Monthly Meetings

Learn how Native Americans and modern residents of the Sonoran Desert Region have used their environment to find food, medicine, and tools to live in harmony with the surrounding desert.

Your community is more than just its people – it’s the whole ecological tapestry of interwoven lives in their environment. What better way to ponder local ecology than to eat of its riches! Join Desert Museum Research Associate and Ecologist, Jesús García to explore basic ethnoecology of the Sonoran Desert region. Sample native and traditional foods and learn techniques to gather and process them. Experiment with natural fibers and pigments. And come away with a new view of the desert’s cornucopia and some great sense of place activities to share with others.

Jesús Manuel García was born and raised in Magdalena de Kino, Sonora, México. In 1987, after finishing a degree in Elementary Education, (Escuela Normal del Estado) in Hermosillo, Sonora, he moved to Tucson, Arizona. In 1996 he returned to school and attended Pima Community College and the University of Arizona. By December of 2001 he completed a Bachelor degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, with a minor in cultural Anthropology. Jesus has been associated with the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum since 1991, first as a Docent then as a bilingual educator. He is currently an Education Specialist, teaching natural history programs to the Hispanic community of the Tucson area schools and schoolteachers and youth in the border region of the state of Sonora, Mexico. He is also Director of the Kino Heritage Fruit Trees program. His many interests include conservation biology, music, drawing, cultural ecology, languages, and gardening.