Researchers

I spent my childhood in Desemboque de los Seris, learning Seri, which I still speak. Getting to know the many researchers who frequently passed through the area, some of whom became good friends, gave me an appreciation of an amazing world that I otherwise took for granted. In “A Desemboque Childhood” in Seri Hands, a special issue of the Journal of the Southwest (Joseph Carleton Wilder, ed., 2000) and “A Good Day for Playing Hooky”, in Backcountry pilot: flying adventures with Ike Russell (Thomas Bowen, ed., 2002) I have written about some of my childhood experiences. After earlier completing an undergrad degree in biology and art, I’ve enjoyed combining both fields through scientific illustration, often in publications having to do with the Seri world. Among other works, my illustrations are included in People of the Desert and Sea: Ethnobotany of the Seri Indians (Richard Felger and Mary B. Moser, 1985), Unknown Island (Thomas Bowen, 2000), and the most extensive, with more than six hundred drawings, in the trilingual Seri dictionary (Mary B. Moser and Stephen A. Marlett, compilers, 2005 and 2010 [2nd edition]). I am interested in Seri oral history and researching the people’s interactions with the biological world. I’ve always been fascinated by shells, and combined these interests in my book, Shells on a Desert Shore: Mollusks in the Seri World (University of Arizona Press, 2014). Website: shellsonadesertshore.com.