Celebrating 30 Years of Service

This coming year marks the 30th Anniversary for the International Sonoran Desert Alliance (ISDA). Over the past 30 years the organization has overcome tremendous challenges and met a series of extraordinarily ambitious goals.

ISDA was founded as, and remains, a convener of Sonoran Desert peoples at the intersection of three nations: The Tohono O’odham Nation, Mexico, and the United States. This year, we celebrated the 7th bi-annual Trinational Sonoran Desert Symposium. That’s 14 years of connecting researchers, land managers, culture bearers, and residents of the Sonoran Desert toward fostering communication and productive collaboration across the bioregion.

The current version of this Trinational Symposium represents an extension of ISDA’s early convening work in the 1990’s. From this large footprint convening work, the necessity for a more community-scaled focus emerged. In villages, ejidos, and towns across the bioregion, local needs and aspirations stretched well beyond the environmental and cultural pillars of ISDA’s mission. Safe affordable housing, economic opportunity, education, and workforce skill development consistently topped the list of priorities in places throughout the Sonoran Desert. The great ‘Aha!’ moment for ISDA was embracing just how interwoven this smaller footprint work would be with the landscape-scale commitment to environmental conservation and cultural preservation.

Over the past 20 years, an integrated community-level approach has been piloted in Ajo, Arizona, an unincorporated copper mining town in western Pima County. After mining operations shuttered in the mid-1980s, Ajo experienced a near economic collapse with dis-investment, high unemployment, and limited economic opportunity becoming the norm. In the early 2000s, concerned community members engaged ISDA to help save historic buildings imbued with treasured memories while exploring opportunities for revitalization. Through a process we lovingly call ‘Creative Placekeeping’ ISDA worked with artists and culture bearers to honor and unpack the past while making space to adapt to a changing future. What is emerging in Ajo is a vibrant and creative community that holds environmental stewardship and honor for cultural heritage as bedrock values.

30 years in, we are excited to begin expanding this ‘small footprint’ work into the greater Sonoran Desert Biosphere Region (SDBR)—a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve. We believe the SDBR is the perfect vehicle to share out the lessons learned, and innovative approaches piloted in Ajo. Whether it be collaborating on workforce development with the Pisinemo District of the Tohono O’odham Nation, expanding cultural exchanges with Sonoyta, Sonora, or being thought partners for historic preservation work kicking off in Gila Bend, ISDA is eager to see how the work done in Ajo might be a catalyst for positive change throughout the region.