BOOKS: 1990s — SOUTHWEST INDIAN COUNTRY
Steve first worked in Southwest Indian country in 1984, photographing and interviewing for a slide show at The Heard Museum in Phoenix about contemporary Southwest Indian people. That show, Our Voices, Our Land, still runs at the Museum. Our, Voices, Our Land, the book, (more on that in the "1980s Books" section of this website) led to the first edition of Talking with the Clay: the Art of Pueblo Pottery (1987) and culminated with The People.
words and photographs by Stephen Trimble
(SAR Press, 1993)
Awards:
Best Southwestern Books of 1993, Arizona Daily Star
1993 Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award finalist
Purchase: IndieBound, Powell's, Amazon
About:
Fifty Indian nations lie within the modern American Southwest—communities sustained through four centuries of European and American contact by their cultural traditions and ties to the land. In The People, Stephen Trimble provides an introduction to these Native peoples that is unrivaled in its scope and readability. Graced with an absorbing, well-researched text, a wealth of maps and historic photographs, and the author’s penetrating contemporary photographic portraits and landscapes, The People is the indispensable book for anyone interested in the Indians of the Southwest.
Trimble spent ten years visiting reservation communities, making friends and interviewing dozens of Native people. He provides enough historical background to make his rich portraits of contemporary Indian issues even more compelling. The well-known tribes are here: Apache, Navajo, Pueblo, and Tohono O'odham. Even more satisfying are the stories of less prominent Indian peoples like the Hualapai, the Paiute Tribe of Utah, the Quechan, and the Yavapai.
Praise:
"...the best general introduction to the native peoples of the Southwest that has ever been published. Nor is it good only by comparison: it is a superb book. It combines the traditional concerns of ethnography, ethnohistory, and prehistory with a newer one of letting native voices speak for themselves."
Professor Alfonso Ortiz (San Juan Pueblo), University of New Mexico
"Stephen Trimble’s The People is a valuable addition to the library of anyone interested in the Indian cultures of the Southwest. It may well become one of those classics that stay in print forever."
Tony Hillerman
Trimble’s introduction to these cultures is exceptional; he redefines American ethnography...
Library Journal
"The People is a masterpiece, a warm and brilliant book."
Gary Paul Nabhan, author of Cultures of Habitat and The Desert Smells Like Rain
"Many of his photographs...are destined to become classics in the history of the Indians of our time."
Utah Historical Quarterly
"…each family moving to the Southwest from elsewhere should be sent a clean copy… The People isn’t quite a page-turner, but it’s close—a remarkable accomplishment in a work of detailed non-fiction."
Colorado Plateau Advocate
"Panoramic in scope. Trimble demonstrates that it is perfectly possible to write about Native American life in a way that contributes to real understanding."
Los Angeles Times
"The People is a book we have needed for a long time . . . Trimble provides a vibrant, accessible introduction to the contemporary Indians of the Southwest."
The Western Library
"...a monumental endeavor to flesh out the modern economic, spiritual, political and artistic milieus in which Indians of the Southwest find themselves, and in so doing presents a living portrait of a deeply oppressed people....This book does an immense service to all those interested in modern reservation life and the future of indigenous cultures, and in the prospects of the American way of life in general."
The Bloomsbury Review
"This visually stunning book has already found a ready market in museum shops and visitor centers throughout the Southwest. Yet, it has a place in the classroom as well, both as a basic source of information on the contemporary native peoples of the Southwest, as well as an example of innovative, multimedia ethnographic text."
Ethnohistory
Slideshow:
Faren Burch, Southern Ute, Colorado, from "The People"
Hazel Merritt's satellite dish, Navajo Reservation, Utah, from "The People"
war chief at kiva, San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico, from "The People"
sign on Hopi Reservation, Arizona, from "The People"
traveling carnival below sacred Corn Mountain, Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico, from "The People"
Jicarilla Apache encampment for Stone Lake ceremonial races, New Mexico, from "The People"
deer dancers, San Juan Pueblo, New Mexico. from "The People"
Hosteen Mud Kid, Navajo, Monument Valley, Utah, from "The People"
Danny Soliz, Ak Chin O'odham, Arizona. from "The People"
Sierra Estrella, Ak-Chin O'odham Reservation, from "The People"