Phoenix has a story of survival that too few of us know. That's about to change

You don’t have to push out far from downtown Phoenix to see what a brutish place the Salt River Valley once was. On the edge of our city is original desert cooked hard by the sun. Walk that craggy surface for any length in June and you’ll feel the life force drain from you. 

We live in a mean place. We’ve managed comfortably with our swimming pools and air conditioning so we don’t feel the elements. But people once did.

We don’t think about them much. We think of Phoenix as a new place, an overnight metropolis that passed Philadelphia as the fifth largest city in America.

But the Salt River Valley is not a new place. It’s an ancient one.

And on Nov. 7 a partnership led by the Arizona Community Foundation, the most important benefactor of worthy causes in this state, gave out five large-dollar prizes to artists to help us better understand the place where we live.

The Phoenix we know today, the metropolis, is the product of surveyors and builders, businessmen and boosters. They wanted everything a world-class city enjoys – freeways, symphonies, ballparks, museums and high-rises.  

Phoenix needs artists to tell our stories

Now that we've built those things, it’s time for a different specialist. The artist. The artist will bring us something skyscrapers can’t – a sense of place.

About five years ago, Arizona Community Foundation teamed with the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State University and The Arizona Republic | azcentral.com to create “The New Arizona Prize,” a contest to inspire problem-solving, not from the top down, but the ground up; to get more Arizonans using their ingenuity to address some of the state’s biggest problems.

In that spirit, the first two prizes went to a video project that is raising water consciousness across the state and a beer-tasting challenge that is preparing Arizonans for the likelihood that we’ll one day drink recycled water. 

A prize to better understand this place

This year’s prize aims to address our water problems while helping Arizonans gain a deeper appreciation of their state. The partnership, joined by Salt River Project, put out the call for teams to form and compete for “The Water Public Art Challenge.”  

The idea was to use art to tell the story of the ancient peoples who once populated the Salt River Valley. The Tohono O’Odham Indian community calls these people the “Huhugam,” their ancestors from ages past.

Archaeologists call a subset of these ancestors the “Hohokam,” a mispronunciation of Huhugam that became the word to describe an archaeology tradition in central and southern Arizona – a distinct indigenous group who populated the Salt River Valley for more than 1,000 years from A.D. 400 to 1450.

They lived in this forlorn desert when there was no electricity to cool temperatures or any other modern conveniences. Their environment challenged their survival with drought and floods, but they survived a very long time and became models of human endurance.

What we can learn from the Huhugam

They were ingenious people. Before Columbus arrived in the Americas, they learned to harness the Salt River through one of the most advanced canal systems of the ancient world. They cultivated hundreds of thousands of acres of the Salt River Valley with corn, beans, squash and cotton. 

They created homes with courtyards, pottery with intricate designs and ball courts with smooth surfaces, where they played a variant of the ancient Mesoamerican ballgame. 

To recall that past, The New Arizona Prize invited teams to combine storytelling and education in works of public art. “We hoped to give local artists and art organizations an opportunity to display their creative power in order to bring respect and reverence for the Huhugam culture,” said Steve Seleznow, president & CEO of the Arizona Community Foundation.

The five winning teams will use their $50,000 prizes to develop works of public art, such as murals and storytelling to depict an ancient culture that learned to manage their water resources in the Salt River Valley. 

Modern Arizonans know very little about the Huhugam who preceded them, but like them they face a future of water scarcity and will have to find water to supply their future.  

Andrew Ross, author of the 2011 book “Bird on Fire,” has called Phoenix the least sustainable city on Earth. He adds, “The remnants of Hohokam canals and pit houses are a potent reminder of ecological collapse; no other American city sits atop such an eloquent allegory.” 

Perhaps, but the Hohokam lasted a millennium in one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. The Roman Empire lasted 500 years in a Mediterranean climate.

Less the symbol of our impending doom, the Hohokam are our model of resourceful ingenuity. They were the original problem-solvers in this Valley.

Phil Boas is Arizona Republic editorial page editor. He can be reached at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.

The Winners

Sixteen teams submitted public art entries to try to win one of five prizes of $50,000 each. On Nov. 7, after several rounds of judging, The Arizona Community Foundation, along with its partners Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State University and The Arizona Republic | azcentral.com, named the following five projects the winners. 

All of Us Together (Team leader: Sonia Perillo)

“We Are Still Here” will weave together stories of Huhugam history at the Audubon Arizona nature center in Phoenix and later the Huhugam Heritage Center on the Gila River Indian Community. It will use augmented reality murals and feature the sounds of water, nature and the species that inhabited the Gila and Salt River basins. 

The Continuum (Team leader: Thomas Marcus)

“Su:dagi Haichu Agga: Waters Story” will be a multimedia art installment of murals, carved wooden tools used to create the canals and farm the land of the Salt River Valley. It will be located near Hayden Butte and Town Lake in Tempe.

Water Heritage Collection (Team leader: Carmen de Novais)

A cut metal gate and fence adorned with prehistoric and historic plant motifs will welcome visitors through the new entrance to the Pueblo Grande Museum in Phoenix. “Portal to the Past” will engage and educate new audiences about the ancient peoples who populated this Valley.

Scottsdale Arts (Team leader: Kim Curry-Evans)

“A Deeper Map” is a public art project illuminating the Valley’s ancient past using a map-based mobile app that allows people to see where Hohokam cultural features once existed. This is combined with web-based storytelling to increase understanding of the ancients.

City of Mesa (Team leader: Cindy Ornstein)

A team of artists will collaborate with surrounding local communities to “make palpable the legacy of canals” that once ran at Mesa’s Riverview Park. The area was once the site of more than 10 Hohokam canals. “Water = Life: Making the Invisible Visible” will use art to expose the public to “the hidden legacy of the canals.”

READ MORE:

• Arizona can solve its water problems ... with art? Yes, really
• Hohokam people built canals, cities, culture
• John McCain knew this: The Salt River is who we are