Database HERE

The idea for this project originally came from Robert Johnson over the the Huhugam Heritage Center. I was in a meeting with him a few months ago discussing language and history learning- he brought up that GRIC already has a pretty sizeable set of curriculum in the public - the HHC staff has been posting regular articles for about 15 years!

On the history front, you have the great work by Billy Allen, and then going further back you have articles from Emmett White as well. Robert said we should just go through and pull all these articles together – so I started working on that.

What is It

This is a database that has the various articles regarding history, language, or culture that I’ve found in the various Gila River Newspapers.

I searched through the issues I have available in the Gila River News Database - specifically in

• Pima Gazette (1935-1946)

• Gila River News (1964-1970)

• Pima Maricopa Echo (1971-1982)

• Gila River Indian News (1998-2024)

You can see from the database that there are still a number of issues missing from my collection, so there could be additional material out there. I’m sure that Emmett was doing articles before 2008 - but my collection only goes back to there. Maybe someday I will convince CPAO to digitize the rest…

How?

This was a lot of manual effort - luckily I had already tagged many of these articles in my “Interesting Stories” listing.

When I first went through the papers I tried to note articles related to history, culture, or language. So I had some foundation already. Going through this time I found more than I original tagged - but I’m sure I missed some side stories that were written here and there. But it was pretty time consuming … so it’s good enough.

I was thinking about pulling the actual article out of the paper through some extraction software - but with over 200+ articles I just don’t feel like putting the effort in to do that. Maybe someday I’ll do some extraction to make the text easier to search, but for now this is a good start.

How to use it?

Read!

No seriously - I think of two major uses

1. History - A lot of the history work I do is built on Billy Allen’s articles over the years and I highly recommend reading through all of them. He does a great job with easy to read articles that have a great mix of personal and data-driven information. Similarly, Emmett White also did amazing and very personal articles about all kinds of local history.

2. Language - Like Robert Johnson recommended, you have all the elements here to start your own little curriculum. There are word-searches, crosswords, and line connecting puzzles to have activities. There are in-depth sentence structure and other linguistic lessons as well that HHC has put together over the years. A great place to start your language journey or practice your skills!

   1. Oh - and there is also a great partial series of language lessons from the 1960’s that is fun to read too! Orthography is a bit different, but you’ll get used to it.

Ways to make it better

As usual - there are probably lots of ways it could be better, but here are a few I’m thinking about

1. More Content!!!!!

I wish I had more of the newspapers digitized - I’d love to be able to complete this collection. Especially with the GRIC issues from the 80’s and 90’s - I hope to someday go through them to see if there is any other content in there…

2. Other Language Lessons

Something I considered but didn’t pursue was a broader set of language lessons from newspapers on all the Four Southern Tribes - Gila River, Ak-Chin, Salt River, and Tohono O’odham.

I was thinking about an intertribal super-collection of these resources so folks can have a one-stop… But, I don’t know their newspapers well enough and what I have so far was already pretty time-consuming.

Still…. it would be cool if anyone from any of these tribes wants to copy this base and start their own collection. Happy to help you get started and maybe we can link them together.

HMU if interested in a collaboration =)

Conclusion

And, well… that is about it. Not a crazy new project, not a lot of cool technical bells and whistles to get it developed. But I hope that it will be useful for folks who want to get quick access to publicly available language and history resources.

Obviously, there is also the O’odham Learning Library you can access and find academic and scholarly sources - but to me these local sources are more important and powerful than those. These are the words from our local experts, they are lessons from the people who have been doing this work in our Community for decades.

And they are aimed at COMMUNITY - not some ivory tower publisher.

Anyway - hope this resource helps you on your learning journey =)

Pepperidge Farm Remembers.

Well, I did just a bit more than gathering the photos…. I also colorized them.

What Is Colorization?

Colorization is a technique to add color to black and white photos. You likely already read my post on creating the photo database, if you haven’t go check it out.

There are a lot of ways to colorize photos, but I chose to use an AI system to do it in large batches.

Some folks will hand-color pictures, but it takes a lot of time and a pretty in-depth understanding of colors….

So I used an AI model called DDColor to colorize them instead.

DDColor is an open-source model designed for photo colorization. If you ever use one of those colorizer programs online or do it through something like Ancestry or Family Search — this is similar. I downloaded the model and its weights onto my computer, set up a Python environment, and ran batch processing across the full set of photos.

It wasn’t … easy. I had to troubleshoot a lot of compatibility issues, the scans kept failing to load because of inconsistent image formats. A whole lot of stuff to fix…

Anyway I got it done, got them processed. Some of the images didn’t come out well, but I’d say like 80-90% of them came out looking pretty good.

I then uploaded the colorized versions into Airtable.

AI? OMG NO, OUR DATA!

Hol’ up! Let me explain.

I tried my best to keep these photos out of the hands of the major AI companies by using local tools on my computer. The photos were not uploaded to any janky online systems. The model ran entirely on my machine.

I’m doing my part, but knowing how AI companies work, I’m sure they have long scraped these images from the archives where they’re already publicly posted.

Still, I tried =)

Why do this?

Because I can, mainly.

Because as much as black and white photos are cool, there is context you miss if you don’t think about how much color was part of our history.

Maybe it’s just my own brain, but seeing color helps me see photos in a new way and pick out details I missed before. I’m hopeful they might have the same effect for others, helping people view these photos from a new angle.

But HOW do I see the pictures?

That is a very thoughtful question - if you go onto the database they should be in the gallery. Below is a video that helps show how to see the color version if it is available.

You should be able to mouse over it:

Want to ONLY see the pictures with color? Check out this quick tutorial on setting filters or sorting below

And reminder - you can check out just the gallery HERE or the full data set HERE

*NOTE - this doesn’t work well with mobile - sorry. If you are on a phone or tablet, use the full data set to browse the photos instead. Someday I’ll make time to figure out a way to get it to work. Someday…

Ways to Make It Better

The main issue is that free colorization models have some limitations. Or maybe I just need to learn more. But there were some issues in these photos.

Some didn’t get colorized at all, some came out in very strange colors, and some got really weird and wonky.

But… it was free, it was fairly fast, and I think the results came out looking pretty good. Good enough, at least.

Just keep in mind this is a version of what the colors might have been - but it is an interpretation… not exact. The system is trying to interpret colors based on shades, so different model weights create different colors.

Still, I think it adds a cool dimension to the photos.

Final Thoughts

There isn’t much to wrap up here. Mostly I want to encourage you, dear reader, to take a look at these photos and remember that our ancestors were not living life in some monochrome, dreary reality. We were colorful people with bright, vibrant lives.

Also keep in mind that not all AI is killer robots and sucking up water. Especially for smaller local projects, we can do this stuff on our own and minimize the environmental impacts while also putting cool stuff out into the world.

Just one example of AI being a pretty cool tool.

Hope you enjoy - here are some samples:

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You can view the gallery here or check the full data set here

What Is the Project?

This is a database of photographs and metadata related to O’odham and Pee Posh history. It brings together images from dozens of archives and collections into one central, accessible place.

Why Did I Do It?

I originally started a version of this project a few years ago while working on my 3D modeling project. I had collected a few hundred images to use as visual references, and that process was one of the ways I first got pulled into history. I had all these incredible photos and no real plan for them. Then, as tends to happen, I got distracted. They mostly sat on my hard drive.

A few months ago, Community Elders asked me to participate in an event and put together a short presentation on how the Community has changed over time. They asked me to find photos to support the topic.

As I started digging through my local files, it hit me that I wanted to give people more context with the images. Who took them? Where did they come from? Who was pictured? What headlines were used? When were they taken?

I had not kept good track of that information, and it felt important to do it right.

I asked around to see if there was a public record of O’odham-related photo collections. I couldn’t find anything easily accessible. HHC and other local archives required in-person visits. Many finding aids didn’t tag or surface O’odham material clearly, it was mixed into larger datasets.

The deeper I went, the more I realized... I’m already doing this work. I should make it easier for the next person. So I put this together.

What’s the Goal?

The primary goal was to create a central, publicly accessible source of archival photos that our Community can access from anywhere, without a gatekeeper.

A secondary goal is to encourage engagement with history. If people want to create an Airtable account and add comments, names, or details, that would be incredible. I found the Ramsey collection and also a large collection of “North American Indians” on Facebook that had a ton of comments from Community members on the photos. I’m hopeful that this could help spark some of that same conversation.

But even if nothing else happens, I want people to be able to browse these collections and, if something catches their interest, have a direct link to request a high-quality copy from the original archive.

How Could You Use This?

I see three main uses.

• Browse it. Scroll through the gallery. Group photos by year or location. Sit with them. Enjoy the history. Maybe do some research on the photographer and the time period.

• Use the images for teaching or storytelling. Under fair use principles, non-commercial, educational, and research use should generally be acceptable. That said, I strongly recommend checking with the original rights holder and requesting a higher-quality copy when possible. Either way, use the photos for community presentations or to teach folks about our history.

• Digitize more! I pulled together material from across the internet, but there is far more out there than I could ever capture. One benefit of this database is that it helps identify what exists and what is still missing. If you know of collections I missed, let me know and I will try to add them.

However you use it, please be respectful of the photo subjects and the wishes of the families involved.

How Did I Do It?

The process was fairly straightforward, but time-consuming.

First, I conducted wide-ranging internet searches across major archives and public-facing collections. I used Pima, Papago, and Maricopa as main keywords along with a lot of other variants (O’otham, O’odham, Pee Posh, GRIC, SRP, TON, etc.). Similar to the O’odham Learning Library, I figure we are all closely related, so it made sense to cast as wide a net as possible.

Then I used AI to supplement the research. I used ChatGPT 5 Pro’s “Deep Research” tools to identify additional archives and O’odham or Pee Posh-related photos. I burned through several months of credits experimenting with different search strategies. I found a lot of really cool small collections and projects I’d never seen before. Found a lot of other cool archival docs I’m looking into as well, but that’s a story for another article.

Next, I downloaded low- or mid-resolution images and attached them to Airtable. I intentionally avoided high-resolution downloads to save space and to strengthen the fair use case for the database. The idea is to give a sample visual of the photo so users can go to the original source to request official use.

Metadata was copied from source websites and run through ChatGPT to generate standardized data tables. If you are curious, I link to my primary prompt HERE.

Most of the work was manual. Entering records one by one. Moving photos around. Tracking down sources. I also restructured large portions of archive finding guides so they could live inside the database, including notes for images that exist but are not yet digitized.

A quick note on AI. Without it, this project would have taken far longer. Trying to standardize dozens of archives manually would have been soul-crushing. AI made it easier, but not easy. Most archival websites are optimized to block automated access, so I couldn’t simply scrape and automate. In the end, manually reviewing each photo and metadata entry helped reduce errors and hallucinations, and it also let me learn a ton about each photo.

It’s not perfect. But it’s a pretty good start.

How Long Did It Take?

This was another nights, weekends, and free-time project. I estimate roughly 200 to 250 hours. Holiday breaks around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year made a big difference in pushing it across the finish line. My poor kids had to put up with me having my nose in my laptop for the past few months.

It helped that this was a second-screen project. I made it through a lot of background TV while working, and I finally started Stranger Things with the kids, so at least there was some family time during this project.

I’m not going to get into all the weird technical stuff I had to learn either. Moving attachments around in Airtable was nightmarish. But it’s good knowledge to have whenever I go back to the OLL or other projects for updates.

How Could the Database Be Better?

There is a lot of room to grow.

• More collections. There are many undigitized or inaccessible collections I would love to add. The Smithsonian has a lot, and the Arizona Historical Society and Arizona State Museum hold materials I couldn’t include because I couldn’t find very robust finding guides. And to be really clear, this is a tiny sample of what’s out there. There are hundreds and thousands of images at HHC and at other archives across the country. But ain’t nobody got time for all that, so at least this is a start.

• More recent photos. I focused heavily on older material due to copyright and collection size, but there are incredible photos buried in government reports and departmental archives that deserve to be included. Local newspapers are another major gap. The Pima Maricopa Echo and later papers contain fantastic images I would love to add someday.

• Community photos. These are the trickiest but potentially the most important. Much of this database reflects an outsider perspective. I would love to find a respectful way for families to contribute their own photos and narratives.

• A proper front-end. Someone smarter than me could turn this into a beautiful, intuitive interface. Long term, it would be incredible if HHC or another organization could build this into something more polished and maybe formalize relationships with archives so photo requests could be directed through the tribe, rather than Community members having to go to these archives on their own.

Before You Dive In: A Content Warning

A warning up front. Some of these materials are sensitive, and some are outright racist.

You will see titles and captions like “A Pima Squaw” or “Primitive Housing.” History is not always pretty. I strongly encourage you to explore the context surrounding these photos, captions, and descriptions. In many cases they are dehumanizing or demoralizing.

The people taking these photos were not always enlightened. Many were operating within colonial, extractive, or openly racist frameworks. Still, I am grateful that these images exist at all. They give us something tangible to reflect on, critique, contextualize, and reclaim.

At the same time, our ancestors endured all of this so that we could be here today. I encourage you to celebrate how far we have come and recognize the hard work we are all building on. Now it is up to us to make the future even better for our future generations.

If you are interested in helping add context to these photos, such as identifying people, places, or correcting descriptions, I invite you to participate. You can sign up here: Sign up to contribute

On Nudity and Sensitive Imagery

I struggled with how to handle this enough that it felt worth addressing directly.

For those familiar with our history, you know that it was common for women to be topless during parts of the year, wearing only a grass or cotton skirt or maybe a wrap-around. Some of these photographs reflect that.

Reading Aleta Ringlero’s dissertation helped me better understand how many historic photographs were deliberately staged to frame our ancestors in a specific way: uncivilized, unkept, poor, broken. Or as simple sexual objects.

So I am conflicted. On one hand, some images are manipulated or falsified. On the other hand, they depict real people from our Community. And staged or not, they have existed publicly for over a century and do attempt to show a reflection of Community history.

With that in mind, I chose to keep these photos in the database but clearly tagged them as Not Safe For Work (NSFW) so they can be filtered out. I tried to label images involving nudity, human remains, or graphic content the same way, but please let me know if I missed any. You should be able to choose how you engage with this material, and I hope this approach helps.

Final Thoughts

Before closing, I want to give a huge thank you to Carol Shurz and Linda Andrews. Both invited me to be part of their event, and that unknowingly sparked this project. Also a huge thank you to my family who had to put up with me being hyper-fixated on this over the holidays.

I hope this database is useful. I discovered so many powerful images that will inform future projects, and now I know exactly where to request proper high-quality copies instead of relying on pixelated scans from forgotten corners of the internet.

Hopefully this project helps you find our history easier, makes it easier to engage with, and easier to carry forward and share.

I hope you enjoy it, and I hope it supports your education, research, and storytelling.

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Wanted to share this video I made for a recent event in the Community.

A few months ago, elders asked me to help prepare some images and a quick history for the 2026 Elder Day Conference. I sat in on planning meetings and listened to their conversations, and the topics they wanted to cover were far-reaching: housing, farming, education, religion, social life, culture, and more.

A big theme kept coming up: how much the Community has changed. The elders remembered a time when there were more events, more people showing up, more engagement at district and community meetings. And the more we talked, the more I think they’re right. There have been some major shifts, both in the Community and in the world around us, that have changed how we live.

But I didn’t have a huge timeslot. My original pitch ran about 45 minutes, which was way too long. This was a celebration, a gathering of elders from across the Community, a time to visit and catch up.

They didn’t come to sit through a long lecture from some whippersnapper.

So I chopped it down and tried to hit the highlights, broad “waves” of change in the Community. Each topic the elders raised could be its own lecture series, but I tried to capture them into themes. Maybe someday I’ll come back and do deeper dives.

I broke the history into four main sections, and I’m being super reductive. A lot of groundbreaking events had to be left out, and even starting at 1880 leaves out a huge amount of history. But I had to keep things manageable.

I also wanted images to go along with the words. I’ll post part two tomorrow showing some of the other work that went into this project. For now, I hope you enjoy the video and it inspires you to learn more about our Community history!

PS - If you prefer no captions, this version below makes it easier to see the photos.

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Over the next few weeks I’m going to be posting older projects because I’m migrating my information over from my website. These are some older projects but I think still useful. Hope you enjoy

This is a project I actually received funding for! I applied to a fellowship with the Center for Cultural Power and I received about 18 months of funding and support to help me work through and create some amazing artwork in collaboration with Three Precious Miracles. It all culminated in a final showcase at the Huhugam Heritage Center back in 2023.

The idea was to create some models that would help to bring connection and story to folks around history. I specifically wanted to focus on O’odham history as part of this project. I’m most excited that some of the models are still being used today at Three Precious Miracles for events with children in the foster care system.

As part of this project I created 10 O’odham-inspired 3D models through going out to local district meetings and other groups like Youth Council and Elder Concerns. Had some amazing feedback and worked with some amazing artists to help design some 3D models that are more representative for our Community.

Above is a segment completed for Gila River Broadcasting on the final showcase. As far as I know, the diorama of models is still available to view at the Heritage Center near Wild Horse Pass.

If you are interested in seeing the full set of models I put together an audio playlist that explains the thoughts behind each model here.

I could probably write a lot more about this project - I can’t thank the Center for Cultural Power enough for the time and support to do this project, and the freedom they gave me to do… basically whatever I wanted.

It was that time and support that also helped me to dive very deep into a lot of culture and history knowledge and complete the first iteration of the O’odham Learning Library.

I’ll also post a link on the main Substack page for folks who want to view and download the 3D files directly. Happy Printing.

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Over the next few weeks I’m going to be posting older projects because I’m migrating my information over from my website. These are some older projects but I think still useful. Hope you enjoy

This is a short discussion of my first 3D model project. I eventually used this first project to spin out the idea for IndigeModels and some of the other 3D printing/History work I’ve done.

But it all started here when I was first thinking about this project….

Who could have guessed that this would have been my first real entry into learning so much about culture and history? It started from skimming a bunch of books and pictures for inspiration and ended with me doing all kinds of history projects to make it easier for folks to learn and access the information I was uncovering.

What is the Data Source?

The data source is mainly from Frank Russel’s “The Pima Indians” and J William Lloyd’s “Aw-Aw’Tam Nights”. Thin Leather or Thin Buckskin tells some of the earliest recorded stories and songs in these books.

Why did I do this Project?

When I first started learning about 3D printing I wanted to print out something related to Native Americans for my kids. Something I could print and use as a prop for them to learn about their culture and where they come from. But I couldn’t find anything online other than tipis and half-naked men with tomahawks.

So, I started thinking about designing my own models. I originally wanted a home or an object like a Kiaha or baby basket, but I kept coming back to these two books and the O’otham man that was the source of all this early recorded knowledge about our Ancestors, songs, and stories.

So, with some guidance from GRIC elders and my friends I decided to commission this O’otham model inspired by one of the most inspirational intellectuals in our history. I also put together the short historical summary using Thin Leather as my inspiration for this model - “O’otham Man with Bow”

I’m hoping to eventually come back and do more of these when I find time (and funding) – there are so many amazing people in our Community history and living today!

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LB Edit:

(Spoilers… I did get funding and I did get more models created. Take a look HERE)

Along with the original model, I also developed this small information booklet to go along with the model for folks interested in the inspiration. Looking back this is much too simple for such an amazing man… but maybe I’ll go back and update it someday….

Over the next few weeks I’m going to be posting older projects because I’m migrating my information over from my website. These are some older projects but I think still useful. Hope you enjoy.

This is another recent project - and I wrote this blog after my Papago Woman Audiobook project.

In it I am reflecting on using AI for those who have walked on. This AI landscape keeps changing - and is making me more and more nervous… but I still think it is up to us to try and wrangle some good from it.

This also includes another short blog post I wrote in 2023 about the AI Afterlife more broadly. It wasn’t public, but I posted it along with this to give some more information in case folks are interested.

AI Afterlife - Thoughts on Digital Legacy

I’m assuming you came here from my blog on creating an AI voice to use in narrating Papago Woman. If you didn’t, you should go check it out.

Before we dive in, I wanted to give a quick shout-out to the moral and legal implications of voice cloning—keep in mind that at this moment (2024) we are in a bit of a Wild West scenario. There are not a lot of clear legal precedents around voice cloning, and the ones that DO exist are typically built to protect people that make money from their voices (actors, singers, etc).

If you want to do some nerdy exploring, I recommend this article to get a pretty good overview of the current legal landscape. But, to summarize—we don’t have a solid legal grasp of this tech yet. There is little stopping someone from cloning your voice or likeness. While there are some deepfake laws that stop using your likeness for generated pornography or laws being developed to stop “misinformation campaigns” related to public officials—there are not a ton of policies in the pipeline for us normies.

With that in mind, I want to call for anyone reading this to be cautious in their use of the tech. Be respectful, be kind, remember your Himdag. Just because there isn’t an explicit law against it... don’t be a jerk. This is especially important when dealing with something as intimate as a loved one’s voice or likeness. The technology may be new, but the values we bring to it should be as old as our communities—rooted in respect, empathy, and understanding.

My Experience Recreating My Mom’s Voice

I want to focus this on my project and the use of my Mom’s voice specifically. My mom passed in 2014, and I used voicemails of her to create a synthetic AI voice for a project narrating a book.

In my project, I altered her voice to the final result, but I still have a voice clone that is pretty similar to her. The idea of hearing her voice again, after all these years, was both comforting and disconcerting. It felt like a way to bring a piece of her back into the world, a way for my kids to hear the voice of their grandmother, whom they never met. But it also made me keenly aware of the limitations of the technology.

I’m not doing a novel application of the technology—in fact, there is a huge industry being created around the AI afterlife. I wrote a blog in 2023 that I’ll copy below that explores that a bit.

In it, I discuss my thoughts on the current landscape, how I see it culturally, and how I see it personally. You’ll see my early thought that I wish I had more media to re-create my mom in some form. Now that I’ve done it, I wanted to circle back to my thoughts on the process and the outcome.

The Emotional Terrain of Voice Cloning

First, the process was weird. I didn’t like it. I already have issues dealing with the passing of my mom; I have since she passed over 10 years ago. I’m not good with emotions.

But despite not liking it, I think this project actually helped me process my grief.

Part of it was re-listening to her voice over and over to make sure I had it right. I kept thinking, “Man, this doesn’t sound like her at all.” Part of it was that I had a very limited voice sample of her—only a few minutes of audio. But I also think that AI just isn’t dynamic enough. Even with troves of data, I don’t think it can grasp the nuances of a human life and the complexity of something even as simple as a voice.

One memory I have of my mom is that she did baby talk. A lot. I remember as a teenager, I would get so embarrassed by her talking like a baby. Saying my name like I was a baby, or mis-pronouncing words like a toddler would.

As a parent - I realize now why she would do this. When you have your own kids you pick up some of those words and stick with them because they remind you of how cute they were at the time, and now I find myself doing the same baby talk voices she once did as I re-create my children’s stumbles at english.. “Straw-babies” tends to get a lot of play in my house.

Anyway - as I listen to this AI creation that is attempting to mimic her, I realize I’m missing that quirk of my mom. This voice may rise and fall in a cadence that follows her, but it doesn’t randomly change into a joking and passive-aggressive reminder that I have a dental appointment. It doesn’t have the memory of my childhood and the random mis-pronounced words that are sprinkled in as subtle reminders of our shared history.

This process made me reflect on the idea that a person’s voice is not just a sound; it’s a living part of who they are. It carries with it the weight of experiences, emotions, and relationships. My mom wasn’t the same with me as she was with her husband, her friends, her co-workers. She was a plethora of different people, and this AI voice, no matter how close it came, couldn’t capture those differences.

The Limitations and Possibilities of AI Afterlife

Maybe with a larger data set or a better AI model, we will get something closer to replication in the future, but I just don’t think it will ever be perfect. How do you record every nuance of a human? Even my own voice, as I cloned and used it for narrating projects, made me realize it was such a limited scope of me.

It isn’t using the same speaking voice I use for my friends—it isn’t dropping a casual “straw-babies” in a conversation because my daughter used that name for fruit when she was learning to talk, and it just… stuck with me. It was me, but in a very limited sense that I had only moderate control over.

So, even though the industry is on the rise to re-create and simulate life after death, I think AI creations of this type will ultimately be a bit hollow. They may serve as a tool for remembering, but they can never fully replace the presence and complexity of a living human being.

That isn’t to say that it doesn’t have a place in society—as I said in the blog of my project, I’m glad I have a way to share even a small amount of my Mom’s voice with my kids. Being able to use that voice to tell a story for my kids is something that I’m really excited about. Is it a replacement for my mom? No. But I want my kids to have a frame of reference for this human being who raised me and helped me to become the man I am today

…

I also think of my own legacy - what will my children have of me after I’m gone. Will they want to share it with their children? How will my spouse remember me? Will she want to hear my voice to remember me when she is lonely?

I know many who have lost love ones and they listen to the same voice mails or watch the same videos of them because they miss them. These are slices of their life as well - little moments in time that don’t encompass the complexity of that person.

Is generative AI much different?

Ethical Considerations and the Future of Digital Legacies

On the other hand, I do worry that it might complicate grief for some folks. Not being able to let go of someone is powerful. But I don’t view these AI Afterlife technologies any differently than the next step in recording an oral history or taking a picture. It is just a new version of archiving and memorializing. For me, I view the tech as a means of preserving memory - a voice, a piece of who they were.

Where I grow concerned is if it is being used with an AI chatbot backend and being presented as a replacement of the person. Creating a “Bevvie Chatbot” that pretends to be my Mom would be profoundly gross to me. Even if it was accurate and full of transcripts of her words and writings, it feels unnatural. I don’t want to pretend my Mom is back, I want to preserve her legacy.

But maybe that is my own reluctance with my own bias?

But—to each their own. I’m sure using her voice in the first place is wrong to some. We will see how technology, our grief, and our thoughts on death and the afterlife change as AI technology becomes more common in our lives. As we navigate this evolving landscape, we must ask ourselves important questions: What role should technology play in our memories? How do we balance the preservation of legacy with the natural process of grieving? These are questions that don’t have easy answers, but they are ones we must grapple with as we move forward into this new digital frontier.

(And here is the other blog I wrote on the AI Afterlife more broadly. If interested it details some of the movements happening right now to create post-death content through AI.)

2023 Blog Post: AI Afterlife

During a recent discussion on AI, my friend made a comment on death that got me thinking about AI and the discussion of the “AI Afterlife”. I remember reading this Verge article back in 2016 that was about an AI chatbot that was developed from the digital data left behind by someone who passed. Even before that, Black Mirror had an episode related to the topic in 2013, Be Right Back of a woman who uses her lover’s digital legacy to create a robotic copy of him after he passes.

Now we are seeing the rise of generative AI and everything is accelerating. There has never been a time in history where so many people have a “footprint”. The majority of people throughout history have passed with few artifacts of their lives outside of maybe some written journals or perhaps a few pictures. We have stunning 8k resolution videos, decades-long blogs, and crisp audio from millions of people.

Often the stories around this technology are focused on the elite - folks who hold massive economic or cultural power and have high-stakes surrounding their estate; but the technology has become increasingly available for use by us normie folks. It won’t just be a Tupac hologram dancing on stage in the future - it might be our grandmas too. It isn’t just George Carlin’s family who has to grapple with a public image being altered and re-generated, anyone with a youtube channel or instagram profile can be next.

An AI Afterlife isn’t coming - it is already here. There are companies that have been around for nearly a decade that are dedicated to using AI to re-create us or our family members. Microsoft and Amazon are two giant corporations that are delving into this space right now as well. What this technology is going to mean for society is still being decided, but we should all be knowledgeable about it!

My Traditional Worldview

I’ve always been taught that the O’odham tradition is to keep away from death. My people would traditionally burn the home that people died in, we didn’t say their name so as not to “call them back” from their journey to the next world - the next dimension.

But - We stopped burning homes in the early 1900s, instead we started packing a small bag of their belongings for their grave. We say their names, now with “-bat” or “-hook you hii” added at the end to note for others that they passed and show our respect. We name parks and buildings after departed tribal members. We even have annual memorials for some members, sometimes with large and extravagant celebrations to honor their passing. For many of our community - our traditions around death have changed dramatically from 100 years ago. Not everyone is happy with these changes, and many view them as untraditional and wrong.

Traditions change. Perhaps in 20-30 years it will become normal to have voice, memories, and likeness memorialized into an AI. Maybe we will curate our image after death as carefully as we curate our lives on social media today?

I don’t know what it will mean for our traditional views - to be constantly called back forever. Pieces of our identity - video, audio, text - tucked away in data centers around the world. As pieces of our identity are integrated into large AI models and influencing the generative art and words of people 100 years from now through tiny subtle changes in an algorithm. Not a direct copy, but the subtle influence of thought or likeness to an indescribably large system.

I think of the power created by our voices telling stories or singing songs to our 7th generation and beyond. The ability of our descendants to tap into ancestral knowledge and memory without a gatekeeper in the way. I think of the multitude of people who won’t need to work through an institution to get their voice in the world and be remembered. They have the ability to turn on a camera and start their digital legacy today.

For Creatives

These questions of legacy and digital footprints are especially pressing for creatives. For years there has been a constant drumbeat to get a brand. To post as much as possible about our lives, our processes, our thoughts and passions. To form a public persona and brand that will get others excited for our work, to become “known”.

Unfortunately much of that public brand can and will be co-opted through AI. For example we have holograms, AI George Carlin, etc. The more public the figure, the easier it is to use their existing digital footprint to re-create their likeness.

There are many questions this technology brings up -

• Who gets to control your image and likeness when you pass?

• How far does that control extend and who keeps ownership?

• Should we even keep data and information after passing or should it be wiped?

• What does that do to legacy and remembering?

• Who gets the right to be remembered, who gets erased?

• What parts of us get erased?

• What about people who specifically wish to be saved in this way?

With the amount of data we have in the world, and the amount of personal likeness, voice, and personality we put into social media and other places – having a clear directive for family and descendants becomes even more important.

I personally don’t like to think about my digital afterlife. I hate thinking about death generally - I don’t like it, and I think most folks don’t want to think about it.

I know other people of color don’t want to deal with it - it’s one reason they don’t typically have a Will when they pass. AI is just another reason that creatives of color need to ensure they outline what happens to their work and their public data when they pass!

Personal Notes

I have mixed feelings about the AI Afterlife. It feels creepy - but I also think about how I wish my mom had recorded more of her life before she passed. I wish I had more stories from her lips- and even though I realize an AI would be a pale imitation of her, having some way to share her likeness and her stories with my kids would be amazing.

At the same time, I had a hard enough time with her passing that maybe it would have made the grief process even worse if I was able to load a chatbot and have her voice or stories in front of me?

As something of a creative and public figure myself, I consider how my own children will have a much broader and intimate view of my life after I pass. The public brand I’ve created, the writings I’ve done, the photos and videos that I have, the many many stupid comments I’ve left on Facebook. Not even considering if they visit a data broker and get my purchase history, “interest profiles”, or other assorted digital cookies I’ve left behind from my many years of internet use.

I don’t think there are any good answers to this issue yet - other than we should lobby for more personal data protections, take the time to write a will or estate plan, and talk to your family about how you want to be remembered. It’s a bit morbid, but questions of legacy are extremely important for all of us, especially those of us that create a public persona and post pieces of our lives online.

Further Research:

2024 - Is the AI afterlife coming? Sundance Documentaries say yes https://www.fastcompany.com/91021083/generative-ai-death-sundance-documentaries

2024 - ‘I Died That Day’—AI Brings Back Voices of Children Killed in Shootings

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai-brings-back-voices-of-children-killed-in-shootings-7d72cb8d

2024 - George Carlin’s estate sues over AI-generated stand-up special

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/george-carlins-estate-sues-ai-generated-stand-special-titled-glad-dead-rcna135808

2017 - Speak, Memory: When her best friend died, she rebuilt him using artificial intelligence

https://www.theverge.com/a/luka-artificial-intelligence-memorial-roman-mazurenko-bot

2017 - The strange legacy of Tupac’s ‘hologram’

https://andscape.com/features/the-strange-legacy-of-tupacs-hologram-after-coachella/

2013 - Black Mirror S02E01

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2290780/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

AI after Life Companies:

https://www.soulmachines.com/

https://www.myyov.com/index.html

https://www.hereafter.ai/

https://www.almayalife.com/

Over the next few weeks I’m going to be posting older projects because I’m migrating my information over from my website. These are some older projects but I think still useful. Hope you enjoy.

This is another pretty recent project - so I did a lot of documentation and context for it already. It’s also another one that I eventually want to come back to someday. I wanted to do a proof-of-concept for an AI audiobook on one of my favorite books, and I think it turned out pretty good. But - I’ve been thinking about coming back to try to finish the rest of the chapters…

Maybe someday? I don’t know if it is work the work to do the whole book unless folks are going to listen to it - but I’ve met enough folks out in the Community that don’t know how to ready… so I think something like O’otham Audiobooks would be useful. Especially one as special as this.

Papago Woman continues to be my top recommended book for folks interested in our history. It is short (ish), it has amazing pieces of knowledge about our social and material lives, and it is one of the most accessible glimpses into our history I’ve found.

What is the project?

This is a first pass at creating an O’odham audiobook for Papago Woman by Ruth Underhill using an AI voice clone.

Why did I do it?

The main reason is even though I recommend this book to literally everyone, few people have read it yet.

No shade - I’m busy too, I can count the books I’ve read for “fun” the past year on one hand.

But that is why I wanted to try this out - I wanted to create a way for more folks to access this amazing story that has been so impactful to my journey to learn more about O’odham history.

The “Why” for creating an AI voice is that I wanted to explore the capabilities of the technology for creating new mediums to tell our stories. But I couldn’t just use an off-the-shelf AI voice - I wanted the voice for this book to be more authentic to the character of Chona. I couldn’t find an AI voice that sounded quite like what I wanted - an O’odham elder telling a story. So I created one.

At the end of the day - it isn’t quite perfect, but I think I’m happy enough with the outcome and the process that I want to share what I have so far.

How did I do it?

I’m going to focus on two main parts here - the AI voice and the Audio processing. Before I get too deep, I want to be clear that I don’t know what the heck I’m doing so take my process with a grain of salt. I’m sure real audio engineers have much better (and quicker) ways of doing this:

The AI Voice

The voice you are hearing as part of this production is a hybrid of a few different voices.

First, the “base” or foundational voice is from my Mom, I then added more voices from ElevenLabs AI library to get the voice to sound older and have more of a raspy tone.

I will warn you reader, this was probably not the best way to go about things… having multiple voices in the model created some weird outputs in the audio - it was very hard to get a consistent audio level from the AI models.

But - I think it worked out well enough. The final voice is certainly NOT my mother - even though I hear some of her coming through, it sounds much like she is aged 20-30 years. It did catch her slightly southern accent though.

Why my mom?

To start - my Mom passed in 2014. She passed just a few days after her 50th birthday from cancer and her deterioration happened so rapidly, I don’t think me or my sister really recognized how fast we were going to lose her. Unfortunately we don’t have much audio or video of her. In fact, I had to train this model on only about 2 minutes of crappy audio from voicemails that she left my sister and I.

One aspect of this project was me trying to see if I could re-create her voice from the limited samples I had available. Partially because I think the technology is interesting, but I also wanted to see if I could create a way for her voice to be part of my kids lives - to tell them stories, to teach them history and culture.

I can’t think of anything my mom would have loved more than to be part of her grandkids’ lives to help steer them into womanhood. I think she would have loved the idea of being able to expand that to teaching others in the Community as well. To be a part of this project with the goal of growing historical and cultural knowledge.

And in some ways that part of the project worked well. If you are interested in learning more I’ll link to further thoughts on the AI portion specifically, but anyway - lets move on. .

Why mix the voice?

I wanted the voice in this production to be an O’odham one. To be clear, no one voice “sounds O’odham” we all sound different. But I wanted this story to be told with a more authentic voice, and while I don’t think there is any one way for O’odham to sound, I like knowing that the story is being told by an O’odham woman.

I originally had the voice of an elder that I thought would be perfect for this project, but I wasn’t able to get the family’s permission to use the elder’s voice I wanted and I don’t think it would be correct to create a voice without some type of permission.

I was already testing out AI voice cloning for my own voice and my mom’s. But neither of our voices worked by themselves. I’m a man, and I believe this story needs to be from a female perspective. And for my mom, her base voice didn’t work for this story for a number of reasons.

The AI version of my mom’s voice had a lot of issues. One major one was that all of my voice clips were of her are in a very low voice, almost whispering at times. It made the outputs from the model sound too melancholy.

The other issue is that Chona is telling this story at an old age - Underhill states she thinks Chona was somewhere in her 80’s when they met. So, my mom’s voice didn’t sound “old” enough. She was only 50 when she passed, and I just didn’t think her voice matched the character.

In the end, I used her voice and others from ElevenLabs in a type of “hybrid” model to create the voice you are hearing.

Why Use AI?

I’ll be writing a whole blog about the ethical implications of this project, but here are some general reasons -

After the Anton’s Defiance production I wanted to test if this AI technology could be used to help bring to life more books or stories from our Community. We have such amazing resources to learn from, but no one is going to create more accessible versions of them for us - so I did it myself. I think there are a lot of ways generative AI (images, text, voice, etc) can be used for bad - but I think this is a cool example of how the technology can be used for good.

The second reason I used AI is that I wanted to have a voice for this project that evokes the auditory experience of hearing the story first hand. Chona’s story is so amazing and I didn’t want it to sound like a California valley girl or British woman. I wanted it to sound like one of us.

But, I’m doing this project in my free time and with my personal funds - I don’t have the money to hire someone to record a book. Renting a recording studio, taking time to read and re-read, and editing the audio - it’s expensive. So this was a low cost solution to getting the outcome I wanted.

A large part of my work the past few years has been trying to leverage technology to support our Community - we have amazing tools at our disposal, lets use them!

How long did it take?

Completing this project took well over 180 hours of work doing the following:

• Thinking about the implications of using AI for the project

• Testing different methods of voice cloning

• Testing different AI models

• Pre-processing audio (normalizing, compressing, editing)

• Re-writing Papago Woman to match AI pronunciation (CHO YAH!)

• Re-generating janky audio outputs

• Post-processing audio (normalizing, compressing, editing)

I spent a lot of time thinking about this project before I got into it, and It took a long time to complete due to token limits for generating the audio. Next chapter won’t be as difficult I think.

How much did it cost?

This was a bit of an expensive project - Here is a breakdown of my general costs

ElevenLabs (Creator) - $24/mo ($72 total)

ChatGPT (Premium) - $20/mo ($40 total)

Descript (Creator) - $35/mo ($70 total)

Da Vinci Resolve (free) - FREE!

Audacity (free) - FREE!

So ~$200 out of pocket and whatever my night and weekend hours are worth.

What was the process?

I’m not going to outline the whole process - but be sure I spent a LOT of hours fiddling with generating voices. I’ll give a quick outline and some pointers…

1. Pre-Process The Voice - Keep in mind that the model is going to be using whatever voice you add, so any ums or ahs are going to show up. Long pauses, etc. I learned that pre-processing the audio to remove that made a huge difference in the audio quality of the AI voice. I also found that using ElevenLabs voice isolator and Descripts “Studio Sound” add-on made a HUGE difference in the clarity of the voice.

2. Generate! - Once I had the base voice cleared up and isolated, I added it into ElevenLabs and used the “instant voice clone” option. I fiddled with the voice settings until I thought it sounded right. This took a lot of tokens because I was trying to get the right output - but eventually I landed on (30% Variable, 90% Similar, 49% Exaggerated) that worked the most often and sounded the best.

3. Post Process the Audio - After I had the Papago Woman chapter generated I first used Audacity to clean the audio - Normalize, compress, Truncate silence. The AI sometimes had some weird gaps in the words and this process helped to make it sound a lot better. I also send the audio back through Descript at this point to have its “Studio Sound” add-on clean up the audio.

4. Re-Generate The Weirdness - Look… AI voices are still pretty new and the tech has some really weird outputs sometimes. Weird noises or speed ups on certain phrases. So I went back and re-generated and cut in some of the “outtakes”. It sucks because the audio change is noticeable - but better than what was there before.

5. Celebrate - And that is it! I’m being SUPER reductive in how much work it was, but now that I’ve done it I think it will be easier in the future.

What are ways to make the project better?

There are a few ways this project could be better:

1. Don’t Use a Hybrid Voice

The biggest issue I think is the hybrid voice. If I continue to use AI, I think finding and using a single voice - preferably recorded with a good microphone - would be best. I think the current voice I have is passable, but having a dedicated voice for this project would make it much easier.

I’d love if we (Indigenous, O’odham, GRIC) had a voice database for projects like this. I’m looking for some other books that would make sense to use my own voice to narrate and try to do this with a single voice instead of a hybrid one.

2. Get a Local Voice Actor

Honestly, if I had the funding I would really like to just hire someone to do the voice acting to narrate the book. I’d like it to be someone from Community and look for the perfect voice. I think this would work well because I haven’t found a way to give AI direction in it’s reading. So, while I read some parts of the book as funny or joking - the AI reads it all in a bit of a serious manner. I just don’t think AI is a replacement for a real human being.

3. Get a Real Audio Engineer

Look - I don’t know how audio works. I’m stumbling my way through it watching Youtube tutorials. Getting someone who knows how to clean and process audio on the pre and post processing side of this project would elevate it a LOT.

Final Thoughts

I’m glad I spent the time and effort on this project. I know a lot more about how voice cloning works, I’ve developed some voice models of myself and my mom to use on future projects, and I created a really cool initial chapter that will hopefully get people interested in reading Papago Woman. I might circle back to create an audio production of the rest of the book, but for now I’m marking this project complete.

If you are interested in some of the more theoretical AI thoughts you can check out my companion blog tomorrow.

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Over the next few weeks I’m going to be posting older projects because I’m migrating my information over from my website. These are some older projects but I think still useful. Hope you enjoy

This is actually a pretty recent project - and one of my most popular so far. I’ve had a few hundred views on this one, which is pretty good considering how niche the subject is.

Since this is pretty recent I already have some good context around it - but this is still one of my favorite stories to talk about and one of the reasons I really wish we had more historical documents available from our history. This one transcript gives so many amazing insights into our history.

Someday maybe I’ll do an update on this project - I’d still love to get real voice actors and maybe trim it down a bit. It is pretty long. I cut some of the transcript to even get it down to this length, so if you are interested you can take a look at the whole transcript HERE.

PS - Yes, I know that isn’t how we dressed. AI models suck at representation. But I needed an image to post to Youtube. I’ll get a better image sooner or later!

What is the Project

I created an audio production based on a transcript conversation between an Akimel O’otham man and the local Indian Agent from 1912 around O’otham singing and dancing in the Gila River Indian Community.

Why did I do it?

Because Gina at CPAO told me to - blame her for this. I’ve been kicking this story around in some personal conversations since I first read it back in 2016 or so. I think this story has so many powerful themes and provides a glimpse into the struggle of our ancestors to maintain some type of cultural legacy.

I’ve told the story of this transcript to multiple people, but it was Gina who encouraged me to do something to tell the story more publically and put it on my website. Sometimes it takes a push to get started with something, and I’m grateful to her for providing it to me. I know this isn’t the only story of resistance from our ancestors, but I think it is a great look into history and I hope other folks enjoy it!

Also, it gave me a good excuse to play around with audio production and AI =)

How did I do it?

This project was broken into a few steps with a few different systems -

First - I read the hell out of this document. This step is the most important! Don’t skimp on the reading folks - AI will only get you so far… and you gotta know when it’s hallucinating on you.

Second - I took the original document and put it through Adobe OCR. This makes the PDF able to be copied (Ctrl + C) and pasted. It wasn’t perfect. As with most older documents (or poorly scanned ones..), the OCR was filled with errors, broken grammar, and weird characters. Don’t worry - this is where the AI comes in.

Third - I used Open AI’s Chat GPT-4 to transcribe the text. This is useful for two things - first GPT-4 was great for filling in the gaps or errors in the text. There was a bit of hallucination and creating false words, but it was pretty minimal and easily fixed by hand.

The other useful part was that GPT-4 re-structures the text to make it easier to transfer to a document. I can’t stress how important this is because you need to “chunk” the project into smaller pieces - more on that later.

Fourth - I used Chat GPT-4 to simplify and shorten the text and format it for a podcast or audio production. This step was hit or miss. I kept some of the suggestions it made, but it kept using language that sounded too… AI. I changed my prompt to ask for more “natural language” and it helped… but I didn’t feel right about it.

Fifth - Sooo…. I went back and reversed all of the AI language changes. Sometimes you do stuff and it doesn’t work. sigh. I realized I wanted to keep as much of the original wording and nuance as possible and the AI kept wanting to summarize things, even with prompts that told it not to summarize. Fail.

Sixth - I was worried that the transcript would be too long so I did some editing and cleaned up some of the sections manually. While I wanted to keep the original text as much as possible, I was worried it would be too long - too many “tokens” – more on that later.

Seventh - Now that I had the text ready, I wanted to record it into audio. My original intention was to read it myself - but I had a cold and my voice was jacked. Then, I found GPT-4 can do audio reading of outputs. I was blown away by how good and natural the AI sounded, so I had the idea of doing AI voices for the different parts of the transcript. GPT-4 doesn’t allow exporting their audio, so I tried some different text-to-speech systems.

I ended up using a website called ElevenLabs. ElevenLabs has a creator tier that allows for uploading “projects” and you can assign different voices to different sections of the text. After a bit of fiddling I was able to find some pretty good voices and assign them to the text. I then downloaded the audio file.

Eighth - While I was listening to the audio file I realized it was too… boring. I wanted to add some spice to it and not just have two voices talking back and forth. Also, some of the text was too close together - there weren’t enough natural pauses between the speakers. So I uploaded the file into a program called DaVinchi Resolve - because its freeeeee.

Ninth - In DaVinchi, as I was editing the audio it still sounded… boring. I wanted to have some background music and some foley - or sound effects. The AI in step 4 had given some ideas about sound effects when it was formatting the project as a podcast, so I had some ideas to start with. I downloaded DaVinchi’s sound library, but it was limited so I went online and found some other audio on Pixabay.

Tenth - Finally, I used Audacity to record the introduction and conclusion to bookend the production and add context. Boom - project done.

Why use AI?

For this project, I think AI was very helpful in getting the transcript cleaned up and easier to read. I’ll 100% be using it for this in the future.

As for the audio - I’m still on the fence about this. I think if I had a budget and more time I would like to have some real voice actors, or at least real people to read the scenes. The AI works well, but it is such a limited selection for “elder” voices - and NO selection for voices that have the accent I want - O’odham/Arizona.

One solution ElevenLabs has for this is Voice Generation. There are ways to create my own voice actors based on a voice sample - but I didn’t want to get into that with this project. It might be something for the future, but I didn’t want to spend the time and effort testing it at the moment.

Overall - I think the AI was super useful in getting the project created and into the world. It isn’t perfect - but I’d say it’s about 80% of my vision. Which… good enough for a pilot project!

AI Tips?

This was a longer set of text, which meant I had to “chunk” it - or break the text into smaller pieces. I find that breaking the project into smaller chunks of text makes it easier for quality assurance (QA) when sending it through the AI. It also reduces the chance that the AI will hallucinate.

Chunking your project will also help reduce the “tokens” that you are using. Most AI systems run on a token system that limits the work you can do or you pay for overages. Chunking the project helps to make sure your prompt actually works without using too much of your token quota.

On AI models - For the text, GPT-4 or higher is a must. I tried to do the transcription and other work on 3.5, and it was a terrible experience. A ton of mistakes, the AI wouldn’t listen to my instructions, and even when starting new threads or clearing the history it would keep injecting weird hallucinations of words that were said - or change the words mid-sentence. Maybe I didn’t prompt it well enough?

Either way, GPT-4 was so much easier to use and it rarely made mistakes. I had an existing subscription to Open AI for past projects, so I didn’t try other models (Gemeni/Claude/Etc).

How long did it take?

Not counting how this story has been in my head rent-free for like 8 years… this project took about 32 hours. Most of it was fiddling with audio settings and figuring out how the heck to get it on Youtube.

I spent:

~8 hours doing the transcription and editing for the text

~18 hours doing the audio editing and foley work

~2 hours doing narration and writing

~4 hours of chatting with mentors about the project

What were the costs?

I normally try to create my projects in a way that is free and easy for Community to re-create. This one isn’t free :(

Like I mentioned before, the free GPT versions will make it harder to transcribe the text and the headache isn’t worth it. Similarly, I tried a bunch of free Text-to-Speech platforms and none of them were even close to natural. Most of them sounded like straight-up robots.

Adobe Pro - $20/mo (OCR)

Open AI Chat GPT Premium - $20/mo (Text Transcripts)

ElevenLabs Creator - $20/mo (AI Voice acting)

DaVinchi Resolve - Free (Audio Editing)

Pixabay - Free (Sound effects)

Audacity - Free (Audio Recording)

On the note of “chunking” the project - this is especially important for paid versions of GPT and Eleven Labs. Both have pretty limited tokens and I just barely avoided the limit on ElevenLabs.

What are ways to make it better?

1. Real Voice Actors

The AI voices aren’t perfect. They get the job done, but there is a loss of nuance. Having genuine voice actors would make this project much better.

2. Add to the Story

I’d love to learn more about the story and find the family to learn more about the events here and around the Community. Maybe adding more episodes or doing a whole deep dive into this time period. I’ve heard the line of songs still exist as well, so adding more of the actual songs would be great too. Maybe someday…

3. Better AI Models

This is always my general complaint - the AI space isn’t diverse enough! I’d love if we (O’odham) had our own datasets to help create more authentic content. O’odham voices in this case.

One idea I had was to engage with some local folks to explore creating a voice clone through ElevenLabs. I felt like it would take too long and require a lot more testing. There are also a lot of implications for voice cloning I’d want to ponder.

It would be amazing if a indigenous community was a hub for this kind of dataset so I don’t have to create it myself - that way we had authentic voices and information for AI generation.

4. Re-do the Dialog?

I don’t know if this would make it better or not. I feel like the original dialog is pretty good… but some of the parts are super longwinded - even with my editing. The last section with Thackery droning on is especially annoying for me. So, I wonder if the project would be made more readable or listenable with more focused dialog.

5. A Play?

Finally - I think this whole situation would be perfect for a play. This is not my expertise, but while I was adding in the sound effects and listening to the final project I kept thinking of how amazing it would be to have this visualized on stage. Especially with O’odham actors!

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Over the next few weeks I’m going to be posting older projects because I’m migrating my information over from my website. These are some older projects but I think still useful. Hope you enjoy

Action Sheet Database ← Click Here to check it out!

This was one of my first major data projects and still one of the most useful ones for me today. I spent so much time doing this one - Imagine the height of 2020 when the pandemic is keeping everyone at home. I started working on this at night while my wife and I were watching netflix. It has become a bit of a ritual for me to do these projects during my nights and weekends. Dang COVID habits…

Anyway, this was one of my first major projects on Airtable - and this was all done before AI was popularized. I look back and think about the massive amount of time I spent transcribing information and my heart hurts… so glad to have AI as part of my process now!

This was before I did very detailed project updates on my process, time, and costs.

Anyway, I still come back to this database to track legislative history. It isn’t perfect - the data set didn’t include special meetings or committee meetings so there are cracks. But, it is a helpful way to see what is going on in Council over time.

I know a few other folks using this or a fork of it to help track the data over time as well. Personally, I stopped updating it, but it is something I think about updating…. With AI I feel like it would be so much easier to keep updated - but I need to make time for it. Oh well.

​What is the Data Source?

The data for this project came exclusively from issues of the Gila River Indian News and the Council Action Sheets printed each month.

Why did I do this Project?

I kept seeing all these action sheets and seeing them month after month with all this interesting data, but no way to search for anything or track subjects. So... I made a way to do it!

How long did it take?

A long, long time. From tracking down newspaper copies to transcribing the information by hand - getting this database together took months of night and weekend work.

I also did this QA blog post after I received initial feedback. Posting here in case you are interested….

I need somewhere to respond to various questions that I receive from the public on the Action Sheet Database. As I get new ones or as information evolves I will update here!

Q. Can you shade every other line in the database for easier visibility?

A. I wish! This would make it much easier to read. Airtable doesn’t allow this function right now, but it’s on their product roadmap. Once it’s available I will implement it or add a tutorial on how do it yourself.

Q. Can you link the items associated with their files? PDFs of Resolutions, reports, etc?

A. Maybe. I pulled this information from GRIN action sheets, but the original documents are housed in CCSO. I believe they have an electronic copy of most submissions, but those are not all public records according to CCSO policy.

It is possible to add documents to this database for resolutions and ordinances, so maybe someday. It will mean a LOT of record requests to CCSO, and that is time consuming.

Reports and information in new and unfinished business are NOT considered public record. In my past experience with CCSO I have been told that reports need to be requested from the reporting agency following their individual departmental or organizational policy. So this is a maybe, but unlikely.

Also, note that meeting minutes are NOT considered public record and can not be requested.

Q. Can you post the associated GRIN documents where you found this information?

A. Yes! You can find most of my sources at my Newspaper Database. Note that my records and this database are missing the following:

- Action Sheet - second June Meeting 2011

- GRIN issue April 2012

- GRIN issue June 2012

- GRIN issue October 2012

- Action Sheet - second December Meeting 2019

- GRIN issue (2) February 2020

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(THROWBACK)

Over the next few weeks I’m going to be posting older projects because I’m migrating my information over from my website. These are some older projects but I think still useful. Hope you enjoy.

I originally posted this as a companion article to my OLL post - it was a longer version of the “why” from the original project. I had a lot of questions and comments from folks on how some materials shouldn’t be so easily accessible, or how some people were giving information they shouldn’t.

And… I wanted to address and respond to those comments and hopefully help folks understand where I’m coming from and my goals.

More Thoughts on the OLL

I think of an autobiography I found while working on this project - “Desert Indian Woman, stories and dreams” (2001). It is the story of Frances Sallie Manuel who lived from 1912-1985. Frances worked with Deborah Neff to record her story and a ton of poems and writings in both O’odham and English. There was a poem toward the beginning of the book that stuck with me:

We were poor

I had no shoes

two dresses

never had anything!

I’m

very

PROUD of it so

I’d like somebody to read it

[softly] after I’m gone.

(1985)

Not every resource in this database is as personal as this, but throughout the whole project I had this passage running through my head. Our ancestors shared for us.

For us to learn, for us to teach, for us to discuss and analyze. Other people did work about us - and even that we should learn, discuss, and analyze. Then we should accept, correct, or reject - but not hide from it.

So I, for one, want more people to read these works.

One of my inspirations for this work is considering the folks who don’t have the privileges I do. Who didn’t have the opportunity to learn about our history and who didn’t get to have access to the training I’ve had to find it themselves.

I recognize that I’ve been very privileged to have amazing people in my life from a young age to mentor me in my Community’s stories and culture, but many of our fellow O’odham don’t have that. They are urban members far from home, or they are in a home with no guidance, or they have been through the foster system with non-native families, or they are non-enrolled members or any other reason.

Who knows - maybe they just turned middle age and realized that - holy crap - all this culture and history is important and I should learn it but I don’t know where to start and I don’t want to feel like a complete idiot trying to get started and I have a ton of anxiety because I’ve never even gone to a community event and where do I even start to ask questions?

You can start here bud!

I think about my own children - O’odham, but not able to be enrolled in my tribe. Blood quantum taking its toll on our Community.

Where would they be if I wasn’t here? If I didn’t teach them what I know?

How would they access our history and connect with our ancestors?

Would they ignore that side and lose their heritage entirely?

If they protect their indigenous identity, would they be welcome in my Community?

What about my grandchildren? What about my 7th generation?

I don’t know if this project will help with any of these questions for my children or any other O’odham - but I want it to.

I’m also super privileged because I’ve been supported by the Gila River Indian Community in my education and training. Going through college I had lots of training to do deep dives into archives and research repositories. These are skills everyone can learn, but I want to help so people don’t have to learn to access that knowledge - to not have to saddle themselves with thousands in debt just to find knowledge our ancestors left for us.

My mom always told me to go out and get my education - then return back and figure out a way to use what I’ve learned to give back to Community. This is one of those ways.

As I’ve pondered this project, likely too long, I found my thoughts falling into a few themes -

Culture is Power: A part of culture is history. The stories of our past are an important part of our legacy and it’s important to know they exist and how to find them. Our history and our culture shouldn’t be hidden - it should be celebrated as loudly as possible. We don’t grow our culture and our power by hiding. This database is my way of helping share the knowledge that has been generated by our communities so that other O’odham can reclaim that knowledge, revitalize that history, and grow our power.

Stewarding the Past and the Future: We are part of an arc of knowledge that stretches across history, and we should be learning and celebrating our past and helping future generations access build on our knowledge today. This project is about finding a way to steward our past and equip our future scholars to continue to tell our story.

Self Determination: Part of sharing knowledge is allowing our ancestors (and ourselves) the value of self-determination. That each of us has the right to share our stories and knowledge. I recognize that much has been extracted from our communities, but I want to assume those sharing their knowledge did so with the idea that us, their ancestors, will learn from it.This project is a way to honor those decisions.

Technology Needs OUR Culture and Values: Modern technology is often not made by us or for us. Our communities aren’t in mind when technologies are deployed - and so we need to insert ourselves into them. That means we need to take control of technologies to make our lives better, our communities stronger, and inject our culture and values into them. No one is coming to save us and build things for us - we need to do it ourselves. This project is a way to use technology to benefit our people and share our stories.

I’m generally an anxious person - I fear that one of these projects will be the one that gets me in trouble. Well, more trouble. I likely overthink the work and the impact it could make.

But, I believe this project could be a dramatic shift in the way we are viewing the past. There are so many amazing stories in our history that can, and should, be shared - but not easy ways to find them.

Still, as anxious as I am - I’m even more excited for the next steps from here. Enhancing the database by adding more entries, cleaning the data, finding ways to dive deeper and share more widely. Excited to find ways to make this trove of information more accessible - to leverage technology to propel us into the future by learning from our past. Excited to see the list of authors who have “O’odham” checked next to their name grow long with new entries.

And more than anything, I’m just happy there might be a few more nerds willing to chat with me about obscure O’odham books and stories.

<3

Leonard Bruce

Over the next few weeks I’m going to be posting older projects because I’m migrating my information over from my website. These are some older projects but I think still useful. Hope you enjoy

I originally completed this project in 2023 or 2024 and posted it on my website. The OLL is still one of my favorite and most used projects so far. I check it almost every day for a reference and I come back to my private server regularly to add new materials I find. Read until the end for a special server invite!

The O’odham Learning Library

What is the project?

I created an O’odham Learning Library by using ChatGPT to transform the entries from Bernard Fontana’s O’odham Annotated Bibliography (Fontana, 2009) into a searchable database.

Why did I do it?

I originally started a small database to organize my research library in 2022. I started a history project and I was frustrated by the lack of repositories that were related specifically to O’odham history. While there are repositories at libraries and other areas, they are rarely comprehensive and often hard to navigate. I wanted to have a central database of only O’odham related texts and resources. So I started building one.

I began by searching online for books and articles related to O’odham history to build my database and I slowly got to over 100 O’odham-related journal entries, books, and dissertations. I couldn’t believe all the cool stuff I’d found.

Then - I found the Fontana Annotated Bibliography.

I had seen Fontana’s name during my search, and I had many of his articles listed in my database, but I’d never seen this document before. Fontana (and others) had compiled this document of over a thousand pages with references to O’odham-related texts.

A treasure trove of data!

But - it wasn’t easily searchable. It was hard to navigate. So, I decided to transcribe it in a searchable format (excel) and enter it into my database (AirTable) so more people could have access to the data and more O’odham intellectuals can build on the amazing research available.

I’m deeply thankful for the amazing work that Fontana & Owen did, and recognize that I’m building on the work of a giant in the field. I hope my humble addition will be helpful to others!

Be sure to check out the full database HERE.

How should you use this?

Any way you like - but respectfully! Don’t assume everything you find is accurate - find a knowledge-keeper in your community to double check things.

In my vision I hope that O’odham are accessing this database to learn about the vast amount of amazing history our ancestors have shared. Some ways I think it is helpful:

1. Browse

Just scroll through and see if anything pops out for you. I’ve been amazed at the amount of random stories I’ve found that lead me down the coolest rabbit holes. If you really want to nerd out, find a dissertation, thesis, or journal article to get a deep dive into a subject. If you want a more casual read, find a magazine article or read some poetry!

2. Find a research topic

Maybe you are a student and you want to find past work done with your Community? Look around your field and see if there are any past studies or papers related to what interests you. Take a critical look at their work, maybe even see if you can replicate it? This database will help you find a wide variety of work to add to your research bibliography.

3. From O’odham fingertips to your eyes

One part that I love - and will be working on more - is signaling when an author is O’odham. Reading, watching, or listening to a work from an O’odham just hits different. The sources feel more authentic and helps me feel connected. Go through the Author section and filter by O’odham Author to find media that had an O’odham author involved!

How did I do it?

My first crack at the database was doing searches for key words across different libraries - Arizona State University, Public Libraries, Worldcat, Anna’s Archive, etc. I used keywords like “O’odham, Papago, Pima, Tohono” and so on. This led to some success, but the work really popped off once I found Fontana’s bibliography.

First, I created a copy of Fontana’s Annotated Bibliography that was OCR optimized with Adobe Acrobat. Most of the text was simple, but I would get occasional errors, so I used the OCR tools in Adobe to correct errors before transcription.

I then copied and pasted ~6-10 bibliography entries at a time into ChatGPT 3.5 model with the following prompt:

“Organize the data in the following columns: full Article Title without quotations, year, resource type, author (First, middle, last), journal, the exact notes associated with the entry between the [], and the pages referenced .

Also include a column that summarizes in three general topics the resource using the following categories or a close similar category: History, Stories & Legends, Water, Music, Art, Education, Employment, Economy, Government, Culture, Health, Environment, Religion, Language, Youth Book, Boarding School, Children”

I found that the prompt would keep the information organized in a similar fashion, but after a few entries the AI would start to have small variations in the output and I would have to correct the model by adding prompts like

“This table is missing a column” / “The title is cut off” / “The author name is wrong”

Occasionally the chat thread would become too long and begin to slow down my web browser - likely because the model consults with past prompts to help guide it’s response.

I began to start new chats using the same prompt to stop the slowdown. I needed to provide correction prompts to the new chat, but I found that it was easier to “train” a new thread instead of dealing with the slowdown.

While AI made the process easier, it was still time consuming. There are some systems that can process larger chunks of text, but I also wanted to review each entry to ensure the format and data had higher integrity and fewer AI hallucinations or errors. The AI model would occasionally hallucinate in the note summaries, but it was rare.

The model generated an excel-readable table and I copied the table into my AirTable database.

Why Use AI?

This was the first major project that I used AI in my workflow - and it was amazing. Using AI helped a TON. Being able to paste the data into the model and have it be transcribed into an Excel-readable table saved a huge amount of time.

I will be integrating AI into my workflows in the future for text processing - and I included my general workflow here for others to learn from. It wasn’t an easy process to learn and implement, but I can’t wait to try it out in different projects!

Issues using AI

A list of the variations that I had to look out for as I was doing this project:

1. The categories would often change.

Even with a predefined list of categories that were outlined, I found that the AI did have good suggestions for other topic areas and I decided to allow the variation. This is an area that will need to be cleaned at some point.

2. The table format would often change.

Even following the same prompt, the AI would often make changes to the table - adding new columns, removing columns, cutting off titles, or summarizing Fontana’s notes. When found, I would re-do the prompt and the system would generally fix the error. For the notes, I allowed the summarization, but the exact notes should be added at some point.

3. Pages were often inconsistently numbered.

A common inconsistency was that the AI would change the way that pages/page numbers were read from an entry. This is likely because of the difference in a book, journal, magazine, etc. Some entries have a page range and some are the number of pages in the entry. This section should be cleaned at some point to add some consistency.

4. Topics were inconsistent.

The AI was useful for creating topics, and saved a lot of time. I found that the model kept developing its own tag suggestions and kept them instead of only allowing the prompts limited list. The database ended up with too many highly specific or duplicated tags and these will need to be reviewed, combined, and cleaned up at some point to serve as a better finding guide to users.

How long did it take?

Completing this project took about 160 hours of work doing the following:

• Testing different methods of transcription

• Testing different AI models

• Thinking about the implications of using AI for the project

• Testing prompts and outputs

• OCR/Text Cleaning

• Actual transcription

• Light Database Cleaning

A large portion of my time was taken by testing different methods of transcription and different tools and AI models. I found that some tools worked better than others and had better outputs. I settled on ChatGPT 3.5 because it was free and accessible for most people who would want to do similar projects.

There were many models from www.HuggingFace.com and similar repositories that overall worked better ( higher character limits, more accurate transcription, etc) - but may be harder to use due to the hardware and technical knowledge requirements of a self-hosted AI model. Many of the better self-hosted models require higher end computers and at moderate levels of comfort with programming.

What are ways to make the database better?

There are a few ways this database could be better:

1. The Annotated Bib needs to be reviewed and the exact notes should be added.

While doing the project I noticed that Fontana’s notes were being summarized and there is some loss of detail for some entries. The summarizations work fine, but adding the exact text would be useful for doing searches or for finding specific sources. This could be done quicker using a different AI model or a premium ChatGPT 4 model.

2. The data needs a general cleaning - Book Type, Authors, Pages, Topics

Most of the data output is clear and accurate, but there are some transcription errors and other mistakes that need to be cleaned. Book types are somewhat inconsistent, Authors need to be reviewed and names corrected - especially when there are more than one listed, the page numbers need to be corrected and standardized, and the topics should be standardized.

3. Extra Context Should be Added

While the database includes most data points to help a user find and retrieve the entry - more context from the Fontana bibliography should be added. For instance, many entries are missing the journal volume and issue the entry comes from. A more specific prompt may help.

4. Entries that Fontana missed should be added

This Annotated Bibliography is one of the most comprehensive I have seen for O’odham subjects, but it isn’t fully complete. Finding and adding past materials that have been missed by Fontana would help make this more comprehensive. Also to re-examine the field of O’odham literature to add new sources is needed as well!

5. A ranking system should be implemented

I’ve found that this database is so big that there is just too much information. One solution could be to create a type of ranking system to show how “useful” the source is. Highly ranking sources such as documents that are tied directly to member voices or that have specific information in them and ranking sources with generalized or off-hand notes lower.

6. A list of recommended entries and focused deep-dives should be developed

Another solution to the vast number of sources in this database could be to create “recommended” lists for certain topics or creating a blog to highlight specific resources. A recommended reading list could point users to a collection of highly useful sources for a specific topic for instance. Or a blog could focus on one or more entries to explore them in depth.

7. Documents should be found and linked to entries

I’m not sure how licensing and copyright issues would allow this, but each entry should have the source document attached to make it easier to review. Many entries could be found through internet searches using Worldcat, Anna’s Archive, or other digital libraries. For physical copies, partnerships can be developed with archives to digitize records and attach them to the base.

Final Thoughts

Again - I am endlessly thankful for Bernard Fontana and the work he did with his annotated bibliography. His work is truly amazing and I’m glad to have been able to do my small part to transform it into something a bit more searchable, and more accessible.

I hope this project makes it easier for other O’odham to access these amazing resources and discover the knowledge our ancestors left for us.

—

The main database here is publicly available and has a lot of great information, but for copyright reasons I can’t include digital materials with the public version. If you are interested in reading any of the collected digital materials, please sign up HERE for private server access to a fair use version of the database.

I originally started the book club because I had a conversation with Dr. Anthony Newkirk about how much I love reading O’odham history books and I wish there were more people to talk about them with. His answer was “so … go do that”.

So that is pretty much where it started. I pondered it a few months and with Anthony’s support I got it started.

Our first meeting was out in Phoenix - Newkirk let me use his building at Warrior’s Code to have a few meetings, I bounced around and did some meetings in Sacaton at “The Ranch” to get more folks involved.

And… the rest is history. Here we are a year later and still going strong. We have read 10 total books together, I’ve had about 30 unique attendees and ~75 total attendees come and chat about books.

Sometimes the session is about the book itself, sometimes we skirt around the book and talk more about the time in history or the people named in the book and their place in the Community. Sometimes we get an elder who tells an amazing story, sometimes it’s just me and a few folks online…

But either way, it has been a great ride that I’ve learned so much from.

I want to close out the year by writing a “Thank You” to all the folks on my mailing list for their interest in the idea. I know many of you follow along with the books we read, even if you can’t make the meetings.

I also want to thank District 4 for being my partner for the past few months and allowing us to have our meeting in their space.

A huge thank you to all the amazing people who have made it out to one or more sessions and engage in the content. Appreciate you taking the time to come out and for the time you are spending with the reading. An extra double thank you to Ramona Sabori and Belinda Nelson who have been to nearly every meeting in D4 so far. Appreciate the hometown support.

Finally - I want to give a big shout out with my appreciation to Jackie Thomas out in D6. She has come to every session online since we started. She has also been very good at keeping me on schedule with sending out information on the books and study guides.

I’m excited to look forward to next year and another full schedule of amazing books to learn more about our ancestors and our Community.

If you are interested in learning more about the book club you can sign up for the mailing list HERE

Or - if interested to see more of what we have been reading you can find our past books at this link HERE.

When I first started reading through the Pima Gazette, I kept seeing familiar names. Many were Veterans and families I had worked with years later when I led the AmeriCorps Program and the Veteran Family Services Office.

As I began organizing and preparing the newspapers for digitization at the Huhugam Heritage Center, I started adding notes to my “Interesting Stories” section in the newspaper database. That’s when I realized how many powerful stories about our Veterans were hidden in those pages—especially from World War II.

If you haven’t read my earlier articles, the Pima Gazette was a local newspaper written and published by students at Pima Central High School in Sacaton from around 1935 to 1946. It covered school news, community updates, and, during the war years, letters and reports from service members and their families.

I’ve been thinking about this Veterans project for over a year and finally made time to start it. It’s still a work in progress, but I wanted to share what I have so far. I plan to keep adding to it—maybe even build it into something special for Memorial Day.

So far, I’ve identified just over 200 Veterans mentioned in the Gazette. For each person, I added any information I could find—letters from them, updates from their families, or short mentions in the paper. This isn’t every Veteran from the Community during that time, but it captures many who were mentioned by name.

Here is a preview of what it looks like:

Each record includes tags like:

• Rank

• Branch

• Locations

• Other information

• Stories/Articles

• Non-Community (for people identified as non-members)

I hope this project helps families and descendants of these service members learn more about their relatives and see how they were remembered in the newspaper.

World War II changed life in the Community in a big way. One article I found described how the high school was almost empty—most of the junior and senior boys had joined the military, and most of the young women were out working. The Pima Gazette captured these stories as they happened, showing how much the war reshaped daily life here at home.

If you’d like to explore more, some of these Veterans also appear in the Roots and Rivers Database. That project includes several years of local newspapers that have already been digitized, though it’s still growing. You can search for names there to find other stories from the same time period or related families.

I’ve also included short snippets of each article in this Veterans database. If you want to browse the full newspaper issues, I invite you to visit the full Gila River Newspaper Database I created, where you can read complete issues of the Pima Gazette and other local papers.

With that, I just want to say I hope everyone has a great Veterans Day. If you or a family member are interested in ordering military paperwork—especially for relatives who don’t yet have a headstone—please contact the Veteran and Family Services Office at (520) 562-5148. They can help you with the paperwork and make sure your family receives the honors and services they deserve

I went home that night and I was thinking about what those songs might be – and I realized I have a pretty good source from that era – the Pima Gazette!

So, I went through the issues and pulled any song that was mentioned. Many of these were from musical numbers or mentioned that someone played the song for a recital or some other function.

I’ve included snippets of the articles where I found each set of songs so you can see who sang them or what the song was related to. I’ve also tried to find a copy of each song so you can listen to a version of it.

This is likely not all the songs from the paper, I might have missed a couple – but I think it is a good start. Let me know if you find any I missed!

All issues of the Pima Gazette can be found at my Newspaper Database below

January 1938

Reuben and Rachel

Bullfrog on the Bank

(Can’t find)

Kentucky Babe

(Very original HERE if interested)

Stars of the Summer Night

February - 1938

Can’t You Hear Me Calling Caroline

March 1938

The Old Refrain by Kreisler

Neapolitan Nights

January 1939

My Reverie

My Walking Stick

I Still Love to Kiss You Goodnight

February 1940

Carry me Back to Old Virginia (Virginny)

March 1941

Mexicali Rose

Buttercups and Daises

(Can’t find)

Where the Wild Rose Sweetly Doth Grow

(Can’t find this one either…)

Little Sir Echo

Columbia the Gem of the Ocean

(I didn’t include most of the more well known songs like America the Beautiful or the Christmas songs, but I figured this one might be lesser known by most folks. Columbia has a very fascinating history)

May 1941

My Task

Follow the Gleam

Amapola

San Antonio Rose

The Missouri Waltz

Old Barn Dance

Old Faithful

Pale Moon (An Indian Love Song)

October 1945

Home on the Range

Santa Fe Trail

Go Down Moses

(Alright… so this song is super old, but this version is so legit…)

Texas Cowboy

(Can’t find this one)

La Paloma – Spanish

(This is not the oldest version - this song is super popular, but I’m not sure what a version from ~1940 would have been… so I just picked this one.)

And that is about it…

Surprised you made it this far! Congrats! I don’t have anything else to add - hopefully this trip down the songs of the Pima Gazette was time well-spent =)

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I put together some research on each of the men who were signatories or part of this effort. This is mainly archive and internet research, but I’d love to have more local sources if anyone wants to connect these families back to me.

Like with all the work I present, please take time to look through the sources I provide or ask an Elder with more information. I’m doing my best, but sometimes I miss things!

Last note - I was originally going to wait to post this, but figure I’ll put out what I have and circle back to do an update if any of the families want to provide more information.

Solon M. Jones

Solon M. Jones was the O’otham man credited with proposing the idea of creating a written constitution for the community. At the time, Jones worked as the agency interpreter in Sacaton. Born around 1872, Solon attended the Santa Fe Indian School before returning to the Community.

Around 1890, Solon Jones married Melissa Inez (also known as Melissa Jones after marriage). Melissa was herself Akimel O’odham and studied at Hampton Institute in Virginia from 1881 to 1885 — notable as “the only girl among her people to appreciate the value of civilized ways,” according to school records. After returning to Arizona, Melissa served as an assistant teacher and interpreter at the Sacaton agency school.

In February 1904, just a few years after the Constitution attempt, U.S. Indian Inspector Col. Frank C. Churchill visited the Gila River Reservation and took a series of photographs in Sacaton. One of these images (now in the National Museum of the American Indian’s collection) is a group portrait of Solon Jones, his wife Melissa, and their family at Sacaton.

A 1906 report from the Phoenix Indian School lauded Solon and Melissa Jones among the “successful returned students,” noting that they “in their honest, earnest efforts [help] their people and make the most of themselves.” Solon was also known to have worked as a ranger on the reservation around the 1910s and remained active in local affairs.

Solon Jones’s life was cut relatively short. He died in 1918, while still in his mid-forties.

His wife, Melissa Inez Jones, survived him by many years and continued to be an active figure in the community. In 1919, not long after Solon’s passing, anthropologist-collector Edward H. Davis visited the Gila River Reservation and met with Melissa Jones. Davis collected several O’otham artifacts from her.

Melissa also provided information to Elsie Clews Parsons for her paper on O’otham clanship. From that paper, we know that Solon and Melissa had multiple children — including Lillian Jones (born 1896), Frank Jones (born 1902), and Dora (unknown).

Though his life was cut short in 1918, Solon M. Jones left a legacy that far outlived him. No obituary has been found in public sources.

Earl A. Whitman

Earl A. Whitman was the principal drafter of the 1901 Santan constitution, working from Jones’s initial idea. In 1901 Whitman was serving as the disciplinarian at the boarding school in Sacaton . Like Jones, Whitman had an off-reservation education: he enrolled at Carlisle Indian School in 1898 and departed in 1900 .

Whitman took on the task of writing down the constitution that Jones and the others conceived, producing a document “modeled after that of the United States” but tailored to the community’s needs.

Carlisle records indicate that by 1912 Earl Whitman was working as a grade foreman for the U.S. Reclamation Service in Sacaton and that he was at some point an assistant carpenter with the Indian Service as well. The records further show his concern with allotment around that time - stating he wasn’t planning to make a home to call his own in fear that it was to be allotted soon.

And he was right - Gila River lands began to be allotted in 1917 and we are still dealing with the consequences…

Earl A. Whitman lived into mid-century; Bureau of Indian Affairs records show he died May 23, 1949 (with his estate probated in 1951) . No obituary has been found in public sources.

Antoine B. Juan

Antoine B. Juan (possibly Antonio Juan?) was one of the committee members and co-signers of the 1901 Santan constitution. Possibly a student at the Albuquerque Indian School. Little information is readily available about his early life or later activities.

No obituary or detailed biography could be found.

Edward Jackson

Edward Jackson was another signatory of the 1901 committee’s constitution . Possibly a student at the Tucson Indian Training School - Escuela.

In 1910, he is mentioned among the “O’otham elders” who helped raise funds to build the first Presbyterian church in Sacaton. Church records from that year show Edward Jackson, along with other O’otham leaders, traveling to gather donations for the new church building.

No obituary or detailed biography could be found in the sources consulted for him.

John K. Owens

John K. Owens was listed as a member of the constitution committee. Possibly a student at the Santa Fe Indian School.

No obituary or detailed biography could be found in the sources consulted for him.

Kisto Jackson (Kisto J. Morago)

Kisto Jackson, also known by Kisto Morago, was born in 1867. Kisto was the son of Luis Morago (Louis, Lewis), a name you might recognize from my past article. The Smithsonian Institute has a picture of Kisto stating he is the last remaining son of Louis Morago.

In Frank Russell’s list of committee members, he appears as “Kisto Jackson, Hampton, Va.” , he was a student at Hampton in 1881 at age 14. He attended along with Antonito Azul (Antonio’s son) and Juan Garfield. Kisto was among the first Akimel O’odham to attend Hampton (a vocational boarding school for Native Americans and African Americans).

I find it pretty interesting that Kisto was involved in the drafting of the constitution. considering his father’s ties with Azul and his own history with Antonito at Hampton.

After the constitution failed we know that Kisto married Jessie M. Chapman on December 25, 1904. I’d love to know more about this pairing - Jessie was born in Unity Wisconsin - a tiny town in the Midwest. I wonder if she was a worker in Sacaton or if Kisto somehow met her during his traveling in government.

In the realm of community affairs, Kisto emerged as an outspoken advocate for O’otham rights. In 1911 he joined other O’otham leaders in formally protesting the U.S. government’s Sacaton irrigation project, which had attempted to drill wells to compensate for the drying of the Gila River. Kisto was part of the “Business Committee” that wrote to Congress in May 1911.

Kisto Morago, Lewis D. Nelson, Harvey Cawker, and Jackson Thomas sent a letter to the U.S. Senate objecting to the costly well-pumping scheme, arguing that it would “ruin” their land with alkali and stating that “the water rights in the Gila River…are still ours.”

Thanks in part to these efforts – including petitions signed by hundreds of O’otham farmers – Congress ordered investigations and suspended the irrigation project in 1912 . Kisto’s role in this struggle showed him to be a savvy leader asserting indigenous rights against federal policies.

Kisto Morago was also a successful farmer and rancher in the Community. In 1912, Hampton’s alumni magazine The Southern Workman (p.62) reported that “Kisto Jackson Morago, a returned student, has been making a success in cattle raising and farming,” and noted that he had exhibited sorghum syrup from his crops at a local fair .

Records state (p.296) that he was also a police captain for tribe at some point, but it is unclear what year.

Kisto Morago may also be one of the elders who recorded O’otham histories with Ruth Benedict in the winter of 1927. Anthropologist Ruth Benedict visited Gila River to record Akimel O’odham oral histories; “Kisto” was one of the elders who narrated O’otham creation and other related events (others included William Blackwater, Thomas Vanyiko, Clara Ahiel, William Stevens, and Oliver Wellington) . It’s unknown to me if this is the same person, but it is close so I figured I’d include it as a possibility.

According to records, Kisto J. Morago died on November 1, 1957 in his late 80s.

No obituary could be found in the sources consulted for him.

Oliver Wellington (Oliver “Willington”)

Oliver Wellington – listed in Russell’s 1903 article as “Oliver Willington (assisted but did not sign)” – was another young O’otham involved in the constitution initiative. (The spelling Willington in the source is almost certainly a typo or variant)

Oliver was part of the committee’s discussions and helped in drafting the document, although he did not formally sign the constitution.

Oliver Wellington’s contributions to O’odham Creation and Related Events is a little clearer. In 1927, when Ruth Benedict recorded Akimel O’otham stories, Oliver Wellington was one of the storytellers who shared O’otham creation and related events . He is directly listed in the book.

According to the Chick Pan, Oliver passed on May 31st, 1940 in Sacaton and was survived by his two children Lyman Wellington and Mrs. Dan Blackwater (Her first name isn’t listed in the obituary.)

John Lewis

John Lewis of Santan was the man selected to be “Head Chief” under the new 1901 constitution. He was born in 1854, older than most of the other committee members.

John Lewis had been among the first Pima converts to Christianity in the 1880s. Presbyterian missionary Rev. Charles Cook recorded that “John Lewis of Santan” was baptized around 1885, soon after the first O’otham baptism. We also know from his obituary in the Pima Gazette that Lewis was one of the O’otham Scouts that fought against the Apache with the US Government and was even one of the men that helped to capture the Apache leader, Geronimo in 1886.

When the Santan constitution was adopted by the community in October 1901, John Lewis was unanimously elected as the new Head Chief in accordance with the constitution’s provisions, but his resignation effectively ended the fledgling constitutional government in early 1902.

John Lewis voluntarily resigned his position to avoid causing a break in the Community, stating he “would not hold the position of chief if he was not the unanimous choice of the people”.

John passed in 1939, and the Pima Gazette posted an obituary for him.

His last name might be familiar to many O’otham today - his family is still very active in public service.

John’s grandson, Rev. Roe Blaine Lewis, became a leading Presbyterian minister.

Roe’s son, Rodney B. Lewis was the first Native American to argue and win in front of the Supreme Court. He was a stalwart defender of GRIC’s water rights.

Rodney’s son, Stephen Roe Lewis, serves today as Governor of the Gila River Indian Community.

Conclusion

I started putting this together because I think it is useful to consider the folks who helped to form our Community and bring us to where we are today. I’m not putting any of these folks or their families above anyone else, but I do want to recognize the stories behind the signatures in that early Constitutional document.

This is just one cool story from history, but we have a lot more. Again, I urge you to check out sources and follow up with Elders to learn more. I’m not perfect - if you catch an error let me know and I can correct it.

If you are family, or know family of these folks and want to connect them with me to get more into this story please reach out to me at LFNBRUCIE@gmail.com

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References

These are some of the references I link above and some of the texts that I reviewed to help make this.

1. Martinez, David. “Pulling Down the Clouds: The O’odham Intellectual Tradition during the ‘Time of Famine’.” American Indian Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 1 (Winter 2010): 1–32.

2. Wilson, John. “People of the Middle Gilas” (reference to Kisto Jackson Morago going to boarding school and his police service)

3. Russell, Frank. “A Pima Constitution.” Journal of American Folklore, vol. 16, no. 63 (Oct.–Dec. 1903): 222–228. (Includes full text of the 1901 Santan Constitution and commentary.)

4. Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center: Student file of Earl A. Whitman (Pima), showing enrollment July 20, 1898 to June 14, 1900, and post-school occupation (foreman in Sacaton, 1912) .

5. Gila River Indian News – Billy Allen, “A’aga: Something to be told or talked about,” July 5, 2019. (History column recounting early Presbyterian mission efforts on Gila River.) Contains references to John Lewis of Santan as one of Rev. Cook’s first baptized converts in 1885 . Also mentions Edward Jackson (and others) raising funds in 1910 for the first Sacaton church building .

6. Southern Workman, vol. 41, no. 1 (Jan. 1912), p. 62. – Hampton Institute publication. Quote: “Kisto Jackson Morago, a returned student, who has been making a success in cattle raising and farming, exhibited [sorghum] in several stages.” (Report on Kisto Morago’s farming success after returning to Gila River.)

7. Gila River Indian Community, Pima-Maricopa Irrigation Project (P-MIP) Education Initiative (2002–2003), Lesson 22: “The Congressional Investigations: 1911–1912.” . – Describes the 1911 Pima Business Committee letter by Kisto Morago, Lewis Nelson, Harvey Cawker, Jackson Thomas to the U.S. Senate protesting the well irrigation scheme, asserting Pima water rights, and the resulting suspension of the project.

8. Gila River Indian News – Billy Allen, “Billy Allen’s A’aga” (column), Dec. 4, 2015. – Discusses O’odham winter storytelling and names the elders who told creation stories to Ruth Benedict in 1927, including “Oliver Wellington and Kisto.” (Confirms Oliver Wellington’s role as a storyteller and correct spelling of his name.)

9. FamilySearch.org genealogical profile “Jessie Chapman (1883–1981)” – Marriage record: Jessie Chapman married Kisto Jackson Morago on Dec. 25, 1904 in Sacaton, Arizona .

10. FamilySearch.org genealogical profile “Kisto Jackson Morago (1867–1957)” – Notes that Kisto J. Morago died on Nov. 1, 1957 (in Arizona) .

11. U.S. National Archives, RG 75 (Bureau of Indian Affairs), Gila River Agency Probate Records – Entry for Earl Whitman (Gila River allottee 829): Date of Death May 23, 1949; heirs and estate value (probate dated 1951) .

(ed.

1/8/26 - Update with some corrections and updates from the esteemed Billy Allen. He made some excellent recommended edits throughout the document. But I especially want to point to the names for Juan Antonio and Antonio Azul. Billy tells me “Keep in mind these individuals were not linguists, improvising at times and more importantly-not O'odham. But with Jose Lewis and Juan Dolores, initial linguistic steps were made.” — It is important to keep in mind that most O’otham you read in older texts may be written incorrect! I’m keeping the original in since those were from People of the Middle Gilas, a they are in the historical record - but I put the corrections nearby.

9/17/25 Correction- In earlier version Solon was stated as attending Carlisle, I’ve since found he actually attended Santa Fe)

I wanted to talk about a lesser-known story from our Community about Gila River’s original draft constitution.

Most folks know about the 1936 constitution that formed our early government under the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA). Some also know about the 1964 amendments, which created the modern executive and judicial branches.

But did you know that there was an even earlier constitution, prepped and ready to pass nearly thirty years before 1936 version?

We know about this event because of the work of Frank Russell, a researcher who lived among our people around 1901 and published a paper titled A Pima Constitution in 1903.

Russell wasn’t perfect… like many early anthropologists, his writing carries the language and biases of his time: “primitive this,” “underdeveloped that.” Kind of a jerk; but, without him we might not have kept as much of our history. He passed before his research and book were published. So let’s put that aside for now.

Either way, this is an amazing article that shared part of our first recorded attempt at a written constitution. A document written by and for O’otham in the Santan District. A record of an entire system of governance based on O’otham values.

This is the story of that constitution, the people behind it, and the lessons we can learn from it today.

Setting the Stage: Chiefs, Change, and the Turn of the Century

To understand what made 1901 such a turning point, we have to go back a bit further.

Our earliest widely known chief was Juan Antonio Llunas who was known in some records as Ke:li/old man Azul; or T-a hi: tam, One who walks inside or towards, in other words doesn’t back down, physically or verbally (see edit). Juan Llunes led from around 1825 to 1855, helping guide the O’otham villages through a time of increasing pressure from Mexican, American, and tribal neighbors.

(Billy Allen Edit: Billy states that historical names Culo Azul (“Blue Asshole”), and Ti’ahiatam (“Piss”) were misheard. Corrected per his knowledge!

“Culo should be Ke:li/old man; Ti’ahiatam should be T-a hi: tam, One who walks inside or towards, in other words doesn't back down, physically or verbally”

He was followed by his son, Antonio Azul, known by many names such E:da a va:ka, One who goes inside or towards, much like his father, , Ma’vit Ka’vutam (“Puma Shield”), and, in some sources, S-ce:dag m-vus, blue/green comes out from him.

(Billy Allen Edit: Billy states that the historical names Uva-a’tuka “Spread Legs”, and Ce:dagi Mus “Blue…lady parts” were also likely misheard. Corrected per his knowledge!

“Same as the father - Uva-a’tuka should be E:da a va:ka, One who goes inside or towards, much like his father. S-ce:dag Mus, I am not sure but it could have been S-ce:dag m-vus, blue/green comes out from him).”

Anyway - Azul’s time as leader saw massive shifts in our world: the Gadsden Purchase (1853) officially designated our land part of America instead of Mexico, the arrival of the first U.S. Indian agents (1859), constant warfare with Apache groups, and even the formation of Arizona’s first National Guard company (~1865) which included O’otham scouts fighting alongside the U.S. military.

Azul was noted as a leader in one of the largest victories against the Apache with the Massacre on the Gila (1857) and was part of the first peace talks with the Apache after the Camp Grant Massacre (1871). The massacre took place early in his career, he felt he was not ready for the fight, so he deferred to the older, experienced war leaders, leading to victory.

Azul helped the Community survive these storms. Under his leadership, we formed new relationships with churches and schools, and we fought off efforts to remove us to Oklahoma. He also saw our reservation created, the diversion of water from our river. He asked for schools and also accepted the Christian religion.

Around 1880, he worked with the U.S. government and Charles Cook to establish the first boarding school at Sacaton, which marked the beginning of a new era - one shaped by Western education and a new generation of O’otham youth.

Keep in mind that at the time only a sixth-grade education was available - for higher education students (including Antonio’s son Antonito) were sent to outside boarding schools like Hampton, Carlyle, and Santa Fe for further education.

By 1900, Azul had been chief for almost 50 years. He was elderly, respected, and still at the center of community life, but things had changed. A new generation of O’otham leaders educated at places like Carlisle, Santa Fe, Hampton, and Escuela began to ask hard questions about our future: What happens after Azul? Should we continue with a hereditary-style chief? Or build something new based on Western Style government.

The son of Antonio, Antonito took over but quickly realized the world had changed. Men who knew English, law and business were needed. He stepped away in 1911 and leadership was handed over to a "Business Committee”.

I don’t think this was assimilation due to colonization - our early leaders likely believed that having a more formal set of government rules would make dealing with the American government easier and allow us more power in the conversations.

The 1901 Constitution: Origins

The push for a new government came from the Santan District. According to Russell the spark came from Solon M. Jones, a Santa Fe-educated interpreter who worked at the Sacaton Agency. He shared the idea with Earl A. Whitman, who served as the disciplinarian at the Sacaton boarding school and was a graduate from Carlisle. Whitman took the lead in drafting the constitution, writing what Russell later described as a document “modeled after that of the United States.”

Jones and Whitman weren’t alone. They formed a committee with other men from the Community as well:

• Antoine B. Juan (Albuquerque Indian School)

• Edward Jackson (Tucson Escuela)

• John K. Owens (Santa Fe)

• Kisto Jackson Morago (Hampton Institute)

• Oliver Wellington, who helped draft but did not formally sign

Together, they created an 18-section constitution that laid out a government that was a mixture of traditional leadership structure with western style democracy.

Head Chiefs, Headmen, and “Legs”: A Traditional Power Structure

Before we dive into the constitution itself, it’s worth talking about what leadership looked like traditionally.

In O’otham tradition, power came from the people. Each village had its own headman or “chief” who was chosen by their village. These were often patriarchs of the large families who formed the villages, but it wasn’t always the oldest - the leadership often went to the most capable.

These headmen were supported by “undermen or sub-leaders," trusted helpers and organizers. These men had specialized roles and fulfilled specific duties for the headman. They coordinated everything from ceremonies to canal cleaning. Another important member was the ' leg or kahio," who delivered messages.

In Papago Woman, Chona’s father is the chief of her village and she describes some of his duties. Helping lead war parties and addressing legal challenges or conflicts with villagers. She also speaks of her father’s “legs,” describing how they helped with speeches, organizing labor, conducting ceremonies, and navigating the other needs of the people.

But the headman of the village were beholden to a council, The council meetings were open to males considered done or ripe. At meetings, only men who were “ripe” were allowed to talk and set policy. A man was considered bai or ripe when certain tasks had been performed, key was raising and caring for his family, roughly at about 30 years of age. Killers or war veterans who had gone through the cleansing rituals also earned the right to speak. Younger men were allowed to attend, but not speak. Women were not allowed to join, but it’s said they exerted power through their husbands.

Each village chief was brought together for an overall council when the Head Chief called for it - these were to discuss overall issues, but each village chief also had to follow the will of their individual councils.

Azul and his father were Headmen but didn’t have explicit control, they had soft power. They were selected and sustained for their intellect and vision, but reports say they had to lead through suasion - but consensus was the ideal.. Meaning they pointed the way and used shame or shared values to bring the Community into alignment instead of formal punishment. Villages were free to move but at the risk of an attack. There was safety in numbers.

It was a decentralized system - the Head Chief would be the face dealing with governments or other tribes, but the real power was the Headmen of the villages and the people themselves in their village councils.

It’s unclear how a Head Chief was chosen - I’ve seen some reports that it was a royal lineage, I’ve seen some saying it was based on merit and vision. O'otham; some individuals can see a long way (future), others only see today.

(Billy Allen Edit: No royalty, everyone has a gift to offer. However many felt the good qualities of the father will be present in the son. The elders watch and begin to get an idea of what each child may have to offer. See Shining Evening story in Chona. One child may be told to go gather wood, while another may be told to sit and listen.)

When Llunas passed, there was much discussion if Antonio should take the role of Head Chief - many said he was too young or didn’t have the right skills. But, he proved them wrong and was Head Chief for over 50 years!

Inside the Constitution: Building on O’otham Governance

The 1901 Santan Constitution was shaped by O’otham ways of governing that had existed for generations. These young leaders were adapting and blending village-based leadership, collective decision-making, and shared responsibilities into a formal structure that could stand up to the pressures of the new century.

Some of the ideas were adopted from church hierarchy, Protestant or Catholic. The Spaniards were looking for ONE spokesman and issued a staff, ribbon, medallion to signify the Spanish office.

Frank Russell, who published the constitution in 1903, notes that he received only a condensed version — the original was cut in half just before the meeting, likely removing 10–20 pages of content. What we’re left with is just a portion, but it still reveals a lot about their thinking.

Executive Roles

• Head Chief

Elected for a 4-year term. Could call the council, enforce decisions, and refer unresolved matters to the Indian Agent. But, like traditional chiefs, he was accountable to the Council, not above it.

• Assistant Chiefs (2)

Two-year terms. Tasked with communicating orders, distributing rations, and appointing local helpers.

• Undermen

Head Chief appointed aides, similar to the traditional “legs” that supported headmen in local organizing, speech-making, and work coordination.

• Minute Men

Oversaw canal and dam labor, reporting to the Undermen. A new name, but a role that matches traditional ditch tenders and irrigation labor coordinators in traditional village structures.

Legislative Roles (The Council Remains Central)

• Council of 11 members

Made up of 8 elected Councilmen, 2 Assistant Chiefs, and the Head Chief.

• Annual rotation

One-fourth of the Council elected each year - a system designed to balance community accountability with stable leadership.

• Powers of the Council

Responsible for all general issues, settling disputes, reviewing fines, and directing the Head Chief on what to enforce.

Infrastructure and Resource Management (Canals, Roads, and Labor)

• President of the Canal

Elected to oversee all dam and water distribution. Although it’s unclear who they reported to, this role resembles the traditional “water captain” or “Alcalde", who organized irrigation and work crews.

• Water Directors

Appointed by village Chiefs. These local managers likely reflected the ditch tenders who helped organize water use by section.

• Road Overseer

Appointed by the Head Chief. Managed public road repair and enforced labor participation. Failure to help with road work resulted in a fine - a formalized version of the public duty requirements that existed in the villages.

Local Laws and Civic Obligations

• Livestock trespass rules

Animals caught in someone’s field could lead to fines. This ended up being a major sore point for Antonio Azul, who had many free-roaming cattle.

• Fence and gate regulations

Required maintenance of fences and gates, and imposed penalties for damage or neglect.

• Ditch labor requirements

Men were required to show up for canal repair unless excused. Substitutes were allowed, but skipping work without reason resulted in a fine.

• Environmental responsibility

The constitution prohibited irrigating uncultivated land — a surprising but wise move, ensuring that limited water only went to active farms.

A Cultural Translation

Some might see this as the beginning of Western-style government in Gila River. But when you compare it to what we know about traditional O’otham governance, it becomes clear that this matches the traditional governance system of the O’otham in a new light.

• The Chief and Council worked together, just like Head Chief and Village Chiefs did in the past.

• Water systems were communally managed, with roles for elected and appointed positions.

• Public labor and civic duties were expected, not optional.

These men were creating something both new and timeless. We can see elements of our traditional structures being paired with Milgan style government in an attempt to strengthen both.

What is funny to me is the critique by Russell who complains that the document is crude and incomplete, but if he had known more about our traditional structure of government I think he would realize this was a very amazing attempt to modernize O’otham governance to meet the needs of the day.

What’s Not in It

I think what is also interesting is the stuff that is not in this draft of the constitution….

There are no blood quantum requirements or enrollment rules in this constitution. No roll numbers, no percentages, no categories of “full” or “half.” At a time when the federal government was pushing blood quantum as a tool to limit tribal citizenship over generations, the authors of this constitution didn’t touch on the idea.

People were part of the community because they lived it, contributed to it, and were raised in its responsibilities. Maybe it was a simpler time, but I think the idea that identity could be fractionalized would have made no sense to our ancestors.

(Billy Allen Edit: This comes from the code of warriors; never kill children or women. They were to be taken captive and brought back to the village to become a slave, taking the place of one who had died or killed. Most were allowed their freedom much later on.

We were a crossroads, a trading center with other Natives coming in from all directions. The blood of many groups is in our veins.)

There’s also no mention of U.S. citizenship, allegiance, or dependency. This is especially striking because by 1901, many boarding school-educated Native youth were being encouraged to embrace U.S. citizenship as a mark of “progress.” Yet here, these young leaders chose not to center their identity around that. They weren’t trying to “become American.” They were building something for their people to continue their traditional governance.

(Billy Allen Edit: US Citizenship didn’t come until later in 1926 with the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. O’otham were not allowed to vote until much later.

In 1928, two Gila River tribal members, Peter Porter and Rudolf Johnson, filed suit for the right to vote in elections. They were denied.

Harry Austin and Frank Harrison of Fort McDowell finally won a court case in 1948, but true voting rights were not obtained until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed literacy tests and other discriminatory practices.)

Collapse and Aftermath: What Went Wrong

So what happened? Why don’t we still have a Head Chief and folks don’t know this story?

Well, the constitution was submitted to the Indian Agent, who approved it. A public meeting was held, and about fifty O’otham gathered to adopt it. John Lewis of Santan - a respected leader, and veteran of the apache wars - was elected Head Chief under the new system.

By all appearances, the transition had succeeded.

But then came the backlash.

One of the ex-Carlisle men reportedly upset he wasn’t chosen as chief complained to the Indian Agent. At the same time, Antonio Azul, still alive and politically powerful, objected to the constitution as well. The livestock provisions specifically would have affected him personally, as he owned many free-roaming cattle. Him and some of his followers criticized the new constitution.

Under pressure, the Indian Agent withdrew his approval. The system was vetoed.

John Lewis resigned, stating that he wanted the constitution to succeed, but would not serve without full community support. The moment Lewis chose unity over power was the end of the effort.

The constitutional committee continued to hold meetings, but there wasn’t a successful push to form a new government until the IRA-constitution in 1936.

Comparison to the 1936 Constitution

Yep - it would be ~35 more years before Gila River formally adopted another written constitution under the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934.

That federal law was framed as offering tribes the chance to form recognized governments. But with that offer came a federal template that didn’t emerge from our Community’s traditions. While we were not forced to adopt the federal template, we know now that there were extreme pressures placed upon leaders at the time to follow the template as closely as possible.

Our 1936 constitution followed that template more than it reflected O’otham governance.

It established a strong legislative council, modeled on congressional systems, but it eliminated the role of Head Chief. Unlike the 1901 version, which gave a clear executive function to a community-selected leader, the 1936 document didn’t include an executive branch. Instead, administrative power, including the position of Governor, was a position selected from within the Council itself, blurring the line between legislative and executive authority.

We didn’t have a strong executive branch until the amendments in the 1960’s when a descendant of Luis and Kisto Morago, Jay R. Morago, spearheaded a campaign to include the role in the constitution.

It introduced bureaucratic membership rules: enrollment numbers, blood quantum requirements, and legal definitions of who counted. These systems were not part of O’otham ways of belonging, but became official policy. They sometimes excluding families who had always been part of the land and community and we still are dealing with those issues today.

It also formalized federal oversight, with requirements for BIA approval of actions, strict rules around ordinances and resolutions, and outside auditing of tribal decisions. In practice, this often meant that while we had a formal government, we didn’t always have full control over it.

It’s also important to note that even in 1936, not everyone supported the new constitution. In papers like the Chick Pan, some voices raised concern that the IRA document was just another way for the federal government to tighten its grip on tribal affairs and that the new system might weaken our own internal forms of accountability. That’s a different story, for a different article. But it’s a reminder that every constitution came with its own tensions and compromises.

Conclusion

In 1901, in the Santan District, a group of young O’otham leaders didn’t wait for permission. They drafted a constitution. They gathered the people. They organized elections.

This moment pushes back on so many of the tired narratives about Indigenous peoples. It shows that we were not broken, defeated, or passive. Even as federal systems tried to mold us through boarding schools, land policies, and religious pressure, our people were already using those same systems to serve our needs. We sent our children to learn in those schools not to become white, but to come back and lead. And they did.

The Santan Constitution wasn’t a copy of the U.S. model or created from a forced template. It was a grassroots hybrid rooted in our cultural history.

The people behind it - Solon Jones, Earl Whitman, Kisto Morago, John Lewis, and many others went on to serve as nation-builders in the decades that followed.

Maybe one day, future generations will look back on our time and see the same pattern. That even in a time of language loss, cultural disconnection, and change, we are still evolving, still adapting, still finding ways to carry O’otham values forward. That just like these young leaders in 1901, we are working to keep our history and culture alive for what’s still to come.

If you made it to the end, thanks for reading and subscribe if you are interested in content like this. I’m working on a biographical sketch of the folks who were signatories of the constitution. If you or someone you know is family or know any of these folks I’d love to get more information on them. You can contact me at LFNBRUCIE@gmail.com

And - if you want even MORE reading, I grabbed much of my knowledge from:

• Pulling Down the Clouds: The O'odham Intellectual Tradition during the "Time of Famine"

• Peoples of the Middle Gila

• The Pima Indians

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Found this speech while going through issues for my Newspaper Database. You can read a bit more about the Chick Pan history here if interested.

Alexander Cannon was GRIC’s third governor under the IRA Constitution we adopted. In the speech he talks about governance, his life, and his vision for what will help the Community grow.

When I came across this speech during my research I knew I wanted to make it into an audio - this is one of the earliest direct speeches from a Community leader that I’ve found and I think it is a really interesting window into the time.

I’ve also uploaded to Youtube if that works better for folks -

Here is a bit of my educational journey through GRIC’s Higher Ed Program.

Getting Started

When I began this series, I thought I was just doing data analysis. I was looking at where our students go, what they study, how many degrees get completed, and how the GRIC Higher Education system holds up.

The more time I spent with the data, the more I started seeing pieces of my own journey in it. I saw breaks between degrees, people taking time off, switching schools, re-entering. I saw stories that looked a lot like mine.

Education has always been important to my family. When I was very young, I remember my mom taking college courses at Mesa Community College. I was too young to remember anything about the classes themselves, except that I would be stuck in daycare for a few hours while she was in class. What I remember most clearly is the clock tower lit up at night when my mom would take us back to her car after class. That memory has stayed with me for years.

I do not think she was using GRIC funds for school at those times in the mid 90s. But she thought it was an important step for getting where she wanted to go. For her, it was about building a life with more choices. Even if she did not have all the support systems in place, she was struggling to get through.

My father worked as a signmaker and was in school as well for his bachelor’s degree. I remember occasional nights with him playing Space Invaders after he got off school, but it was a short time. My parents divorced while I was in kindergarten and he was not part of my life much after that.

After their divorce my mom moved us out to the reservation to live with her family, and that is where I spent most of my childhood. From an early age I knew college was possible. In fact it was expected. I remember always being told that I should be thinking about college. Even before we moved to the reservation my mom drilled into me that education was good for personal growth and success, but also that whatever I learned I should figure out how to bring it back to serve the Community.

The Middle School Leap

Most of my early education was at Sacaton Elementary and Sacaton Middle Schools. I loved reading, I was a general nerd, and I was probably annoying as hell.

I had amazing teachers, but they were dealing with students facing heavy challenges — mental health trauma, extreme poverty, and all of it made harder by a shortage of funding. It was not always the best learning environment.

On top of that were my own struggles. I was dealing with an alcoholic and abusive stepfather, the choice of isolating myself or hanging out with gangs, and the occasional racism.

Even with all of that, I always did well in school. My mom was an amazing human being who did her best to stay engaged with the school system. Sometimes she would go into what she called “Bitchy Bossy Bev” (BBB) mode when she felt like I was not being served well enough. I also had mentors like Connie Jackson and Brenda Sekaquaptewa, along with others I still consider important in my life.

My early educational journey ended earlier than most. I skipped 8th grade entirely.

By the time I reached that point, my few school friends were gone — caught up in drugs, in juvie, or dropped out of school entirely. I faced the idea of going into 8th grade alone, dealing with more bullies, and an all-around bad environment. It wasn’t just school, I was also going through normal teen boy stuff - trying to fit in, getting caught for light shoplifting, and my mom was generally worried about me.

I’d been excelling in school since we had moved, and my mom asked if I could get bumped up a grade in hopes I’d avoid getting deeper into my teen angst.

Even though I was excelling by Sacaton’s standards, I do not think I was ready for the shift. But it would not be the first strange bump in my education.

Finding My Place in High School

The transition into high school was rough. Since the calendar was different from Sacaton, I started just a little late in the semester, after everyone had already settled in. The curriculum felt completely out of sync with what I was used to. CG Union even had a requirement to take Physics in the first semester. Physics?!

I still remember my English class and the casual expectation to complete a five-paragraph essay. Everyone else seemed to know exactly how to do it. Maybe it was something I missed in 8th grade, or maybe Sacaton just had not prepared me for it, but I felt like a total failure. I had gone from being near the top of the school to completely out of touch and out of place.

The biggest change was the number of non-Native students. I had gone from a 98% Native school system to a far more diverse, mostly milgahn classroom. It was a big adjustment. Eventually I found friends, but that first semester was rocky.

Then there were the bus rides. Anyone living on the reservation knows they can be long. Our neighborhood was one of the first picked up and last dropped off. I often spent over an hour a day each way on the bus. There were no cell phones back then, so I would try to read but mostly just fell asleep.

My grades dropped fast. I went from A’s and B’s at Sacaton to C’s and D’s in high school. Things got better over time as I found friends and some stability. My sister helped guide me for a while, until she left for an alternative school.

The rest of my high school life was not typical either. My mom was going through personal struggles with my stepdad and a miscarriage, which would eventually lead to the beginnings of her cancer diagnosis. It was a rough time.

During my freshman year, I met friends through my sister who in my Sophmore year were moving into an apartment with their older siblings and away from their parents. I convinced my mom it made sense for me to do the same. I told her I would be closer to school, have friends around who cared for me, and be more independent. She agreed.

Looking back, it seems completely wild that my mom let me move out at 15. But she had left home young herself, so maybe she trusted the process. I was lucky to land with amazing friends who supported me. They were straight-edge emo kids, so instead of partying, our fun was playing Donkey Konga and eating Little Caesars for nearly every meal.

My schoolwork improved for a while. I attended more often, got better grades, and felt more stable.

Then came the summer before my senior year, and things started to fall apart again. Many of my friends had graduated or moved away. I moved in with my girlfriend and her family to get through the summer. Things were fine at first. I was working full-time at Wendy’s, closing shifts that kept me up until 2 or 3 a.m., but we both knew she would be leaving soon for college in Oregon.

When school started, we tried doing the long-distance thing, but we broke up within the first couple of weeks. Her parents were kind and offered to let me stay, but it felt awkward, so I found my own place and kept working the same hours to make rent.

All the chaos hit my first semester of senior year hard. My GPA tanked. Looking back, I probably should have moved back in with my mom, but I did not want to be a burden. I liked being independent and did not want to go back to riding the bus for over two hours a day.

School felt empty without my friends. My living situation was tense, I was working late nights, and I started to wonder if it was worth finishing my senior year. My boss at Wendy’s told me that if I kept it up, I could be a manager as soon as I turned 18, just a few months away, and start making “real” money.

So I dropped out a month or so into my senior year.

The GED Gamble

I did not drop out completely right away. I knew my mom would be furious if I just quit school, so I tried enrolling in an alternative night school. It was a go-at-your-own-pace program where you completed endless packets of assignments. After a week, I hated it. It was lonely, I had joined mid-semester, and I was giving up prime chili-making hours at Wendy’s.

I could not quit entirely though. I did not want my mom going into BBB-mode on me. So I came up with a plan. If I got my GED, I could soften the disappointment, and after talking to an advisor at the local community college, I realized it could be my ticket into higher education. With a GED, I could enroll in community college and skip the worst of the lectures from my mom.

So I took my GED and started applying to colleges. I will not go into all the personal details here, but I applied to a school in Oregon and was accepted.

Alright, I can’t totally hide it. I was following my ex-girlfriend. I hadn’t planned it that way, but when she came down for Christmas break, she left an opening for me to think that if we lived closer, things might work out. Writing that out now makes me cringe. I was young and not thinking clearly.

Still, I accepted the offer and moved to Oregon. I quit my job at Wendy’s, and my manager actually cried that I was not staying to work my way up to manager. But I had “true love” to follow, and I thought going to school there was the right move.

This was my entrance into GRIC’s higher education system. I had been mostly disconnected from Gila River since I left Sacaton for high school, but my mom told me to check if the tribe would fund me instead of taking out loans.

That meant going to Student Services and filling out a FAFSA, the federal aid application. I had no idea why it was part of the process, but it was in the packet. Because I was living away from home, I had to coordinate with my mom to get her tax information, then figure out how to submit everything.

It was my first real trip into the world of tribal bureaucracy. Forms got lost, calls and emails had to be made daily, and with enough persistence, you might just come out the other side with what you needed.

Coming Back Home

I give them a hard time, but my advisor in Student Services was actually amazing. I still remember Bonnie DeWeaver and Jim Larney helping me understand the process and making sure my documents were in on time. Looking back now, I realize how busy she must have been, but she still found time to call me with updates.

Once everything was approved, I headed to Oregon for my first year of college.

Moving out of state to follow an ex and attend a small private school was probably a huge mistake. The silver lining was that it got me out of Casa Grande and Sacaton, into a whole new environment. I met great people, lived on campus, and was right in the middle of Portland with public transit and endless new experiences.

Things with my ex did not work out. I realized pretty quickly that I had made a mistake, and I did not stay. I left and moved back home.

The GRIC scholarship program softened the blow. They paid for my first year and I avoided crushing debt. That is one of the strengths of the program — the tribe takes on a lot of risk for first-time college students. While the system assumes students are ready to make big decisions at 17 or 18, the reality is many of us are not. I am grateful my tribe helped me through that first leap.

Once back in Arizona, I took a break from school. I wanted to go back, but life was chaotic again. I got a job, found new roommates, and it took more than a year before I made my way back into college.

This second round of applying for funding was harder. Because I had taken a break, I had to complete the entire application process again. I still needed my mom’s tax information, had to redo the FAFSA, and deal with the headache of transferring out-of-state credits. Not every credit from my Oregon school would transfer to Arizona.

It took research and several meetings with Mesa Community College staff (the same school my mom attended) to figure out how my credits could apply. Eventually, I got everything in and started my community college journey.

I spent a couple of years at MCC working toward my associate degree. The only real hiccup came when I got a D in a math class. I made the credit up over the summer, paying out of pocket, but I did not submit my transcript in time. That put me in “bad status” with TED without them notifying me.

Their policy was clear: bad grades meant I had to make up the credit before they would fund me again. But even after calls and emails, I did not get a firm answer until I was already a month into the semester. By then it was too late to drop classes without affecting my transcript. I ended up paying for that semester out of pocket, with help from friends, family, and a little credit card debt.

Once that speed bump was behind me, I was fine until I graduated. I stayed at MCC for about two years, finishing my associate degree and preparing to transfer to ASU. At the time, I was set on studying sociology and becoming a marriage and family counselor.

Before transferring, I had to reapply to TED yet again. This time it was because I took a semester off after earning my AA. I had started a new job, my apartment lease ended, and I was moving around the valley. Stability was still hard to come by.

I started the reapplication process late in the year, scrambling to gather transcripts and documents. I drove them to Sacaton to avoid the risk of emailed files being “lost.” It was the middle of summer, my car’s air conditioning was out, and I spent a few days soaking the driver’s seat in sweat while racing between offices to gather documents like my CDIB, birth certificate, and other important documents.

Degree in Hand

Attending ASU was great. Since I already had my associate degree, I only needed to take upper-level classes to graduate. I chose sociology over psychology because the course path looked more interesting.

I took classes on organizational structure, city planning, statistics, and other subjects that ended up having a big impact on my career, even if they did not seem directly connected to my goals at the time.

Most of my classes were online. By then, I was working at a manufacturing job and had recently gotten married. Between my work schedule and family life, I had little time to drive to campus. During my senior year, we welcomed our first child. Baby plus school was a brutal combination, and I was running on very little sleep.

I graduated in December, which meant I did not walk across the stage. Still, I had my diploma and was excited to start a career in my field. I loved my manufacturing job, but my mom kept reminding me, “When you are finished, you need to go back and give back to the Community.”

With that in mind, I applied for multiple entry-level jobs in the Community. I was rejected each time, either for not matching specific skills or for lacking experience in the exact area the department needed. After a few months of trying and failing, I followed my mom’s advice and went to the Employment and Training Department. She had gone through the department when she first moved back to the Community, and it had led to her 15-year career.

Getting enrolled in Employment and Training was its own process. There were in-person requirements, wet signatures, and plenty of trips to the office. I was in a strange spot — I was employed and making good money, but I wanted to leave that job for one with the Community.

Eventually, Director Lana Chanda met with me personally. We talked about my goal to go to graduate school and become a counselor or psychologist. She offered me a position in the summer youth program so I could gain experience counseling young people preparing to enter the program.

It was a big pay cut, but it was closer to home, and I convinced my wife it would be a stepping stone. It also made my mom happy.

That experience turned out to be invaluable.

A Different Direction

I loved working with my clients. I enjoyed the problem solving involved in finding them places to work and matching their skills. But I also realized that I really hated the counseling part. I am glad I figured that out before committing to graduate school for counseling.

What I discovered was that I liked helping people, but I enjoyed research, writing, and data much more than direct one-on-one counseling.

I stayed at Employment and Training for a while, eventually moving into a grant position to build an AmeriCorps program that served veterans. I loved that role. I got to build the grant and program from the ground up, identify gaps in Community services, and meet some amazing people along the way.

After a few years, I moved to the Office of the Community Manager as a program evaluator, working on an even wider range of projects involving planning and program development.

At that job, I got the itch to go back to school. With encouragement from my boss and mentor, Pamela Thompson, I decided the timing was right. I wanted to stay at Arizona State University, and I was interested in technology.

In my research, I found a new program called the Master of Science and Technology Policy. I did not know much about the degree itself, but the professors’ projects looked fascinating. I applied and was accepted with only a few issues through TED.

Of course, that meant another round of submitting documents. I had to gather transcripts and records from all the schools I had attended, even though I had submitted them before. I told myself this would be the last time. At least my car had air conditioning now, and my office was right down the street from Tribal Education, which made the process easier.

I completed graduate school while keeping my full-time job. It was exhausting and stressful, but also one of the most rewarding periods of my life.

Conclusion

You may ask what is the point of writing all this. When I started this analysis, I saw how closely the data reflected my own story. My journey to higher education was not straightforward. I took breaks during my degrees and I took breaks between my degrees. Like many other Community members, I did not have a perfect life or an easy path to getting into school and staying there.

Even with the incredible opportunity that our scholarship provides, there were challenges. It helped me get into school, but it was not a perfect solution. My own frustrations with TED are the same I have heard from others for years. The communication and financial aid process can make getting into school feel like a chore. I was fortunate that for most of my academic career I had my mom encouraging me, pushing me to get my documents in on time, advocating for me, and even teasing me when I was slow to get back into school. After she passed, I was lucky to have a boss and mentor who took over that role and kept me going.

Despite the challenges, I have to acknowledge how life-changing it is to come out of college without debt. I have never totaled the full cost of my education or calculated exactly what the Community covered after grants, scholarships, and other aid, but I do know that in graduate school I had classmates carrying $50,000, $60,000, even $100,000 in debt. They will be paying it off for decades.

I was able to complete my graduate education with a few thousand in loans that I was able to pay back pretty quickly.

So despite the winding road, the paperwork marathons, and the summer drives to drop off documents, I give my full appreciation to the Community for their support.

Beyond the funding, Employment and Training played a major role in shaping my career. The scholarship helped me get the degrees, but the real-world experience was just as important. Without that, I might have gone straight into counseling and ended up hating my work.

For students, my advice is to treat higher education like a shared responsibility between you and the programs that support you. Get your paperwork in on time. Learn the policies and understand what is required to stay in good standing. Work with a counselor to map out your path before you start so you know how each step fits into your long-term goals. Build relationships with mentors who can guide you, advocate for you, and keep you accountable. I was lucky to have my mom, later a boss and mentor, who filled that role. You will need people like that in your corner, especially when the process feels overwhelming.

At the same time, remember that the degree is only part of the picture. Employment and Training can be just as valuable as Student Services. Take advantage of career exploration opportunities - internships, job shadowing, volunteering - anything that lets you see the work up close. The sooner you test your interest in a career, the sooner you can make changes if it is not the right fit. That saves you time, money, and frustration, and it helps make sure tribal funds are supporting paths that lead to real success.

Finally, understand that your journey may not be perfect or straightforward. Breaks will happen. Plans will change. What matters most is staying connected to your goals, using the resources available to you, and keeping your focus on building a future that is both fulfilling for you and valuable to the Community.

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Policy Guidance

Based on the story above I put together a few policy thoughts to consider for our tribal leadership when they are thinking about ways my story might spark some ideas for change in our current system.

Recommendations for Tribal Leadership

1. Help with transitions between schools
   Switching from Sacaton to CG Union was a shock. The new curriculum, new environment, and different social setting hit me all at once. Look at ways to prepare students for these jumps so they do not start high school already feeling behind. The JOM or K-12 programs might help with this, they were not around when I was in school – but maybe do some evaluation to make sure they are actually helping with that transition.

2. Connect school to careers
   Make sure Student Services and Employment and Training partner closely so students can try out jobs in their field before they graduate. Internships, job shadowing, or short work programs would help students make sure they are heading into a career they actually want.

3. Build a mentor network
   Not every student has someone like my mom or my boss to push them and advocate for them. Create a mentor program that pairs students with Community members in the fields they are studying. Those relationships can keep people motivated and on track.

4. Fix communication and paperwork issues
   Lost documents and slow responses can cost a student a whole semester. Invest in a better way to submit and track paperwork, and set clear timelines for getting back to students.

5. Make it easier to come back after a break
   Many students will take time off for work, family, or other reasons. Instead of starting over from scratch, make the return process simpler so people can get back into school quickly and keep moving toward their goals.

This is a continuation of my previous article on GRIC’s higher education program.

Section 5: What Students Are Studying

This section highlights the fields of study most commonly pursued by GRIC students over the past decade.

However, not all graduation announcements in the Gila River Indian News included degree focus information. As a result, this section is based only on records where a field of study was listed.

Note: A significant portion of graduation announcements did not include a field of study. In this dataset, 266 of 640 degrees (42 percent) had no field reported.

Degree Focus (if known)

Key Trends

• Business Management, Healthcare, and Social & Behavioral Science are the most frequently listed degree focus areas.

  • Reflects the GRIC enterprises of Gaming and Healthcare

• Cultural Studies and History is the least frequent type of degree

  • To be honest I am stretching it with this…. there is only 1 degree that really aligned with this category. The rest were American Indian Studies or Indian Law degrees that I’m hoping might be culturally or historically relevant…

Insight

The distribution of degree focus areas over the past decade shows a heavy concentration in Business & Management (66), Healthcare (65), and Social & Behavioral Sciences (46). This pattern reflects the economic and workforce priorities of the Gila River Indian Community, especially the prominence of gaming enterprises and the healthcare sector as major employers and service providers.

In contrast, Cultural Studies & History ranks the lowest, with only 8 (ish) degrees - and even this number is inflated. Only one degree (Anthropology) clearly aligns with this category. The rest are in fields like American Indian Studies and Indian Law, which may incorporate cultural and historical elements but are not primarily designed as cultural, language, or history programs.

This imbalance highlights a critical gap: GRIC needs more students in language, cultural preservation, and history!

While the economic case for business and healthcare degrees is strong, the long-term vitality of Akimel O’otham and Pee Posh languages and GRIC Historical knowledge depends on producing more graduates prepared to teach, research, and lead in these areas.

*NOTE - There is a limitation in the available data. For example, multiple students are known to have completed the Language Teacher Cohort around 2017, yet their degree focus does not appear in the dataset from GRIN issues.

Section 7: Most Attended Schools

Over the past ten years, GRIC students have earned degrees from a wide range of colleges and universities across the country. While 159 different institutions are represented, a smaller number of schools awarded the majority of degrees. This section highlights the most frequently attended institutions.

Common Schools (only Top 10)

Where Are Schools Located?

Insight

Most degrees come from Arizona schools that are close and practical. ASU is the anchor. Community colleges like Chandler-Gilbert, Central Arizona, South Mountain, and Mesa are right behind, which fits the pattern of students using local, affordable on-ramps and transfer paths.

Career programs such as Carrington and RSI also play a big role, pointing to strong demand for healthcare and trades. The most common places GRIC members are attending are in the Phoenix-metro area.

Conclusion

Over the past decade, the accomplishments of GRIC students recognized in the Gila River Indian News tell a clear story: higher education is a growing and evolving part of our Community’s journey.

Most degrees have come from universities and community colleges, with bachelor’s and associate pathways serving as the backbone of achievement. Career-focused certificates, master’s programs, and the small number of doctoral degrees round out the picture, revealing both our strengths and the opportunities ahead.

One of the most striking findings is what’s missing. Cultural studies, language preservation, and history degrees make up only a small fraction of the total — in fact, there is just one anthropology degree in the entire dataset, and no clearly identified O’otham or Pee Posh language degrees. While economic needs make business, healthcare, and professional fields an understandable priority, the long-term vitality of our languages, culture, and historical knowledge depends on preparing more graduates to teach, research, and lead in these areas.

Each row in the dataset represents someone’s hard work, persistence, and support network.

I’ve walked this path myself, navigating an unconventional journey through the same scholarship system that has helped so many others. To close out this report, I want to share my own story of how those opportunities shaped my education, my career, and my understanding of what it means to give back.

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