irrigation - ancestral innovation

The dryer climates of Aridoamerica required different agricultural techniques from the more densely forested regions of Turtle Island. Water collection and distribution was a central focus in our sustenance and food systems - especially as some of our ancestors moved away from hunter-gatherer lifeways and into more sedentary ones.

Throughout what is now considered Northern Mexico and the American Southwest, floodplain cultivation, extensive irrigation systems, terrazas, and other forms of harvesting water were used in order to ensure successful crop production.

For example, many sacred sites throughout the Southwest, like the Gila Cliff Dwellings of New Mexico, show evidence of people living and storing food in cliff’s above flood plains - using the fields and mesa tops for crop production. It’s important to note that the Tularosa Mogollon people of the Gila Cliff dwellings, who lived there supposedly from the 1270s-early 1300s, were not the first people to occupy these cliffs! Proof of ancestors of an even more ancient time leave us wondering exactly how long we have been practicing methods of agriculture and food storage along with hunting and gathering.

While growing food and sustenance requires a relationship with the processes and systems surrounding, the ability to work with the land’s access to water is essential. The practice of cultivating floodplains involves harnessing the abundance that a flood can bring. Here, our ingenious relatives would plant in the floodplains, which are flat, fertile areas of land. The soil was so rich because with each flood, its nutrients and salts were replenished, making it ideal for growing foods.

Similarly, terraza agriculture refers to another practice of farming found in the mountains of Aridoamerica. Farmers would create step-like platforms or terraces on steep hillsides - retaining the walls to hold the soil and channel the water to irrigate crops. This helped prevent soil erosion from heavy rainfall and optimized water usage by slowing down run off. It also increased the amount of farmable land available in such hilly terrains. 

So much of our ability to sustain ourselves comes from our ability to be adaptable to the world around us. By learning to work with the land and her processes, rather than contort them. The resourcefulness our people embodied is something to hold reverence in as we return to and reinvent ways of being with the landscapes we belong to.