Can Indigenous artists, curators, and historians resist the colonial narrative of art museums when the museum itself is a colonizer institution? Reflecting on his own experience visiting the museum on the Gila River Indian Community, David Martínez argues that the path to resistance lay in the land itself in his talk “There Is No Word for Museum in My Language: An O’odham View of the Art World” on Thursday, November 6, 2025 at 10 a.m. at the Museum of Natural and Cultural History. 

David Martínez (Akimel O’odham/Hia-Ced O’odham/Mexican) is professor of American Indian Studies and Transborder Studies at Arizona State University. He is the author of the forthcoming The Maze of History: Komal Hok, O’odham Teachings, and an Earth-Based Sense of Time (University of New Mexico Press, April 2026). Martínez is also the author of My Heart Is Bound Up with Them: How Carlos Montezuma Became the Voice of a Generation (2023), Life of the Indigenous Mind: Vine Deloria Jr and the Birth of the Red Power Movement (2019), and Dakota Philosopher: Charles Eastman and American Indian Thought (2009). 

Martínez’s talk is included with admission to the Museum of Natural and Cultural History, which is free for UO ID holders. This event is presented by History, Native American and Indigenous Studies, the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies, and the OHC’s Endowment for Public Outreach in the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities.