The 21st century has been designated the Urban Century given that over fifty percent of the world's population is reported to be living in cities. Indigenous populations are not alien to this demographic trend. In Mexico, an underestimated 35 percent of the indigenous population lives in cities. Over the last decade, the global demographic transition towards urbanization coupled with city-based indigenous activism has drawn scholars to systematically study indigenous urban experiences as forms of cultural resilience and innovation. Yet, little attention has been paid to the intersection between indigenous populations and the political ecology of urbanization as a dynamic process. This dissertation contributes to a better understanding of the intersection between indigeneity and urbanization by taking a political ecology approach to study the relationship between the Yaqui people and the city of Hermosillo in Sonora, Mexico. The Yaqui people--Yoemem--locate their ancestral homeland along the Yaqui River, about 220 kilometers south of Hermosillo. In the last century, however, they established diasporic communities across the Greater Southwest, including in Hermosillo. This dissertation specifically addresses three overarching questions. First, it asks how urbanization plays a role within indigenous Yaqui struggles over resource governance in a context where people have little political and economic power. Second, it asks how indigenous communities have adapted the cultural practices of their ancestors to marginal urban environments and specifically how they deal with the environmental and legal challenges imposed by the process of urbanization. Finally, it asks how analytical attention to urban indigenous struggles and indigenous accounts of those struggles present a more nuanced history of the urbanization of nature. These research questions were addressed through a mixed-methods approach that integrated twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork, comparative analysis of museum collections, and review of legal materials and documentary sources associated with indigenous rights and urban development at the municipal, state, and national levels. At its core, this dissertation integrates two related but yet-to-be-engaged theoretical discussions: anthropological critiques of the myth of the noble savage who belongs to nature, and political ecology deconstruction of the myth of the modern city that exists outside nature. Research findings indicate that situated urban indigenous experiences constitute an extension of indigenous territories into new areas. In articulating their indigenous identities the Yaquis of Hermosillo incorporate the city into their indigenous homeland, and in turn transform the political ecology of the city.

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By using Foucauldian critical discourse analysis along with Stuart Hall's theories of representation, I investigate the meanings that Yaqui representations reproduce and how they develop a discourse of Yaquinesss: the set of terms through which Yaquis came to be understood as subjects in Tucson. With the recognition era as a timeframe-the years between the onset of publicly visible Yaqui political action in Tucson in the early 1960s, to the early 1980s after official Yaqui recognition in 1978-this project argues that a discourse of Yaquiness during the recognition era expanded to include various meanings that reconstituted the Yaqui community and its survivance efforts. While a discourse of Yaquiness can be traced back to Tucson media representations that positioned Yaquis as marginal non-citizens, during the recognition era Yaqui self-representations emerged and circulated along with earlier meanings, sometimes rearticulating and challenging them, to reproduce the Tucson Yaqui community as an economically, politically, and culturally autonomous entity. I use Gerald Vizenor's definition of survivance as an active sense of presence over absence to interpret how the community's political, economic, and cultural initiatives assert Yaqui futures. This project identifies a discourse of Yaquiness through analyzing how Tucson print media representations reified Yaquis as marginal, non-citizens. However, Yaqui self-representations have also played a role in Yaqui survivance by accompanying and challenging the meanings produced by Tucson print media. This project examines how Yaqui representations added meanings to a discourse of Yaquiness that transformed as the community practiced survivance during the recognition era.

"This slim but important volume is a transitional work, one that attempts to bridge two very different traditions in the anthropological study of indigenous communities. . . . succinct and provocative."—American Indian Quarterly "Many of the ideas expressed are provocative, much of the information is new; the bibliography is extensive."—Arizona Daily Star

This thesis investigates autobiography from the standpoint of Native Americans, using Anita Endrezze¡¦s work as my anchor text. Drawing on Hertha Wong¡¦s critical position on Native American life writing, I argue that Anita Endrezze¡¦s autobiography, Throwing Fire at the Sun, Water at the Moon (2000), widens the scope of traditional generic limitations. The first chapter is the introduction, which delineates the theme of the thesis and introduces Yaqui history and Endrezze¡¦s family and cultural background. The second chapter analyzes what characterizes Native American autobiography by borrowing Hertha Wong¡¦s standpoint. Hertha Wong is one of the first theorists who yearn to widen the scope of the well-established generic limitations. She theorizes Native American autobiography by putting its etymology (¡§self,¡¨ ¡§life,¡¨ and ¡§writing¡¨) under scrutiny. Wong¡¦s critical base is the key thread of the chapter, and other critics¡¦ positions on Native American life writing are also provided as subsidizing points. Chapter Three revolves around how Endrezee conceptualizes ¡§the self¡¨ in her autobiographical narratives. Wong argues that Native Americans never regard the self as a separate entity from their community. Correspondingly, Endrezze consciously strives to construct a communal self in her personal narratives. To reach the aim, she relates herself to her relatives, her ancestors, and the present-day Yaquis. Besides, through her homing-in journey, she makes a direct connection to her ancestral homeland. Therefore, the representation of the self is not only community-based but also localized. Chapter Four aims to show that Endrezze¡¦s life narratives go beyond the realms of humans. That is, her autobiography resists anthropocentric narratives. She tells stories about the corn, the rain, and a wide variety of plants and animals. It is through the assistance of non-humans that human life is sustainable. Chapter Five aims to argue that Endrezze¡¦s autobiography shatters the fallacy that Native American culture is in demise. On the contrary, it is burgeoning. Endrezze uses her autobiography to fight back. Endrezze attempts to hybridize the languages to pose some reading obstacles to Euro-Americans. Besides, inserting her paintings at the end of autobiography is also a political act because it subverts traditional writing system. She mocks at the mono-dimensional narratives. Chapter Six is my conclusion, in which Endrezze¡¦s cultural and literary contributions are re-affirmed. It is my deep hope that Endrezze¡¦s book can, as her book title symbolizes, become another form of fire/water to continue the life of Yaquis.

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