Reconciliation as Ritual 

How a river in Tucson became a “casa de cultura” for lessons in community and transformation 

Story and Photographs by Angelantonio Enriquez Breault

I spotted the golden Arizona poppy peeking out from a forgotten Polar Pop cup under the Cushing Street Bridge. It was growing along a new ribbon of green in the otherwise sandy-dry Santa Cruz Riverbed. I had never seen poppies here before, and after I shoved the Styrofoam cup into my backpack, I noticed in fact many flowers rising from the sand and trash. Moving towards them, I unknowingly began a practice of reconciliation with the river. 

As a kid growing up in Tucson, I couldn’t imagine the banks of the Santa Cruz lined with anything other than scraggly palo verde and tamarisk trees. I would have rolled my eyes if you told me to listen for trickling water and rustling rushes in the shadow of I-10. Back then, I didn’t know the word bosque and I had never climbed a cottonwood tree. I had no idea I lived on stolen land, that the rich heritage and legacy of Chuk-son had been hidden from me. I accepted dry, littered arroyos as normal and dreamed of one day living somewhere with a real river.

It has been nearly three generations since water flowed perennially in the Santa Cruz near downtown Tucson. But less than a century ago, the river cut through a five-mile-wide mesquite bosque, with trees reaching sixty-five feet high. A forest where jaguars from the south and grizzly bears from the north could travel unnoticed between sky islands. 

Early western ecologists described this dense, biodiverse riparian corridor as an ecosystem with no planetary equivalent. Looking east from the summit of Chuk-son,¹ A-Mountain, you would have seen miles of verdant riparian habitat. Today we see miles of asphalt, vehicles, and the scars of development and injustice—the consequence of capital-driven urbanization and unjust water politics.

But miracles are possible. In 2019 the City of Tucson’s Santa Cruz River Heritage Project restored flow to a stretch of the river in the heart of our desert community. Groundwater recharge now supports volunteer Goodding’s willows and cottonwoods that were extirpated from this stretch of the river nearly a century ago. Federally listed endangered and threatened species including Gila topminnows and Sonoran mud turtles again inhabit the marshland habitat. Reintroduced native grasses like giant sacaton, mesquite vine, and pappusgrass weave their roots strengthening the soil, and providing new real estate for whiptail lizards, Sonoran Desert toads, and other reptiles. Round-tailed ground squirrels and road runners romp through these floodplain barrios. The Heritage Project has demonstrated how simple actions renew even our most degraded ecosystems. Water brings life. Water is life.²

The river still faces challenges. Restoration initiatives are continuously under threat along the Santa Cruz from reckless development and chaotic water politics. Therefore, the river and its stewards are constantly adapting to changing conditions. The term “restoration” itself is misleading. Development of the built environment across the Tucson valley means these bosques and riparian galleries will never look or function exactly like they did historically. Still, healing and repair can happen in this ecosystem. With our help. 

Cultivating connection in a time of isolation

On a cool March morning after a steady rain, the Heritage reach smells earthy. Steam rises from the wetlands habitat. Red-winged blackbirds chatter, and a yellow warbler whistles from the willows. I come to the river to remind myself that I am connected to this land and to actively participate in its healing. This is a practice of reconciliation.

I began going to the river during the first round of pandemic quarantine in April 2020. In a time of isolation, time on the river felt lively and intimate. There was no need to distance myself from the wildflowers or the toads. 

During my mornings watching wildflowers and picking up trash along the river, I began to see  friends, neighbors, and strangers along the Loop bike path or on the bridge. Often I’d hear  words of appreciation for tidying up—and sometimes snide remarks, too. But many of those passing comments became questions and, over time, some became requests to participate. 

I made it a point to be at the river on Sunday mornings. As others joined me and began to build their own relationship to the re-emerging river, they invited even more people. Folks were excited to be outside, connecting with one another and the natural world, picking up trash and pulling buffelgrass, freeing up habitat for native flora. These acts of service became forms of mutual aid—we were supporting the land, one another, and ourselves. 

As lockdown ended, some returned to prior commitments and social activities, but for others, the practice stuck. 

River-time as devotional practice

Humans have been stewarding the land at the base of Chuk-son for thousands of years—moving along the waterways, finding food and shelter, observing plants and wildlife. 

Reconciliation means to return to good relations between one entity and another. On the river, it means engaging in a process of reciprocity with the natural world. This can take many forms, from clean-up to simply watching birds. These acts of repair and connection support abundance and restore our relationship to the land as a species of stewards. 

Now, several times a month, I haul tools, gloves, trash bags, and native seed mix from my truck then fashion an informal sign-in station from stacked milk-crates pulled from the Santa Cruz. Russ and Donna, regulars since 2022, arrive with bags and buckets. As they head toward the riverbed, they stop to watch a coyote wake from its morning nap before trotting downstream for more privacy.  

I welcome the newcomers with introductions, risk management concerns, and some place-based context. We then begin with a grounding exercise—checking in with the land and letting it share what it has to say and then waking up our senses. This is the practice of arrival. No matter what our background or ancestry, we all can connect to the feeling of oppressive heat and the sweet relief of a water-cooled breeze. This shared experience becomes the foundation for the conversations and relationships that follow. 

A mentor once told me about the 80/20 rule: As individuals we are likely to agree with someone else 80 percent of the time, but we get stuck in conflict over the 20 percent on which we disagree. Often, movements, coalitions, and organizations fall apart over the 20 percent that divides them despite a powerful base of consensus. And so, at the river we always start the day on the same page. 

Time moves differently in the river channel. The gentle trickle of reclaimed water drowns out the sounds of the built environment. Flame skimmers and vermilion flycatchers flash red on their respective morning insect hunts. Hours can pass like seconds. 

As we untangle wetlands plants from the polyester tendrils of food packaging and plastic bags, I share with newcomers the natural and cultural history of the Santa Cruz River. I describe the great mesquite bosques, the spring at the base of Black Mountain, the missions made from the earth that have once again become dust, the irrigation canals dug by early human inhabitants around what is today Mission Garden. 

These conversations are frequently interrupted by curious dragonflies and killdeers tiptoeing across the sand. 

“Look what I found!” one newcomer shouts, pulling several plastic bags from a thicket of tree tobacco to reveal the nest of a red-winged blackbird. 

“Maybe it is the same one we heard earlier,” Donna says. 

Inevitably sparks of connection or “tiny town Tucson” moments happen, when folks connect to the friend of a friend, learn something new about this landscape, or reconnect with a concept they’d forgotten or misunderstood. 

With its 4000 years of cultural history, the river is a “casa de cultura” for learning and sharing with neighbors. Here, there is space for connection and vulnerability that can be felt across generations. Here, khaki-clad baby boomers and frequently phone-shackled teenagers can share wonder for the natural world, along with anecdotes, memories, and cultural experiences. 

Ecologists and historians share river histories. Cyclists and skaters trade their favorite spots on the Loop Path. At Halloween, volunteers whisper stories of La Llorona. In April, poets and county administrators both gawk in awe at bright yellow brittlebush blossoms. In late June, the songs of cicadas announce Día de San Juan and the coming monsoon. 

Revealing and revisiting the past

Standing together in the riverbed also helps us unearth painful histories. I’ve listened to volunteers share stories about urban renewal and barrios since lost. Conversation frequently shifts to the deathly impacts of the Pima County Jail looming in the distance. I’ve participated in conversations about the impact of settler colonialism while pulling out invasive buffelgrass. 

These troublesome histories are not relics to be left unturned; rather, they must be brought into the light so that we may build resilient futures rooted in transformative justice. These narratives are tributaries, too, helping connect us as a community to our past and future. 

It is in these moments, for example, that we can reconsider invasive species like buffelgrass  less as “bad” plants and more like inconsiderate neighbors. We can come to understand that such plants, like many of us, have not had the time to develop reciprocal relationships with their surrounding ecological community. Their harm may be unintentional but it is necessary to address and reconcile. We learn to look past eradication as a management strategy, towards more inspiring futures and solutions. Some who once called for “beating back buffelgrass” now are thinking about “building affordable housing using buffelgrass adobe!” These moments of connection and conversion in the riverbed are intergenerational innovation at its finest.  

Which is why places like the Santa Cruz River and the remaining open space across the floodplain are so important. They hold our stories and our heritage. They are the sacred places that demonstrate the truth of our aspirations and of our histories. They reveal what it means to tend and conserve the land through reciprocity and humility. 

The Santa Cruz River is a teacher. A throughline for connecting rich ideas that span across culture, ecology, time, and space. As a kid, I couldn’t imagine water flowing in the Santa Cruz, much less bright yellow poppies growing there. Old photos of children splashing in pools under cottonwoods and stories of picnics along the flowing river, felt to me like dusty artifacts. Now I see them as maps towards a tangible future. My time in the riverbed, planting native plants, cleaning up trash, and sharing conversations with people of all ages and backgrounds, has taught me something about reconciliation—that radical aspirations, like most seeds, simply require water, space, and time.

The first volunteer cottonwood sapling I saw rising out of the river was, to me, a miracle. I had been told in the past by hydrologists and flood control experts that riparian trees in downtown Tucson were a pipe dream. But after one hundred years, this riparian giant has come home. Not all is what it seems at the surface. Currents of life flow under our feet at all times. 

Nowadays, I see miracles everywhere. Belted kingfishers perched on telephone wires. Gila topminnows darting through car tires submerged in the stream. Seep monkey flowers and water speedwell growing out of shopping carts half-buried in the sand. These miracles remind me that I too am rooted here, humbled and inspired by the lessons the river shares and the connections it cultivates.

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1. Chuk-son or Cuk-son or S-cuk Son (I have seen several phonetic spellings) is an O’odham word meaning “at the base of the black-hill” or “spring at the base of black mountain” (I have heard several translations), and refers to the charismatic hill at the heart of the floodplain. Today, it’s known as Sentinel Peak or A-Mountain. I use the Chuk-son spelling because that was way it was first taught to me.  ↩︎
2. “Water is Life” is a mantra of Indigenous water protectors around the globe. I first learned it on a school visit to the San Xavier Co-op Farm along the Santa Cruz River.  ↩︎

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Angelantonio Enriquez Breault is a naturalist, conservationist, educator, and learner based in Chuk-son or Tucson, Arizona. His work centers land-based education, intersectional ecological restoration, and community action and empowerment. Born and raised in the Sonoran Desert, he feels privileged to be rooted in such an ecologically and culturally diverse part of the world. He is the founder of Reconciliation on the River, a community initiative centering ecological and social reconciliation, learning, and justice along the Santa Cruz River, and an organizing member of Tucson’s Birthplace Open Space Coalition.