OUR LANDSCAPES SHAPE US

When it comes to understanding ourselves through the histories of our ancestors - hundreds of years of colonization have forced us to often have to rely Eurocentric descriptions and explanations of who we were. In some cases, colonizers, historians, researchers - have been able to preserve a lot of knowledge that otherwise would have been erased from history. They have preserved this knowledge and at the same time soaked it in colonial perspectives. While we understand that we should always read between the lines, we will use some of these Eurocentric understandings as tools for understanding. We encourage everyone to build their own relations to these places and histories through experience and exposure.

Some such labels that we have adopted here in our research are the words Aridoamerica, Oasisamerica, and Mesoamerica. 

Aridoamerica describes the arid desert lands north of Mesoamerica throughout most of northern Mexico and into the American southwest, including Texas– the Chichimecan homelands. Oasisamerica describes a smaller pocket within Aridoamerica which was more suited to farming and sedentary life. The four corners region of the Southwest and much of northwestern Mexico falls into the category of Oasisamerica. 

These three terms were coined by German-Mexican immigrant and scholar Paul Kirchoff. Paul used the terms not only as ways to define the land, but more importantly, as ways to define cultural paradigms. Inherently, these terms seek to categorize and separate us culturally, in ways that our ancestors may not have agreed with or even been thinking about. We tend to use the words more in relation to the land, and leave cultural boundaries to speak for ourselves– we are not invested in culturally dividing ourselves, and on the contrary, we are more interested in seeing the similarities and siblinghood that has and does exist in the northern lands and beyond. 

It is important to understand that while the land we live on shapes and defines our cultures and lifeways, we must also remember that the land is all one. It is all connected. And we are all connected in the same way. The way we conceive of our lands and cultures is less like borders and territories and more like los colores del arcoiris. While you can say that there are different colors, you cannot really define where one ends and the next starts– the red at one end is fundamentally linked to the violet at the other, and so they are inseparable although they appear to be polar opposites.

Inhabitants of Oasisamerica have never just been sedentary or solely farmers. Aridoamericanos have also practiced agriculture. There have always been fully nomadic peoples who have called Oasisamerica home, as well as sedentary inhabitants within Aridoamerica. Likewise, while we don’t focus on Mesoamerica here, we would be remiss to fail in acknowledging the cultural impact that Mesoamerican cultures have had on our northern raza indigena since as far back as anyone can tell. We have had thousands of years to get to know each other, and we knew each other well.