This Week on Arizona Illustrated preserving and presenting ancient and enduring Southwest indigenous cultures at the Arizona State Museum.

This is Nirvana.

This is heaven.

A quest to speak, teach and save endangered language.

It's something sacred in that you take care of it.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O'Connor discuss justice.

What does it mean for the first black Supreme Court nominee?

Female to be being interviewed by the Senate as they're in rehearsal.

Welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

And no doubt you've driven or walked through here.

It's the west entrance to the U Of A campus.

The gateway behind me was built by the WPA, the Works Progress Administration, back in 1937.

But perhaps the true gateway to campus are the two gorgeous red brick buildings you first come upon when you step inside.

The building to the north is open to the public and offering content rich exhibitions to the south.

That building houses millions of archeological, ethnographic and modern objects created by the indigenous peoples of this region.

Together, they're responsible for collections held in trust for the people of Arizona and curated in perpetuity for the enjoyment, education and inspiration of current and future generations.

This is Arizona State Museum.

This job here at the Arizona State Museum is really a dream come true.

I first came here as head of collections and as a collections based researcher.

This is Nirvana.

This is heaven.

Our collections span 13,000 years and our systematic in terms of geographical coverage in the state of Arizona, giving us the opportunity to answer questions that you just can't answer at any other institution.

We are the oldest and largest anthropological museum in the southwestern United States.

We were established in 1893 by the Territorial Legislature, became the State Museum on Valentine's Day of 1912 when Arizona became a state.

We are the official archeological repository for all materials recovered from state, county and municipal lands in Arizona.

And that's about nine and a half million acres.

Our collections grow at sometimes a quite alarming rate on average during normal times we can expect to bring in as many as 750 to a thousand cubic feet of bulk archeological research material in a year.

Now as part of the University of Arizona.

We also have lots of other responsibilities, mainly teaching research and public outreach Thank you.

Well, when you come to visit Arizona State Museum, we have some of the most incredible collections you get you can't see anywhere else.

The way you do natural dyes in weaving is for me, Arizona State Museum is a place of exploration.

It's a place where we care for people's cultural patrimony, for their cultural heritages within our collections, but also within the knowledge that shared with us from indigenous communities and others about our collections.

And it's a place for people to come and be inspired to learn and to enjoy.

So to make an exhibit it's you start with an idea whether it's a topic or a collection.

So for this exhibit wrapped in color, legacies of Mexican sarape, we started with an artist who came to visit us, Porfirio Gutierrez, and he brought his work, which is phenomenal in and he wanted to see our collection.

And as he was looking at our collection, getting more and more excited about the depth of our collection, he said, "Well, would you be interested in working on an exhibit with me?"

We had to decide, you know, how do you hang these and what is safe for the objects?

But what is also esthetically beautiful for the visitor?

So three of our collections have been named Designated American Treasures through a federal program, and it's our pottery collection our basketry collection and our photography collection.

And two of them, the basketry and the pottery, are permanent exhibits.

Our pottery collection is the largest, most comprehensive, best documented collection of whole ceramic vessels made by indigenous peoples of the United States, Southwest and northern Mexico.

Another permanent gallery that we have is the basketry gallery woven through time which numbers more than 35,000 specimens, making it the largest, most comprehensive, best documented collection of basketry and related fiber arts in Native North America.

The space we're in right now is colloquially known as the basketry vault, and it contains obviously a large amount of basketry, but also contains all of the organic or perishable artifacts.

So things that are made out of plant and animal fibers that in a normal context would decay in archeological sites.

It's decorated, but it looks like it's in large part.

A lot of my work involves facilitating access to collections, but also facilitating the museum's engagement with native nations in the state of Arizona.

It is it's it's I am Oglala Lakota and hogean Muscogee or Creek descent.

And I'm an enrolled citizen, the Muskogee Creek Nation of Oklahoma.

It remains the case that even now there perhaps aren't more than maybe two dozen of us who are archeologists of Native American descent with PhDs in anthropology and so I think one of the most important things that I like to remind visitors and the public at large about when it comes to the arizona state museum and its mission is that not only is arizona state museum as anthropology museum more concerned with how things are portrayed and represented and the accuracy and quality of information associated with those objects.

But we're also interested in getting at the multiple voices that have an interest in things that are being said about the objects.

So it's not as if there's one right way to talk about things, but we're more interested in the dialog.

Now, that's probably a legging that looks like human hair.

See, those is sort of equivalent to the So what are the important roles for the for the modern museum and particularly at Arizona State Museum is not only caring for these objects, storing them and housing them so that they can be made available for future research and an access by Senate communities, but also so that they can be preserved for future generations over the long term.

And so we've been lucky to have for for decades now literally a World-Class Conservation Laboratory and facility here that allows us to engage in the specialized methods and techniques required to successfully treat and preserve and conserve these types of objects for future generations.

Every time someone comes in to look at objects, I not only can be proud of it and appreciate what service the museum does in providing and making accessible that bit of history to descendant communities, but I'm constantly learning.

I would say that one of the things that we try to do is to feature the incredible diversity of the cultures of the Southwest, but also provide opportunities for the general public to relate on a very basic level to our shared humanity.

It's important for me when a visitor comes, if they walk out with no other message, is to know that indigenous people are here today.

They're our neighbors.

They're part of our life.

They have a deep, deep history that is reflected in the cultural objects, the material culture we have in the museum.

But their traditions are living.

They're dynamic.

They're part of life today.

Since 1950, the number of unique languages spoken around the world has steadily declined by one recent estimate in the United States.

There are 245 indigenous languages, 65 of them already extinct and 75 in danger of extinction, with only a few elderly speakers left.

That's also the case for the language of the Tohono O'Odham here in the Southwest.

But there are efforts underway to ensure that their language does not disappear.

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.

You know, most people think of languages, you know, just to use for communication.

So of course, that's very important.

But 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.

The other question, though, is like why, you know, that is occurring?

and we just look at societal change within native communities.

Some, you know, within the family, some within society, a social organization of a tribe.

And then, of course, big institutions like schools are big factors in in language loss and for for language communities and tribes to be on that endangered language list.

[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 think what worries me most about languages being endangered.

I think it's all indigenous language is just to be able to speak with our loved ones.

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.

Well early on of course, some of the barriers which we still have now, actually and not just for O'odham but other indigenous languages, is that we still don't have a lot of materials and resources for the classroom.

The O'odham nation now has an O'odham Language Center where a lot of that work is happening and will continue to happen because that center serves the whole nation, the whole O'odham Nation.

I'm so appreciative of the staff at the community college because they're understanding and they they're really taking this step by step to teach us as as a beginners, you know, to really know and understand the language and making it an easy transition.

[Tohono O'odham music] In recent years, In recent years, there has been more interest by young adults to study O'odham and learn O'odham.

It's sort of like young people who want to affirm who they are, acknowledging their background, their culture and their history and so forth.

We have a lot of generations and our ancestors that worked hard to preserve that language and, you know, we want to do what we can to help preserve this language as well for the future generations.

Imagine evesdropping on a series of conversations between U.S. Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

And then add another voice, that of the potential first black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Oh, yeah.

And then put it to music.

That's what happened with justice.

At the Arizona Theater Company.

When I got here, you know, I said, like, if we're the state theater, we're going to produce shows about great Arizonans that are great Americans that have changed our country because there's so many of them.

And so you do a quick Google and you realize that there are none.

Lauren Gunderson, who is the most produced playwright in the country, is an old friend of mine.

In 2020, right as everything was shutting down, we were trying to figure out like, well, what type of theater can we produce?

And so I texted her, like, would you ever consider doing a one person show about Justice O'Connor?

Very quickly, it grew to about her and Justice Ginsburg, and then it grew again.

And then she said, like, what would you think if it was a musical?

[musical interlude] Sean Daniels approached me and said, Hey, what do you think about directing this new musical about the Supreme Court?

And I can never turn down a world premiere.

You're forging a path that no one has trekked before to be epic about it.

I am ready to be sworn to this confirmation hearing for my place in the Supreme Court of the United States.

We commissioned this work from Lauren Gunderson over two years ago about what that story would be to have the very first black female Supreme Court justice.

The container of the show is within her Senate confirmation hearings.

Vera is a truth seeker.

Vera is someone who fights for equality and justice.

And she believes that although she feels very deeply about the law and she has these beautiful icons that she looks up to since hence the conjuring of these women as she's being sworn in to her confirmation hearing.

I mean, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is pretty famous, and I've learned that she embraced that fame, which I personally think is really fun.

But I didn't know a lot about Sandra Day O'Connor, and she is now a new hero of mine.

I feel like here she's always been an icon.

So I've always thought that Sandra Day O'Connor was incredible.

I've learned that Sandra was the master of knowing how to disagree agreeably.

It's also fascinating to play.

A real character, a historical character.

When you're the first, you have to jump through a lot more hoops and the hoops are fiery.

Being the first, like she literally was the first.

And I've learned so much because of this play.

She trailblazed for Ruth to have a place.

If it wasn't for Sandra, there would be no Ruth.

Come on.

I get to play Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Not only does it really brilliantly portray how Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O'Connor become best friends when they're basically on two different sides.

But it explores how you can be on two different sides of the aisle and argue and fight, but you're still working for the same cause.

It's okay to interrogate your idols and interrogate the people that came before you and to say these are the things that you did beautifully, and these are some moments that you might have missed.

And how can we work on that together to build a stronger America?

Judge Jackson, Congratulations.

What does it mean for the first black Supreme Court nominee, female, to be being interviewed by the Senate as they're in rehearsal for a musical about the exact same thing.

I think it's weirdly timely, prescient.

I don't know what else you could say about it.

It's wild.

It's definitely life imitates art, imitates life, imitate.

I mean, it's and they've been working on this, I understand, for over two years.

And we are literally.

Putting the current history on stage right now.

Ok, here we go.

[piano music] I'm a Latina.

I've never, ever assistant directed another Latina female.

I relate a lot to Ketanji Brown-Jackson's struggle.

[music] Right now, wait, savor it.

It's really helped Chanel Bragg who plays Vera and I our conversations because she's also the Associate Artistic Director of Arizona Theatre Company.

We are both the first women of color in our position at our respective theaters.

And as a black woman within this organization and a leadership position, I have seen so many parallels between what being the first means.

So, I am the first in Arizona Theatre Company's history in this position.

So being able to use my actual experience of what I'm navigating every day at my position to see how that influences the character of Vera has been very interesting.

[piano music] We give men such range in terms of like, what they're allowed to do and still be heroes.

For women, we're almost unforgivable of any mistake that is made.

And so, I think one of the challenges of this piece is like, how do you write a musical that is about all of these women and make them real?

[music] We the people I feel like the team has spent an incredible amount of time making sure that these women get the same latitude and hero's journey that men get when their stories are told.

I can't wait for the day where my qualifications are Vera's qualifications or KBJ's qualifications, will just speak for for us themselves.

And we don't feel like we have to go into a room announcing it or making sure that everyone knows that I deserve to be here .

I'm qualified to be here.

This is part of the reason I wanted to do this, to remind people.

How things happened.

If you forget the things that we've got that were so hard fought by Mrs. O'Connor and Mrs. Ginsburg and the rest, it's very much easier to roll it back.

We think that can't happen.

But as we know, as we have seen, it can happen.

Justice will be performed by the Arizona Theater Company in Phoenix May 5th through May 22nd.

For performance and ticket information, visit their website at ATC.org Before we go, here's a sneak peek at a story we're working on Welcome.

We're going to start.

You can do as much goat yoga, more yoga or more goats, depending on what you're in the mood for today.

Goat at your own pace.

They've done a scientific study where goats recognize a smile.

So it's kind of like an interaction that just keeps building and building and know if you notice during the class, it kind of starts out quiet and as it goes along, people are getting more and more excited, the goats are getting more excited.

You can see them running around and everybody kind of feeds off that positive energy when they don't have goat yoga.

During COVID, it was really hard when we brought them back.

They were almost too excited because they were wanting to jump on them, that they were like they didn't care where they were standing.

It was on top of the head or the face or whatever.

And as you can see, they're pretty careful.

So they were pretty desperate to be interacting with people.

They really enjoy it.

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Thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

See you next week.