I'itoi's Forgotten Children

In Iitois Forgotten Children, David Martnez exposes the hidden history of a fascinating Indigenous cultural group who have persisted through three hundred years of colonization and retained their sense of their distinctiveness as a people.Jared Orsi, author of Peoples of a Sonoran Desert Oasis: Recovering the Lost History and Culture of Quitobaquito

Alternately called Sand Papagos and Areneos, the Hia-ced Oodham (people of the sand dunes) have endured Spanish, Mexican, and American colonization. In 1851 they suffered a yellow fever epidemic, after which they were presumed extinct. But what happens when a people, a nation, refuses to accept the claim that they are extinct? As long as they remember their name for themselves, their origin narrative, who their relatives are, and where their ancestral lands lay, then they will persevere as a people. As they endure, one of their descendants may live to write their story.

Iitois Forgotten Children is that story for the Hia-ced Oodham.

Too often overlooked in the annals of Spanish and Mexican colonial histories, such as that of Padre Eusebio Kino, not to mention utterly ignored by the Americans when they established their reservation system, the Hia-ced Oodham have long awaited the writing of their history. Iitois Forgotten Children portrays the resilient hemajkam (nation) that exists today. Based on Oodham oral tradition, including ooshikbina (calendar sticks), this book reasserts Hia-ced Oodham as a unique part of Oodham and Southwest history.