festivals and events

During the 150^th birthday of Ajo, ISDA hosted a tri-cultural community dinner featuring regional foods gathered locally and prepared in traditional ways, such as cactus salad, cazuela, tepiary beans, and mesquite meal muffins with saguaro jelly.

Each September 21st, in conjunction with the United Nations’ International Day of Peace, groups of students and teachers from the Tohono O’odham Nation and Sonoyta, Mexico, join the Ajo community for a parade of giant dove kites and festivities that signify mutual respect among nations. We so believe in the contagious joy and mutual respect engendered by multicultural public festivities that we have taken our puppets to participate in parades honoring Revolution Day in Sonoyta, Mexico; Native Awareness Week in San Lucy; and the Sonoran Shindig and the Street Fairs in Ajo.

In 2008 ISDA sponsored the first Tohono Sonoran Jam— day long music festival featuring five O'odham bands in the Ajo Town Plaza. In 2009, former residents of Ajo's original Indian Village and Mexican Town, will gather for reunions with music, dancing, ceremonies, and cultural food's.

It seems to me that all real communities grow out of a shared confrontation with survival.  Communities are not produced by sentiment or mere goodwill.  They grow out of a shared struggle.  Our situation in the desert is an incubator for community.

-Larry Harvey