Book-Signing and Talk with Authors Henry Haven, Dale Nations, PhD and, Max Goldtooth, Sr.

Saturday, November 23, 2024

11 am – 12 pm

Join us for a book signing with authors Heny Haven and Dale Nations, PhD & Max Goldtooth, Sr., who will be signing their book “Navajo Traditional Stories and the Science of Geology” by Dale Nations, Henry Haven & Max Goldsmith, Sr.

Geologist Henry Haven (Dine’) will also give a talk.

The three authors of this book vary greatly in backgrounds and experience but share in the love of the land and a desire to impart their knowledge of it. Comparisons are made of the rock record of geologic events known to geologists, to the legends in stories known to traditional Navajos. Ages and environments of deposition of stratigraphic units progress from the two billion-year-old rocks that are exposed in the Inner Gorge of the Grand Canyon to succeeding rock units known to exist on and under the lands of Dine ‘Bikeyah across the Colorado Plateau that were formed a few million years ago or less. Geologists use observed fossil records and other geologic events to establish a Universal Geologic Time Scale that consists of four Eras of geologic time: the Precambrian, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic eras. Navajo medicine men tell stories of their vision of the First Dark World, the Second Blue World, the Yellow Third World, and the Fourth White World. The stories show a major cycle of life beginning and extinction of variety of different species in the four worlds as does the geologic history in the four geologic eras.

*This event is included with Museum admission

Walking to Magdalena: Personhood and Place in Tohono O’odham Songs, Sticks, and Stories

 

Please Join Us:  Saturday, April 22, 2023, 1:00-4:00 pm

For a Book signing with Author Seth Schermerhorn

Walking to Magdalena: Personhood and Place in Tohono O’odham Songs, Sticks, and Stories

In Walking to Magdalena, Seth Schermerhorn examines the annual pilgrimage of the Tohono O’odham to Magdalena in Sonora, Mexico, exploring how these indigenous people of southern Arizona have made Christianity their own.

With scholarly rigor and passionate empathy, Schermerhorn offers a deep understanding of Tohono O’odham Christian traditions as practiced in everyday life and in the words of the O’odham themselves. The author’s rich ethnographic description and analyses are also drawn from his experiences accompanying a group of O’odham walkers on their pilgrimage to Saint Francis in Magdalena.

Walking to Magdalena offers insight into religious life and expressive culture, relying on extensive field study, videotaped and transcribed oral histories of the O’odham, and archival research. The book illuminates indigenous theories of personhood and place in the everyday life, narratives, songs, and material culture of the Tohono O’odham.

Seth Schermerhorn is Associate Professor of American Studies at Hamilton College. He specializes in the interdisciplinary study of indigenous traditions, particularly in the southwestern United States. Although Schermerhorn has worked with several indigenous nations, he works most extensively with the Tohono O’odham Nation in southern Arizona. His first book, Walking to Magdalena: Personhood and Place in Tohono O’odham Songs, Sticks, and Stories, was co-published by the University of Nebraska Press and the American Philosophical Society in 2019. Walking to Magdalena was selected for an “Author Meets Critics” panel at the American Academy of Religion, and the book has received glowing reviews from more than a dozen academic journals across the fields of anthropology, history, religious studies, and Native American and Indigenous studies. He is the Founding Editor of Indigenous Religious Traditions, a new interdisciplinary, international peer-reviewed academic journal. He is also the Chair of the Board of Directors for the Edward H. & Rosamond B. Spicer Foundation.