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Contact: Dave Carney, 520-723-3172 x118
COOLIDGE, AZ – The Casa Grande Ruins Speaker Series takes place weekly through January 18, 2023. On December 14, 2022 Casa Grande Ruins will host Laura Tohe at 1:00 pm. Mrs. Tohe will present "More than Pocahontas and Squaws: Indigenous Women Coming into Visibility". The speaker series will continue every Wednesday at 1:00 pm through January 18.
Laura Tohe is Diné and the current Navajo Nation Poet Laureate. She is Sleepy Rock People clan and born for the Bitter Water People clan and the daughter of a Navajo Code Talker. She published 3 books of poetry, an anthology of Native women’s writing and an oral history on the Navajo Code Talkers. Her librettos, Enemy Slayer, A Navajo Oratorio (2008) and Nahasdzáán in the Glittering World (2021), performed in Arizona and France, respectively. Among her awards are the 2020 Academy of American Poetry Fellowship and the 2019 American Indian Festival of Writers Award. She is Professor Emerita with Distinction from ASU.
This visual presentation shows how Indigenous American women have contributed service to Arizona and the US yet were stereotyped in films and remain invisible in the media. Nevertheless, they have been honored in all areas of public service—law, medicine, literature, military and activism with awards such as, the Presidential Freedom, the McArthur (genius award), the Secretary of Interior, and others. Among some traditional tribal cultures, women’s lives are modeled after female heroes and sacred women who exemplify and express courage and kinship values. Rites of passage celebrate female creativity and the transformative nature of women, hence there was not a need for the concept of feminism. This talk presents cultural aspects of Indigenous culture and how women have contributed in significant ways, not only to their tribal nations, but to contemporary American life.
The Speaker Series is made possible by the Friends of Casa Grande Ruins National Monument (http://friendsofcasagranderuins.org/) with additional support from Arizona Humanities (https://azhumanities.org/). The program begins at 1:00 pm in the Casa Grande Ruins visitor center theater at 1100 W Ruins Drive, Coolidge AZ, 85128. There is no fee for the program, and entrance is free at Casa Grande Ruins National Monument.
Casa Grande Ruins National Monument protects the multi-story Great House (Casa Grande) and the remnants of other ancient structures built by the Ancestral Sonoran Desert People over 800 years ago. Established as the nation’s first federal historical reserve in 1892, the Ruins sparked the beginning of the archeological preservation movement in America. The monument is open daily from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm except for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Independence Day holidays. Directions and additional information are available on the Monument’s website, http://www.nps.gov/cagr. You may call (520) 723-3172, or follow us on Facebook by searching for Casa Grande Ruins National Monument.
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Last updated: November 30, 2022