Global Futures must be rooted in ancient pasts and Indigenous futures thinking Melissa K. Nelson
In January 2022, the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory and most of its units, including the College of Global Futures, moved into a new home base — a modern, multi storied, LEED-certified laboratory, research and learning center on the corner of University Drive and Rural Road on the Tempe campus on the traditional lands of the Akimel O’odham and Piipaash peoples. There are many unique features and extraordinary details to our ultra modern, futuristic building, currently known as ISTB7, and to be officially named during the grand opening on April 19 during our Earth Week Celebration. But the most outstanding feature for me is that this building is located on a spirit path — the Global Futures Laboratory includes and features one of the historic and precolonial water canals that were built by Indigenous ancestors over 1,000 years ago. This canal still holds and moves water through the Salt River Valley of the Sonoran Desert, as it has done throughout many generations. For many thousand of years, Indigenous peoples have utilized the river systems that originate in the mountain ranges that emerge northeast of Phoenix. These mountains shed snowmelt and rainwater down the bajadas and valleys west toward the Gulf of California. In a place like modern Phoenix that receives 10-15 inches of rain a year, capturing, storing and spreading fresh water is an art and science of survival, once mastered by the Huhugam, the people who came centuries before this university was established. Over time, these carefully constructed water canals have brought fresh mountain water to the parched
