Global Futures must be rooted in ancient pasts and Indigenous futures thinking

By 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 desert valley. These elaborate water systems helped nourish native plants such as creosote, agave and cholla, and through the agricultural knowledge, lifeways and strong hands of the local people, cultivated farm crops such as maize, cotton and squash to feed the communities of the Huhugkam.

Today this water is still contained in cemented canals that flow from east to west underneath our building. It is “daylighted,” or visible on the surface, not buried underground like it is most places in Tempe. Every day dozens of faculty, staff and students walk across a small 10-foot bridge to get to the various offices and meeting rooms of our five-story building. What do they think of this waterway? Do they notice it? Are they aware of its profound history and example of ancient engineering that grew a paradise in the desert?

As a mixed-race Native American woman, I have learned to remember, recognize and respect the first peoples of the land and the many layers of contested history of a place. As Keith Basso reports in his book on the Western Apache languages, “Wisdom Sits in Places,” there are many layers to the wisdom of the land: geological, hydrological, biological, cultural and spiritual. Water, as one of the most important elements of life, has the fluid ability to contain memory and beauty, as well as pathogens and toxins. Many Indigenous leaders, including the Hopi leader Vernon Masayesva, have shared that water is our relative, both our ancestors and future generations. By having a flowing waterway, a spirit path, as the dynamic foundation of our living laboratory, we have a constant reminder of the flow of time, from deep, ancient pasts of Native ingenuity to living presence and unfolding futures, all at once. To truly embody sustainability, global futures must be rooted in ancient pasts and Indigenous futures thinking. As the Santee Sioux poet John Trudell said, “we are in the middle of forever.”

As sustainability scholars and practitioners dedicated to a regenerative and just future for all, it is important that we combat settler colonialism’s erasure of Indigenous peoples’ past and presence. It is critically important that our college and all the people who inhabit our building (and campus) remember and acknowledge the ancient roots of our shared place. The Huhugam didn’t “disappear,” they changed, adapted, survived and responded to changing conditions. They persist today in their descendants dispersed throughout many sovereign nations, including the Tohono O’odham, Onk Akimel O’odham, Akimel O’odham, and others at the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, and Gila River and Ak-chin tribal nations. To create a sustainable and just future we must reckon with and reconcile the past. It is critically important to recognize that Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge systems still persist today. They are alive in the living descendants of the ancient ones, the tribal citizens, elders and leaders of the local Indigenous nations.

These essential Native ways of knowing are also being revitalized by many Native scholars and students in university classrooms, watershed restoration field trips, seed-saving workshops and other contemporary learning environments. As an Indigenous scholar in the Global Futures Laboratory, I am honored to lead the new Indigenous Knowledges Focal Area and am committed to creating safe and fertile places for the respectful study, inclusion and illumination of Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge systems in sustainability research, education and engagement. We only have to look down to the Earth at the vital life force of water pulsing in the ancient canal systems to remember the people who came before, the people who are still here and the people we must all be once again to regenerate just and thriving futures.