UC Riverside

This article explores the complex mental state the Tohono O'odham called nodagig. In contemporary society, nodagig came to mean dizziness and is associated with drunkenness or sexual promiscuity. Traditionally, through sex or drugs, tribal members accessed this "dizzy" state during ceremony in a necessary and positive manner. Explored here is the history of this word's usage and how this crucial spiritual state during ceremony became conflated with immorality due to colonial values placed on the Tohono O'odham by missionaries, teachers, and government officials. Settler officials interrupted ancient ceremonies and belief systems by invading and attempting to colonize O'odham bodies and minds. To heal injuries inflicted on Tohono O'odham through the denigration of nodagig and wounds inflicted on the people by colonization, this paper proposes that tribal people might look toward what, Two-Spirit Cherokee scholar Qwo-Li Driskill calls a "Sovereign Erotic." This work argues that the Tohono O'odham concept of nodagig is a vehicle of the Sovereign Erotic, one that the United States attempted to eliminate and destroy through its programs of assimilation and support of Christian policies. Although government assimilation programs and im-posed Christianity changed O'odham culture, the concepts of nodagig remained latent and significant within contemporary culture, surviving cultural genocide imposed by colonizers.