(upbeat music) Tom - This week on Arizona Illustrated, a recap of Arizona Illustrated's 2023 Rocky Mountain Emmy nominated and winning stories.

From a moving portrait of a beloved Tucson character, Rio.

Rio - I learned what not to do is exactly what everybody needs to learn.

Tom - To learning chemistry from comic books.

Colleen - Chemistry is a language and I could hear them be very fluent.

And that's where I really realized the magic that was happening when I was getting fourth graders doing college level chemistry.

Tom - We take a trip to San Rafael Valley with architect Jesus Robles.

Jesus - I am immediately taken by the beauty and expanse of the grass flowing over the horizons.

This time and the place seem to merge under the sky into a familiar yet evolving frontier.

Tom - And an effort to protect Indigenous languages.

Ofelia - I have those books and why I couldn't read it.

I just assumed that I could read it because I can speak it.

- Hello and welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

Each year, regional chapters of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences recognizes and rewards excellent in their broadcast communities with Emmy Awards.

Now this year, Arizona Public Media received nominations for 15 different projects and this show won awards in three different categories.

First up, producer Cáit NíSíomón and photographer editor Nate Huffman were awarded Emmys in the category Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Short Form Content for their story, Rio.

(Rio) Real invisibility, the one that's so complicated and one that's, in my opinion, so tragic is not being understood.

I always think about it, maybe it's a compulsion of mine to be as vulnerable as I can so I can be seen.

I have spina bifida, which means that the nerve endings below my waist basically fell out of my body when I was born, so I can't feel anything below there.

In high school, I was like, I'm so tired of hating my body.

So I wrote down a list of all the things I hated about my body, and it was a long list, but I worked on each one every day.

You know, this is interesting the way it moves and the way it's shaped and everything like that.

Like.

That's.

That can be beautiful.

And once you do that, there's something that just kind of just.

Shoots out, it just shines.

I mean, anybody could do it.

That's the thing.

But we are kind of forced to work on that at an accelerated rate.

[upbeat music] The first movie I ever watched was The Jungle Book.

And Mowgli was so fascinating to me because he was raised by wolves.

He realizes that he can't exactly run or hunt exactly like these wolves.

He's shaped differently.

And I felt like that very heavily.

There's lots of can'ts out there For instance, I can't play guitar.

I tried.

That's fine.

I play keyboards instead.

Play harmonica instead.

Okay.

I really wanted to surf, so I invented a whole new way of surfing, which is tandem surfing.

I got a buddy in the back who helps me paddle out.

He pops up.

You find different ways to do different things.

And feel like existentialism plays a lot into this because I had 27 surgeries and came to the brink of death many times.

And having that mortality realism, you kind of understand certain fears in a different way.

You know, when I'm surfing, you can be flown off your board at any moment.

You know, you have a little more control instead of infection hitting you.

You just pass.

Mowgli goes to the village of the humans.

For me, that moment was my mom was like, You should really start engaging with your community of disabled people.

So I went to a camp with all people with spina bifida.

There was like a pop question.

If you could do anything you wanted without any limits, what would that be?

And at the time, I really wanted to like travel in India, you know, I wanted to go to the ruins.

I wanted to run through the jungle.

I wanted to I wanted to be Mowgli.

So at that time, I remember looking into the technology of robotics and prosthetics.

And I learned that day that that's a big no no in the disabled community, mainly because there's a long negativity to prosthetics going like, Oh, well, you're giving up your disabled card because you hate yourself.

And that wasn't me.

I just wanted to run through the woods.

The world is often not exactly set up for us.

The long way sometimes is the best way.

Optimism for me is a kind of survival technique.

So I'll go from like downtown to midtown, 45 minute ride, and people are like, Rio!

That's insane.

Why would you do that?

Like, just go on the bus, like, no, it's really nice outside.

I got my tunes.

That's all I need.

I got this thing called autopilot.

It's pretty simple.

[upbeat music] Mowgli is in the human village.

He's like all these people like me, but they think differently.

So there was a difference there.

He was a boy trapped between two worlds.

Since I was a kid, I always wanted to be a storyteller.

I started writing screenplays.

Film school was wild and I just did everything I could.

I learned what not to do is exactly what everybody needs to learn.

And next February, I'm filming this proof of concept for this show that I'm doing.

And I really wanted to write this show about disabled people that instead of someone overcoming obstacles, becoming completely cured, I don't want to see that.

I want to see someone that is working on their things and their issues, their fears, honestly.

Also, I just want to see a show where there's a disabled guy just doing his laundry and that the obstacles that come with that like that that isn't shot.

And mainly disabled media film especially is written by abled people.

So I really fight for disabled writers in the writers room.

Thanks, man.

Appreciate you.

I use the podcast in 2020, started telling my stories and it felt good being very honest about my life, you know, my body, like disabled sex, which is completely different.

How we go to the bathroom, you know, and just like being open about that and finding love in that, you know, through that vulnerability.

(recorded voice) To me we can not separate our upbringing, our life experience in general from our sexuality and what we're into.

Like these are two very ingrained experiences.

(Rio) We accept the biases that society has.

We're molded by that.

Hey, how's it going?

IDs on you?

My job is to break that by talking to people.

(Man) How you doing?

(Rio) Pretty good.

You?

(Man) Not bad at all.

(Rio) Helping them realize that, first of all, I'm awesome, you're awesome.

And this is what I go through and it's beautiful.

Thank you, enjoy yourselves.

Our next story deals with teaching the difficult subject of chemistry through comic books for kids of all ages.

Producer Bryan Nelson and photographer John DeSoto were awarded Emmys in the category Education Schools Short Form Content for their story, Comic Book Chemistry.

(birds chirping) I truly believe everyone can learn chemistry.

It's very beautiful, actually.

And when you uncover the beauty and the mysticism and the patterns, it can be embraced by all.

I'm Dr. Colleen Kelley, and I'm an instructor and laboratory manager at the University of Arizona.

And I've created Kids Chemical Solutions, which is a series of comic books capturing early, eager learners ages 8 to 12 with chemistry comic books.

When I started this project, I made something that I thought would be fun and accessible for kids.

And what I discovered is that eight, nine and ten year olds were learning symbols.

So in my comic books I decided, let's make fun, cute characters and they can balance them instead of the symbols for the elements themselves.

The first characters were Poppy and Rey.

Poppy for polonium and Ray for radium.

Ray has this saying all through the comic books like Zero is our hero.

And that sticks when they know Zero is our hero.

So if cadmium is plus two and oxygens minus two, you can put those together and you get zero.

One of my favorite scenes is where Big Ox and Red and Rusty now are roadies for the heavy metals and Big Ox is star struck by Cobalt and they bump into each other and cobalt asks Big Ox to play a duet.

And he's like, Well, he's a little scared.

He's like, Just so you know, I don't play well on an empty stomach.

And Cobalt sings like, "Don't worry, man, I got you" and lifts up his hat and throws in two electrons.

And that that electron transfer is what really happens in the ionic compound Cobalt oxide.

Big ox eats them.

He's like, Somebody, get me some sunglasses.

Let's rock.

So when I first started writing these stories, the drawings were very crude.

I drew like boxes for them stick figures until I realized that I really needed help with the art.

And in walks Mack at that point.

Hey, Mac.

Oh, my gosh.

I first met Mackenzie Reagan when she was 13, and she goes by Mac.

And she was a budding artist.

And while she was in my class, we were working on some of these stories at the time.

They weren't comic books yet.

And I asked Mac if she could help me draw some of these a lot better than my box square figures.

All right.

Are you ready to make some characters?

I am so ready.

Okay, so I am going to surprise you.

All right?

Okay.

So we're going to make water.

Water, H2O.

But when I first think about developing a character, especially if it's a character that's a molecule like water, the first thing that I do is I draw it.

And there's something called a Lewis structure where I would have oxygen in the middle, then two bonds, which are lines and then two hydrogens flanking it.

And in that description, then I would go through that with Mac and say, What do you see?

So let's think about how we can connect this design to a seal.

So I'm seeing like flippers on the H's, maybe.

Oh, good, good.

And we have they have huge eyeballs.

Oh, that's so good.

Massive eyeballs.

So there we go.

That's our water molecule.

Little a little rough sketch of the water molecule.

So once I had the comics developed in script format, I realized that I need to test them on kids.

It was during the pandemic, so I did a schedule over Zoom.

But there is a definite bonus to that because I could record those.

Like I actually learned in more detail about like the atomic mass.

One is that actually happening?

Could that happen?

Oh, this is such a good question, Danny.

So what I was looking for in these kids is their ability to speak chemistry.

Because chemistry is a language, and I could hear them be very fluent.

And then after the parentheses, it's a four.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

And that's where I really realized the magic that was happening when I was getting fourth graders doing college level chemistry.

14 for the neutrons.

Awesome, you guys very, very, very, very, very, very good.

Yes.

Still needs something.

Lady Papi, would you do the honor of sharing electrons with me?

Now that we're all vaccinated, I was able to work with Olivia Grant.

I've known Olivia since she's been born, so I'm friends with her mom, and she saw the comic books because I brought them over to the house, and she's kind of looking at them.

And I thought, well, third grades, a little young, but let's see.

And her mom, Stephanie, called me and said, Olivia wants to know more.

Right.

And the two mean the copper has a two plus charge.

So I came up there with some props.

I brought a big shower curtain, that's a periodic table, and we laid it out on the ground and I said, Olivia, let's play Twister.

What?

What is that quality?

Yeah, it's phosphorous.

Phosphorus did.

I'd like for the students who are reading these comics to recognize that not one comic book is set in a laboratory and that science transcends the laboratory.

Chemistry is everywhere, and that really is the message.

And I want them to realize that the chemistry starts here in your brain with your imagination.

Should we give a messy swimmer bun to all those swimmers out there?

Yeah.

Who live in water and love water.

I really think this project is about raising the bar and learning, but also lowering the bar to accessibility so that students and anybody in the entire world can learn chemistry through this platform.

This is my life's work, and I know that.

And I can keep going until chemistry becomes normal.

Because this is what I'm meant to do.

Tom - Our producer, David Fenster, was awarded a Rocky Mountain Regional Emmy for Photographer Long/Short Form.

And when you see it, you'll see why.

This is Favorite Places, San Rafael Valley.

There is a place in Baja Arizona the rests in my memory and daydreams more as a passage than an arrival to a specified destination.

A confluence of history, cultures, landscapes, biomes and folklore.

It is as much defined by the roads, trails and stories that lead you from the Tucson basin into the valleys and high desert grasslands of the Madrean archipelago.

As you traverse the 80 plus miles, you wind through a two lane road in the valley between Santa Rita and the Whetstone Mountains on your way to Sonoita The twists and turns unfold, views that still inspire as much as the first time one lays eyes upon them.

The subtle gain in elevation and changing landscape, evoking memories and emotions untethered to this place.

Once at the Sonoita stop sign turn right towards the town of Patagonia, from the running waters of Sonoita Creek one can slow time under the giggling of the cottonwoods.

Visiting local favorites like the trails at Nature Conservancy's, Patagonia Sonoita Creek Preserve, or the sanctuary at Tucson, Audubon's Patton Center for Hummingbirds.

It is worth a stop for a bite and drink at the Wagon Wheel Saloon, the local bar where the likes of Jim Harrison and Charles Bowden may have traded stories of the border and modern folklore.

From town, you head another 15 miles east, slowly moving through the mineral rich Patagonia mountains whose canyons and ancient sycamores can speak to the layers of a cultural past that has spanned a millennium.

As you move through this cultural and geologic time written in the landscape, the road rises out of a canyon and breaks the ridge at the western edge of the San Rafael Valley.

I am immediately taken by the beauty and expanse of the grass flowing over the horizons as time and the place seem to merge under the sky into a familiar yet evolving frontier.

The grasses tell the story of the seasons from greens of summer to velvety golden hues of fall to a shimmering silver through winter.

For most of the year, a warm golden hue blankets the land against the crisp blue of the desert sky.

The valley is held by the Canelo Hills to the north and northeast, Patagonia mountains to the west and the Huachuca mountains in the east.

The road drops into the bowl that feeds the headwaters of the Santa Cruz River flowing directly south into Sonora, Mexico, about ten miles as the crow flies, before it meanders and turns back north, down the next valley to Tucson.

As you head back north towards Sonoita leaving the San Rafael Valley, you come to the climax of this journey.

The view from Canelo Pass gives you a prospect South into Mexico and the entire valley.

I can start to imagine the peoples and wildlife for ages moving with the soft grade of the land towards water.

Tom - AZPM's former producer, Nina Shelton, was nominated in the category, Historical Cultural Content for the Story and Endangered Language, which documents the efforts of Indigenous communities to preserve their cultural heritage.

Here's an excerpt from that Emmy-nominated story.

O'odham, like many other tribes, when they talk about language and how they got language, they talk about their origin, how the people came to be.

[O'odham music] When people were created, they were given different things by the creator and things like thoughtfulness, you know, to be able to think and your other senses and so forth.

And then one of the things that people were given as they were created was language.

And so all these things that we were given, it's where we get the understanding that they were gifts and so O'odham like other tribes, think of language in that way.

You know, that is something sacred and that you take care of it and you have a responsibility to it in a lot of different ways.

My name is Ofelia Zepeda and I'm a Regents Professor in the Department of Linguistics.

And I'm also the Director of the American Indian Language Development Institute, also here at the University.

For tribal communities, you know, there's so many, so much that is embedded in the language.

[Native American drumming] It sort of holds a lot of the traditional knowledge that is simply still passed down or around orally.

You know, so you don't have the luxury of going to go find it in some reference book or whatever, you have to talk to someone, someone who knows that knowledge.

[Speaking American Indian tribal language] Language is always in there, even if it's in the form of songs and speeches, orations, or prayers.

So there's a lot you know that that the language is sort of responsible for in a community.

Situation that you look at when a language is labeled endangered is when there are no speakers coming up.

And so O'odham is in this situation.

We don't have children or young people.

speaking O'odham or learning O'odham in the home.

And many, if not all, you know, indigenous languages in the United States fall in that category.

[Speaking Oodham tribal language] Jonathan Rios, we are the Rios family.

So my father is Tohono O'odham and my mother is Navajo.

I grew up on the Navajo Nation with my mom's parents, which are my grandparents who rarely spoke English.

Little if they did.

So the household, we spoke Navajo every day.

I really wasn't exposed to the Tohono O'odham language, and it wasn't till later on in college and I started working for the tribe that I started, I guess, being more in contact with the language.

But I want to take that to the next level and and really show and teach my kids Tohono O'odham, because that's part of who they are as well.

This past year, our community college with the Tohono O'odham nation they're offering classes and I started taking those classes.

I will say it's harder trying to learn a language later on in life rather than you learning your language from the beginning at such a young age.

I grew up in a family that spoke Navajo.

And to this day, when I go home, I mainly speak Navajo because that's what my mother speaks.

My grandparents speak, my aunts and my uncles and even the little kids.

We're very fortunate to be homeschooling.

I know that not all families are able to do that, but for us, we're able to, and I think that's one advantage that we have is that our kids are at home with us.

And so my husband and I really take it seriously to speak our Navajo and Tohono O'odham languages within our home.

We also do an online class with our boys where they're exposed to other kids and the and the teacher leads in the O'odham language.

What I like about taking the O'odham class was because I got to see a lot of other kids and I got to learn the language and our teacher made it really fun.

My favorite word in Tohono O'odham was 'S-ke:g Tash' [interviewer] And what does that mean?

uh, "good day".

The fun thing was about her reading Tohono O'odham books.

[inaudible] As a child, my first language was Tohono O'odham.

I grew up in a generation when that was much more common.

Myself and all my siblings learned English once we attended school, and most of us attended school fairly late, that is, we were older before we ever went to school.

I went to a junior college first.

And from there, I transferred to Arizona State University just for one year before coming here.

But one thing that I was really interested in at that time as a young person was to know how to read and write the language.

I'm not sure why I wanted to do that, but I know that was something I wanted to do.

And there were actually like only two or three books.

one was a dictionary, one was a collection of traditional stories that were written in O'odham.

And I had those books and I would look at the O'odham and stare at it for, you know, long periods of time.

And I couldn't figure it out.

I didn't know why I couldn't read it.

I just assumed that I could read it because I can speak it.

But then I figured out, you have to be taught how to read and write, just like you were taught, how to read and write English.

Tom - Thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara, we'll see you again next week.

(upbeat music)