The Tohono O’odham Nation is a Native American tribe with over 28,000 registered members living in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona and Mexico. They speak Uto-Aztec and have the second largest reservation in the US. The tribe is governed by a democratically elected president and council and operates its own education system, fire department, health center, and utility company. Economic support comes from farming, copper ore rights, an industrial park, a foreign trade zone, and gaming from three tribe-operated casinos.
The Tohono O’odham Nation is a Native American tribe living primarily in the Sonoran Desert in southeastern Arizona. There are more than 28,000 registered members of the Nation. Although most of the Tohono O’odham have moved to the United States, a small fraction are across the border in northwestern Mexico. The Tohono O’odham Nation speaks a common language, Uto-Aztec, which is a dialect of the Pima group of Native American languages. Uto-Aztec is the 10th most spoken indigenous language in the United States
Geographically, the Tohono O’odham Nation inhabits four distinct tracts of land which, added together, make up the second largest reservation in the United States. The Tohono O’odham land stretches nearly 100 miles (161 km) along the border of Arizona and Mexico and has been their home for more than 2,000 years. Together, the land belonging to the Nation totals about 2.8 million acres (1.13 million hectares), about the size of the state of Connecticut. In addition to the main reservation near Tucson, the Tohono O’odham live on reservations at Florence Village, San Lucy, and San Xavier. About 20,000 members of the tribe still live on these reservations.
All reservations are administratively overseen by a central government located on the main reservation in Sells, Arizona, which is the capital of the Tohono O’odham Nation. Organized into 11 local districts, the government of the Tohono O’odham Nation consists of three branches: the executive, which includes the presidents and vice presidents of the 11 districts; the judiciary, which includes judges and courts; and the legislative, which houses tribal council representatives from each of the administrative districts. Overall, the Tohono O’odham Nation is governed by a democratically elected president and council. The Tohono O’odham Nation operates its own education system, which includes a college, a fire department and several recreation centers, a health center, and a utility company.
Economic support for the tribe comes from a variety of sources. Some of the Tohono O’odham still farm or engage in subsistence farming. The tribe also sells and leases copper ore rights to support itself, and has established both an industrial park to attract business and a 23-acre (9.3 ha) foreign trade zone. Gaming from the three tribe-operated casinos became the primary source of support for the tribe in terms of revenue and job creation.
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