I'itoi's Forgotten Children

“In I’itoi’s Forgotten Children, David Martínez exposes the hidden history of a fascinating Indigenous cultural group who have persisted through three hundred years of colonization and retained their sense of their distinctiveness as a people.”—Jared Orsi, author of Peoples of a Sonoran Desert Oasis: Recovering the Lost History and Culture of Quitobaquito

Alternately called Sand Papagos and Areneños, the Hia-ced O’odham (people of the sand dunes) have endured Spanish, Mexican, and American colonization. In 1851 they suffered a yellow fever epidemic, after which they were presumed extinct. But what happens when a people, a nation, refuses to accept the claim that they are “extinct”? As long as they remember their name for themselves, their origin narrative, who their relatives are, and where their ancestral lands lay, then they will persevere as a people. As they endure, one of their descendants may live to write their story.

I’itoi’s Forgotten Children is that story for the Hia-ced O’odham.

Too often overlooked in the annals of Spanish and Mexican colonial histories, such as that of Padre Eusebio Kino, not to mention utterly ignored by the Americans when they established their reservation system, the Hia-ced O’odham have long awaited the writing of their history. I’itoi’s Forgotten Children portrays the resilient hemajkam (nation) that exists today. Based on O’odham oral tradition, including ooshikbina (calendar sticks), this book reasserts Hia-ced O’odham as a unique part of O’odham and Southwest history.