author does a marvelous job weaving O'odham oral traditions and histories into this historical account of Quitobaquito."--Thomas E. Sheridan, author of Arizona: A History

"Peoples of a Sonoran Desert Oasis provides a trenchant analysis of how cultural heritage, modern management policies challenging that heritage, and local to international forces combined to shape a small, contested desert oasis. Quitobaquito is a tiny and unfamiliar space with lessons for the world."--Lary M. Dilsaver, author of Preserving the Desert: A History of Joshua Tree National Park

"With engaging prose, Jared Orsi excavates the layers of Indigenous history that underlie this seemingly 'untouched' nature reserve, details the environmental and cultural devastation of an increasingly hardened border, challenges the National Park Service--and us--to reckon with its colonial past, and points the way toward reconciliation with the O'odham peoples. The result is a fascinating study of a little-known place in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands."--Marsha Weisiger, author of Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country