Cultural Literacy
by Andrew Peterson

To find the place where Daniel Lopez lives, in the Tohono O'odham village of Big Fields, you look for the round house. Standing in an open field across the road from Lopez's home, the round house is a circular wooden building which has traditionally stood at the center of O'odham village life.

It seems a fitting location for Lopez, a writer, singer and educator, who is deeply committed to preserving and continuing the songs, stories and traditional values of the O'odham culture he grew up with.

Early on a cool winter morning, there's a mesquite fire burning inside Lopez's simple, cementfloored house.
His front door opens to the east and standing there he observes that the sun has just recently risen at its southernmost point over the Baboquivari Mountains. "It's already beginning its journey back north again," he says.

It's the sort of observation he often makes as he talks, connecting the physical world to the rhythms and issues of his life. Lopez divides his time between writing and transcribing traditional and original O'odham songs, stories and poetry, and teaching a class of third graders eight miles down the road at the Sells Primary School.

These two aspects of his work are integrally related because what Lopez wants most is to help his people to know and understand their culture. The possibility that O'odham children might grow up without learning the songs and stories that surrounded him as a child clearly disturbs him.

"I like to think that it's something they'll have inside them later on," he says of the cultural lessons he teaches his third graders. "So that when they have to face the difficult times, they'll know who they are. You have to know who you are."

Like many Native Americans of his generation, Lopez can remember the shame he was made to feel when, as a child, he was punished for speaking his own language at school. lt's a legacy that seems to have affected him deeply. And so he takes great pride in the enthusiasm his students show in learning about O'odham culture.

"It's something that they want to do," he says. "They may say, 'Hey, do we have to do science? But they're ready to jump into this, they're excited to do it--the dancing, the singing. They always say 'Danny, can we sing today?' All the time they want to sing."

Many of the songs Lopez teaches his students he has gathered and transcribed himself. Often these are brief, almost haiku-like observations of a single moment in nature--clouds coming over a mountain, a bird circling overhead.

In addition to preserving traditional songs and stories, Lopez creates his own. "I go and sit out there someplace in the mountains and just try to hum a tune," he says. "And eventually I put some songs together. I don't know about other people but I try to put myself someplace where I can think and to watch the world around me and to put things down."

You have to hear Lopez in person in order to appreciate the full beauty and power of his work. Because what appears on the page as a simple poetic image will open up into a 15-minute story when he points at the text and says: "Let me tell you about that. "

Ideally, such a moment will take place inside a house in an O'odham village, sitting around a fire. Certainly that's the way Daniel Lopez would have it. He can't imagine doing the work he does anywhere else.

"You have to be here," he says, stirring with a poker the fire which has begun to die down slightly. "To write about O'odham people you have to experience the life out here. I think you've got to feel for the people, to go through what the people go through.

"You have to be able to look out and see the land, to know the plants and the environment." Setting down the poker, he holds his open hands out to the fire. "You have to be able to feel the heat from the coals."