Page 321 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

24 Implications of Sense of Place and Place-Based Education 295

Contemporary Example of a Contested Place: Superior, Arizona

The physical and cultural landscapes of the region around Superior, Arizona, 80 km
east of Phoenix, epitomize a diversely meaningful place: a passage between low
deserts and rugged mountains used for millennia, an area occupied by indigenous
peoples both prehistorically and historically, a mining district that yielded millions
of dollars in silver and copper while attracting an ethnically diverse population to
work the mines, and a struggling rural community whose cultural identity is chal-
lenged by the encroachment of the nation’s fifth-largest metropolitan area.
At Superior, the physical landscape directly influenced and continues to influ-
ence the evolution of the cultural landscape. The town is situated at the dramatic
boundary between two major physiographic provinces of the southwestern USA.
The Basin and Range province is characterized by parallel serrated mountain ranges
and alternating broad, flat, arid basins extending far to the west and southwest. This
is Sonoran Desert country typified by saguaros, legume trees, creosote bush, and
venomous reptiles. In the other direction, the land rises abruptly to Apache Leap, a
precipitous cliff of volcanic rock, through the ruggedly mountainous Transition
Zone, then higher still to the Mogollon Rim and its ponderosa forests, which mark
the edge of the high-desert steppes of the Colorado Plateau. Such variation along a
relatively narrow belt reflects a complex geological evolution over 1.8 billion years
(Jenney and Reynolds 1989), including episodes that veined and infused the sub-
surface with deposits of silver and copper, among the deepest and richest in the
western USA (Hammer and Peterson 1968). Mining was the driver for land seizures
by EuroAmericans from native peoples, and stimulated the American settlement of
what became the Territory, and later State, of Arizona.
After the US war with Mexico, the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and the
1864 Gadsden Purchase, all of the region around Superior, homeland to the Yavapai
and Apache people, had become part of the USA. Military actions to seize land for
mining and settlement ensued. Those indigenous people who survived were placed
on reservations, but even these were further reduced by federal action whenever a
new mineral deposit was discovered within their boundaries. Thus, the Yavapai and
Apache soon came to retain very little of their original homeland. Dispossession of
indigenous peoples from their aboriginal natural and cultural environments limits
or eliminates their capacity to follow traditional lifeways, in turn causing losses to
food security, well-being, and the deeply place-based sense of cultural identity.
Nevertheless, many native people retain ties to places no longer readily accessible
to them, particularly in the southwestern USA. Even when such lands have come
under government control, visits to pray, collect resources, and maintain a sense of
cultural affiliation still take place.
The US military was drawn to the Superior area for its geographic advantages,
and a soldier stationed here in 1870 discovered a silver lode that triggered the
establishment of a permanent mining community within a decade. The silver
boom did not last, but great copper deposits were also at hand, and copper was
suddenly in demand for electrification projects across the nation. Smaller local