The Tohono O’odham Nation has lived in the Sonoran Desert of southeastern Arizona and northwest Mexico, traversing the border between the two countries for thousands of years. Developing a self-sufficient lifestyle closely tied to the land and its resources is core to the O’odham Himdag, the ancient life ways of the Tohono O’odham people, to create solutions for the future. With this tradition as a guide, artist, activist, and basket weaver Terrol Dew Johnson and his family have dedicated their lives to developing and disseminating traditional crafts and promoting Native food sovereignty.
Sisters Thelma, Vivian, Mary, and Betty preparing to thrash beans at the Pancho farm, 1950s; Courtesy of the Johnson Family
Johnson’s own multifaceted practice represents a form of cultural revitalization in the service of community continuity, health, economic development, and climate action. Johnson and his mother, Betty Pancho, reflect on their family’s history of making home with the land and their community.
TERROL DEW JOHNSON When I tell the story of my work, I always start with my grandparents, Katherine and Alexander Pancho, because they set me on my path to do the work that I do today for my community and my family. I was very fortunate to have my grandparents in my life. With five kids in my family, my grandparents stepped in to help raise us, and it was with them that we would go into the desert to harvest food. Together we would organize community activities and visit friends. It was through them that I got to know my community and to understand the landscape and the traditional O’odham way of life. My grandfather was a medicine man, a healer, my grandmother was an herbalist, and they were both farmers. They came from the traditional farming village of Kawulk.
BETTY PANCHO In our village, there were at least nine or ten families. My dad’s parents farmed the land, and their parents did before that. My mother’s family came up from Mexico. It was peaceful and quiet and communal. The kids all played together, and the families all helped each other out. Everyone would get together at harvest time and help one another bring in their crops, going from one farm to another.
JOHNSON Years ago, just about every village on the Nation had farmland where each family would work the land and grow their own food to feed them for the year. We have winter crops and summer crops that correspond to our two desert rainy seasons. We rely on the monsoon rains to supply the water for our fields through flood-based farming. We built canals to divert water from the big desert washes. For most of the year, these washes are dry. But during the rains, the water would flow and cover the fields completely—this is flood-based farming. The canals that supply water to the city of Phoenix today are the remnants of canals like this that the O’odham people built pre-colonization, but the water no longer comes from the desert, it comes from the Colorado River miles and miles away.
Excerpt from Making Home: Belonging, Memory, and Utopia in the 21st Century, (Cooper Hewitt | The MIT Press, 2025) published in companion with Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial (New York, Nov. 2024-Aug. 2025)
Sisters Thelma, Vivian, Mary, and Betty preparing to thrash beans at the Pancho Farm, 1950s; Courtesy of the Johnson Family
