Danny Lopez: Keeper of Tohono O’odham Culture

By Edie Jarolim 

The Tohono O’odham Nation spans nearly three million acres of the Sonoran Desert in southwestern Arizona. This starkly beautiful landscape gave the Tohono O’odham their name: the desert people. Over time and with outside influences, many of their ancient traditions were lost, from language and rituals to the ability to draw sustenance from the earth.  

It became Danny Lopez’s mission to learn the culture, or Himdag, of his people and to germinate the seeds of the old ways for a new generation. 

Born on Christmas Eve, 1936, beneath a mesquite tree in the village of Gu Oidak, Lopez grew up speaking O’odham but at St. John’s Indian School near Phoenix he was discouraged from using his native language.  

After graduation, Lopez joined the United States Marine Corps and then worked at the ASARCO mines south of Tucson. There, he found his calling as a cultural conduit between generations. He began interviewing O’odham elders, collecting songs, dances, and stories, and passing along his knowledge to young people, and co-founded the Desert Indian Dance group. 

He earned a bachelor’s degree in education and a master’s in language maintenance – the study of preservation and promotion of at-risk languages – from Prescott College. He taught at several O’odham primary schools and became a Language and Culture Instructor at the Tohono O’odham Community College.  

When his people faced a diabetic health crisis accompanied by the common fast-food diet, Lopez helped craft a traditional O’odham food and farming curriculum at the community college and became co-executive director of Tohono O’odham Community Action, a nonprofit devoted to improving the lives of tribal members though nutrition and economic development as well as culture. 

Lopez became a revered elder and knowledge keeper among his people, and an informal ambassador to the outside world. He co-hosted Desert Voices, a bilingual radio show on Arizona Public Media that provided local news as well as traditional music, and was asked to give blessings at public ceremonies – including one for the Dalia Lama during his 2005 visit to Tucson.   

Shortly before his death in 2008, his wife of 46 years, Florence, held her cellphone to his ear so he could hear his students sing an assemblage of traditional songs. He told her, “I want my people to know I am one of them … that I never put myself above them… that I am not just O’odham but one who can accomplish many things with dedication, dreams, and faith. I want the youth to know that they too, can accomplish many things!” 

He was buried under the same mesquite tree where he was born. 

In 2025, his life and many accomplishments were honored when Christopher Columbus Park in Tucson was renamed Danny Lopez Park.