Speakers Bureau Topics Gallery
This gallery offers a look at the topics presented by the Las Guias Speakers Bureau. Each slide is sort of a film “trailer” with an illustration and a brief description of what the topic covers. Think of it as a sort of shopping list you can use to help you choose the presentation you would like to schedule.
Architecture of the Ancestral Pueblo People
The history of the Ancestral Pueblo people began about 1 A.D. and ended in the 13th century. The presentation includes: the Four Corners area of Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico, where the Ancestral Pueblo people lived in the regions of the Northern San Juan River (Mesa Verde), Kayenta, Chaco Canyon, the Little Colorado River and the northern Rio Grande. As a result of a great drought in the late 13th century, these Pueblo people abandoned their homes in the Four Corners area and migrated generally to river areas to establish the pueblos that exist today.
Southwest Baskets
This presentation focuses on the Southwest baskets currently on display in the exhibit SoHOME: Native Peoples of the Southwest. It includes baskets from the Apache, Pai, O’odham, Navajo, and Hopi reservations with descriptions of the materials, construction, and uses of the baskets.
Beautiful Resistence II
The "style" of American Indian painting became popularly identified as “flatstyle”, “studio style” or “traditional”. The popular subjects or themes centered on tribal cultures, produced principally in water-based pigments called gouache, and were greatly encouraged by non-Indian collectors, educators and curators. The works of art in the Heard Museum collection, now numbering over 3000, are not so much a reflection of a painted past, but rather, a poignant visual diary of the human resistance and cultural persistence.
Contemporary American Indian Women
The popular idea of the American Indian was created by 19th and early 20th Century writers, artists and photographers who traveled throughout the United States recording what they believed to be the reality of American Indian life: the glorified brave and the downtrodden woman walking behind her man. The reality was far from this scenario. The lives of women varied from tribe to tribe but generally women had power and authority over their lives. This gave them a great deal of control within the community. During the 20th and into the 21st Century the American Indian Woman has claimed her place in society in the arts, community, medicine, law, and government. This presentation highlights some of the leaders in their fields.
Dine' - The Navajo
The Navajo, who prefer to call themselves the "DINE" which means the "People," live on the largest reservation in the United States (more than 15 million acres - about the size of W. Virginia) located in northeast Arizona and parts of Utah and New Mexico. We show their history, location and some of their traditions, housing, clothing, food, arts and crafts.
Every Picture Tells A Story
This presentation introduces audiences to Native Americans of Northwestern U.S., Canada, the Colorado Plateau, the Rio Grande River, the Sonoran Desert, the Great Plains, and the Great Lakes. It focuses on the environments of each geographic area and demonstrates how elements of these environments are depicted on objects created by Native Americans or appear on their arts. Thus, whatever is seen on pottery, baskets, and tapestries, tells a story about the makers and their surroundings.
Home: Native Peoples of the Southwest
Home: Native Peoples of the Southwest is the permanent, signature exhibit of the Heard Museum. Through its great Southwest collections, the Heard tells the individual and collective stories of Indian families and their homelands from their prehistoric and historic pasts through their present and looks forward to their future. Past, present and future merge in the art fence which ushers us into Home.
The Hohokam and the O'odham
The prehistoric Hohokam people inhabited the Salt River Valley from about 1 to 1450 AD. The desert tribes who today inhabit the Sonoran Desert are known as the O'odham.
This presentation shows some of the history of these two cultures, including the periods, traditions, housing, farming, clothing, food, arts and crafts, and present day occupations of the O'odham.
Hopi
The Colorado Plateau in northeastern Arizona is a land of high open mesas, rocky canyons and a few small streams. Ancestors of the Hopi people have been living here for hundreds of years. Many Hopi still reside in villages atop three mesas in northeastern Arizona on the Hopi reservation, over 1.5 million acres. The presentation includes the Pueblo Revolt, Hopi history and location as well as some of their traditions, housing, clothing, food, arts and crafts and present day occupations. The updated version includes fine art photos from the 2008 exhibit at Heard North, “We Are About Beauty”.
Inde' - The Apache
The Apache are Athapascan speaking people who arrived in the Southwest sometime between 1000 and 1500 A.D., migrating from western Canada where there are still Athapascan speaking people. They separated, moved to different locals, adapted to each environment and to contact with other Indian peoples. They still retained core traditions and values. The Apache continued to be Hunters and Gatherers with a nomadic lifestyle. We show their history, location and some of their traditions, housing, clothing, food, arts and crafts and present day occupations.
Life In A Cold Place - Arctic Art From The Albrecht Collection
Through a selection of prints, drawings and sculpture from the Albrecht Collection, the exhibit Life in a Cold Place examines the ways that artists depict their lives and survive in a cold environment. The art depicts themes of land, family, housing and traditional ways of getting food through hunting and fishing. The homeland of the Inuit spans the Arctic circle from Siberia to Greenland and covers more than 1 million square miles in Canada alone.
Southwest Indian Jewelry: Inspiration to Creation
This presentation focuses on jewelry made by American Indians in the Southwest. We begin with a brief history and move on to important jewelers of the past who changed jewelry making in the Southwest, and then to cutting edge jewelers of today. The title, Southwest Indian Jewelers: Inspiration to Creation, refers to the mentoring process that goes on, not only by peers, but traditions that inspire through generations. Jewelers today are informed by work done in the past. Yet modern day Indian jewelers feel free to improvise and go in different directions while still paying attention to their heritage.
Native Foods
As in many cultures, food plays a central role in the life of Native Americans in the Southwest. This presentation on southwestern Native American food will look at only a few of the various kinds of foods that Native Americans eat in the Southwest and evidence of the integral position of food in native life. Cultural traditions are interwoven in telling the story of food from soup to nuts. Images of food sources used by Native American artists on media as diverse as paintings, basketry, pottery, jewelry, and carvings enliven the presentation.
California Baskets
Of Grasses, Trees, and Ferns included 201 California baskets from the Heard Museum’s permanent collection. Both utilitarian and decorative baskets display a variety of techniques, materials and uses. Tribes represented include Washoe, Paiute, Mono Lake, Chemehuevi, Panamint, Chumash, Hupa, Karuk, Yurok, Pomo, and others.
Phoenix Indian School
History of the Phoenix Indian School from 1892-1990. The off-Reservation Federal Indian Boarding School system began in 1879 with the opening of Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The Boarding Schools were under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of War. The founder of the school was Richard Henry Pratt whose philosophy was, “Kill the Indian in him and save the man.” Pratt believed that only off-reservation boarding schools, by removing children from the influence of family and tribe could accomplish the purpose of assimilation.
Pre-History Of The Southwest
This is an overview of the pre-historic people, Ancestral Pueblo, the Mogollon, and Hohokam, of Arizona who lived in the environmental zones of the Sonoran Desert, the Uplands, and the Colorado Plateau. It shows their housing, canals, crops, pottery, textiles, and projectile points.
Rain: The Importance Of Water To Native Americans
This presentation explores the relationship between rain and indigenous people of the SW. From prehistoric time to the present American Indians have welcomed rain into their lives and land, and prayed for its blessing through ceremony and creative expressions. Many expressions of rain and water focus on rain’s essential relationship to fertility – to the generation of life in all forms. Some expressions are enduring – like the embroidery on clothing. Others are temporary – like body paint on a ceremonial dancer or pigments in a sand painting. Song, poetry and prayer petition the spirits and celebrate rain’s blessing.
Southwest Arts
Southwest Arts begins with an overview of environmental zones of the Hopi, Navajo, Apache, and O’odham reservations. The presentation includes examples of textiles, basketry, pottery, jewelry, painting, and sculpture from these diverse tribes.
Window On The Heard
This is a presentation about the Heard Museum and it's beginning in 1929 as well as Arizona in the 1920's. There is a Heard biography, with photos showing them at various places throughout the world. It gives an update of the Heard Museum as it exists today and the mission of the museum. Included is education, American Indian artists who demonstrate on the grounds, the artists in residence, the Museum Shop and Bookstore, the restaurant, the annual Indian Fair & Market, Hoop dance Championship, the satellites of the Heard Museum, and Home: Native Peoples in the Southwest, the signature gallery opened in 2005.
Zuni Jewelry: A Metaphor For Zuni Society
There is a very strong relationship when studying art which exists between the art form and the culture of which it is a part. In the Zuni Pueblo of Western New Mexico, the art of jewelry making is definitely not apart from the everyday life of the Zuni people, but a phase of activity that is economically and socially related to the total activity of the Pueblo, as it has been for 100’s of years.
This presentation is not simply about the jewelry of Zuni, which is spectacular, but about the life and historical background of the Zuni people and how they are reflected in their beautiful jewelry.
Plants To Politics
The year 1492 began an age of European exploration and conquest of the native populations inhabiting this "new-world”, misnamed by Columbus because he thought he had reached India. The native populations were subsequently conquered, enslaved, and interlaced into the culture and history of the modern nations of the Americas. Agriculture, pharmacology, world economy, architecture, urban planning and politics today have been impacted by the significant and continuing influence of native peoples. Inheritors of thousands of years of totally different cultures, history and life ways, native peoples possessed an array of sophisticated cultural practices. The native peoples of this hemisphere have influenced every facet of present-day life here in the Americas. We talk of New World foods (including production and preservation), medicines, plants for other uses, anatomy, economy and trade, lumber, architecture and urban planning and the US Constitution. (On slide projector only.)
Story Telling And Games
This presentation is designed for children in preschool, kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grades. The stories presented come from the books: The Goat and the Rug, Lizard on the Wall, When Clay Sings, The Coyote and the Butterflies, and others chosen by the guide. The guide can work with requester as to which props he or she may bring: stuffed animals(i.e. goat, rug, coyote, butterfly finger puppet.) Each guide who tells stories usually augments each presentation with his or her own objects.