The Tohono O'odham Ki:Ki Association (Tohono O'odham Housing Authority), formerly known as the Papago Housing Authority, is the tribally designated housing entity of the Tohono O'odham Nation of Arizona, enacted by Resolution of the Tohono O'odham Legislative Council No. 98-03.[1]
The Tohono O'odham Ki:Ki Association (TOKA) is the recipient of the Indian Community Development Block Grant (ICDBG) by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development.[2] This entitles the TOKA to $2.75 million to be utilized for the replacement and rebuilding of vacant and abandoned homes throughout the Nation.
The purpose of the TOKA is to provide low-income and affordable housing services to the membership of the Tohono O'odham Nation. The TOKA is overseen by a five-person Board of Directors, who are appointed by the Tohono O'odham Nation Legislative Council. The programs daily operations are overseen by an Executive Director who is appointed by the Board of Directors. There are eight departments within the program: Administration, Human Resources/Information Technology, Residential Services, Finance, Compliance, Development, Construction, and Maintenance. The association hires from 50 to 90 individuals.
The organization's Mission Statement is as follows:
The Tohono O'odham Nation will promote and develop affordable quality housing opportunities in a safe and healthy environment; promote and establish homeownership opportunities; operate the housing program in efficient and effective manner; improve and strengthen relations with residents; and promote partnerships with community and private sector for private mortgage capital financing to maximize housing opportunities for all eligible Tohono O'odham tribal members.
The Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) is a United States astronomical observatory located on Kitt Peak of the Quinlan Mountains in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert on the Tohono O'odham Nation, 88 kilometers (55 mi) west-southwest of Tucson, Arizona. With more than twenty optical and two radio telescopes, it is one of the largest gatherings of astronomical instruments in the northern hemisphere.
The Tohono O'odham are a Native American people of the Sonoran Desert, residing primarily in the U.S. state of Arizona and the northern Mexican state of Sonora. Tohono O'odham means "Desert People". The federally recognized tribe is known in the United States as the Tohono O'odham Nation.
Sells is a census-designated place (CDP) in Pima County, Arizona, United States. The population was 2,799 at the 2000 census. It is the capital of the Tohono O'odham Nation and the home of several of their tribal businesses, such as Tohono O'Odham Ki:Ki Association. Originally named Indian Oasis, by cattle-ranchers/businessmen brothers, Joseph and Louis Ménager in 1912. The Ménager brothers also built and ran the Indian Oasis Mercantile Store. The settlement took its present English name in 1918 to honor Indian Commissioner Cato Sells. The O'odham name means "Tortoise Got Wedged".
The Pima are a group of Native Americans living in an area consisting of what is now central and southern Arizona, as well as northwestern Mexico in the states of Sonora and Chihuahua. The majority population of the surviving two bands of the Akimel O'odham are based in two reservations: the Keli Akimel Oʼotham on the Gila River Indian Community (GRIC) and the On'k Akimel O'odham on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community (SRPMIC).
Native Americans have inhabited what is now Arizona for thousands of years. It remains a state with one of the largest percentages of Native Americans in the United States, and has the second largest total Native American population of any state. In addition, the majority of the Navajo Nation, the largest Native American reservation in the US, and the entire Tohono O'odham Nation, the second largest, are located in Arizona. Over a quarter of the area of the state is reservation land.
The Office of Public and Indian Housing (PIH) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Its mission is to ensure safe, decent, and affordable housing, create opportunities for residents' self-sufficiency and economic independence, and assure the fiscal integrity of all program participants.
Ofelia Zepeda is a Tohono O'odham poet and intellectual. She is Regents' Professor of Tohono O'odham language and linguistics and Director of the American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI) at The University of Arizona. Zepeda is the editor for Sun Tracks, a series of books that focuses on the work of Native American artists and writers, published by the University of Arizona Press.
The "Shadow Wolves" is a unit of Native American trackers. The law enforcement unit is part of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The Shadow Wolves' primary task is tracking smugglers through a 76-mile (122 km) stretch of the Tohono O'odham Nation territory that runs along the Mexico–United States border in the state of Arizona.
The Tohono Oʼodham Nation is the collective government body of the Tohono Oʼodham tribe in the United States. The Tohono Oʼodham Nation governs four separate pieces of land with a combined area of 2.8 million acres (11,330 km2), approximately the size of Connecticut and the second largest Indigenous land holding in the United States. These lands are located within the Sonoran Desert of south central Arizona and border the Mexico–United States border for 74 miles (119 km) along its southern border. The Nation is organized into 11 local districts and employs a tripartite system of government. Sells is the Nation's largest community and functions as its capital. The Nation has approximately 34,000 enrolled members, the majority of whom live off of the reservations.
The Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act of 1996 (NAHASDA) simplifies and reorganizes the system of providing housing assistance to federally recognized Native American tribes to help improve their housing and other infrastructure. It reduced the regulatory strictures that burdened tribes and essentially provided for block grants so that they could apply funds to building or renovating housing as they saw fit. This was in line with other federal programs that recognized the sovereignty of tribes and allowed them to manage the funds according to their own priorities. A new program division was established at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that combined several previous programs into one block grant program committed to the goal of tribal housing. The legislation has been reauthorized and amended several times since its passage.
The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development was founded in 1987 at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. It administers tribal awards programs as well as providing support for students and conducting research. The Harvard Project aims to understand and foster the conditions under which sustained, self-determined social and economic development is achieved among American Indian nations through applied research and service.
Topawa is a census-designated place and unincorporated community in Pima County, Arizona, United States. The population was 315 as of the 2020 census. Topawa is located on the Tohono O'odham Nation reservation, 7.5 miles (12.1 km) south-southeast of Sells. Topawa has a post office with ZIP code 85639.
Ned Norris Jr. is chairman of the Tohono O'odham Nation of southern Arizona. He previously held the office for two consecutive terms from 2007 to 2015, and was returned to the office in 2019. Norris previously worked as the director of marketing and public relations for the O'odham Gaming Authority.
Vivian Juan-Saunders is an American politician who became the first woman to lead the Tohono O'odham Nation of southern Arizona in 2003. She served as Chairwoman of the Tohono O'odham from 2003 until 2007.
Arthur J. Hubbard Sr. was an American state senator from Arizona, who served as a Navajo Code Talker instructor in World War II.
Colleen M. Fitzgerald is an American linguist who specializes in phonology, as well as language documentation and revitalization, especially with Native American languages. She is the Associate Vice President for research at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. Previously she held a position as Professor in the Department of Linguistics and TESOL the University of Texas at Arlington where she directed the Native American Languages Lab. She formerly served as chair of the department.
The Arizona borderlands are the geographic and cultural region north of the Arizona portion of the US-Mexico border. The area is unique in that it features both an international border and the Tohono O'oham sovereign nation along much of that border. Frequent and persistent topics of interest in the area include the presence of illegal immigration, the confluence of local, state, and national politics surrounding the border, conservation and sustainable living, and the presence of drug traffickers and paramilitary forces in the vicinity.
Several Indigenous peoples who live on the United States–Mexico border have objected to the construction of a border wall on their territories and the militarization of the border by the United States government. The US–Mexico border crosses several Indigenous territories and divides these communities. The barrier erected between the United States and Mexico cuts through and/or affects at least 29 Indigenous tribes, which include Kumeyaay Nation and Tohono O'odham.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Native American tribes and tribal communities has been severe and has emphasized underlying inequalities in Native American communities compared to the majority of the American population. The pandemic exacerbated existing healthcare and other economic and social disparities between Native Americans and other racial and ethnic groups in the United States. Along with Black Americans, Latinos, and Pacific Islanders, the death rate in Native Americans due to COVID-19 was twice that of white and Asian Americans, with Native Americans having the highest mortality rate of all racial and ethnic groups nationwide. As of January 5, 2021, the mortality impact in Native American populations from COVID-19 was 1 in 595 or 168.4 deaths in 100,000, compared to 1 in 1,030 for white Americans and 1 in 1,670 for Asian Americans. Prior to the pandemic, Native Americans were already at a higher risk for infectious disease and mortality than any other group in the United States.
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