This week on Arizona illustrated a recap of our 2022 Rocky Mountain Emmy award winning stories and looking at these footprints.

Wander off into the distance.

Took me to that place in a way that no other discovery has ever made from discovering ancient footprints to current border issues.

The fence that they're putting in is trying to divide us.

And yet you can't divide family you can't divide culture all the way to space and beyond.

One of these days, these mirrors are going to be in the world's largest telescope, and they're going to be discovering things that could not be seen with any previous telescope.

Hello and welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

Each year, regional chapters of the National Academy of Television, Arts and Sciences recognize and reward excellence in their broadcasting communities with Emmy Awards.

This year, Arizona Public Media was nominated for Emmys in 16 different categories, the most of any public broadcaster in the region.

And this show won Emmys in four different categories First up, producer Brian Nelson and photographer John De Soto won their Emmys in the category historical, cultural, short form content For their story, Footprints from the past I really, really enjoy working in the southwest and working in the white sands area in particular has been quite a remarkable experience for a variety of reasons.

Just traveling out there, it's a beautiful area.

Crossing the dunes to me always remind me of a sea of whipped cream, and particularly in the mornings you could see the mountains off to the to the West, lit up by the morning sun and the white dunes.

It's a real, it's a pleasure.

It's quite an honor to be allowed to to work out there.

Ever since I can remember, I've always had an interest in the past in some way shape or form, and my particular interest is the archeology , the archeological record of the earliest people in the Americas, but also the geologic context.

And we'd already been doing some work right in the area that that turned out to be this archeological site.

And so when the tracks were discovered, that was some of the first evidence of the age and context of these tracks.

Yeah, Vance, I think the tracks are probably in this area here.

Yeah, I think you're right, the stratigraphy is almost identical.

The tracks were found in stream deposits, this this area.

Most of the area was an old lake but on the on the east side of the basin, there were freshwater streams coming in off the mountain.

Every time the stream would flood, it would bury some tracks and then the people would come back later and make some more tracks.

And then there would be another flood cycle.

So a couple of there were a couple of ways of approaching this one was to document the tracks that were already exposed, mapping them in considerable detail, excavating them.

What you tend to see is a discoloration because the the sediment filling the track well will often be a slightly different color.

Seeing the footprints, it was the most amazing thing I think I have ever seen in my life.

Putting together the idea that people had been there 6 to 8,000 years earlier than had been documented previously.

And this isn't just a stray tool, a broken piece of rock, something that might be questionable.

This is actual people's footprints and footprints from mammoths, giant ground sloths.

Saber tooth cats, direwolves, human beings were there when all of these humongous animals were walking this landscape.

My moment of connection was when I was able to put my barefoot next to one of the footprints.

And with permission, then I put my foot on the footprint itself, which fit pretty well.

So about a woman's size eight shoe or a 39 or 38 in European size?

An interesting thing about this, in my experience in archeology, is that what you're dealing with are literally moments in time.

If you think about how long it takes to make a trackway, say across my office a couple of seconds so you can look at these tracks and you know, you're looking at where somebody literally just walked across the landscape 23,000 years ago in the space of a couple of seconds, and it's it's it's quite remarkable when we first saw those.

The peopling of the Americas is the last great migration in human history.

The dating that we have right now suggests that these footprints span time from about 23,000 years ago to about 21,000 years ago, and that's 10,000 years older than the oldest well-documented occupation human occupation of North America, the Clovis people named after a site well-known site near Clovis, New Mexico.

So it's it's a huge leap in many ways, a leap in time, a leap of imagination that we have people living in the Americas 10,000 years earlier than Clovis.

It causes archeologists to stop and think about what has been the primary paradigm.

The idea that Clovis were the first people here in North America.

As both an American Indian and an archeologist, what I've been doing over most of my career has been acting as a liaison between the two schools and really trying to bring more American Indian issues, concerns and voices into the practice of archeology and to the interpretation of the archeological record.

Whether or not this will impact American Indian ideas about the history on the continent, it remains to be seen.

Scientifically, this is further proof that the time depth, the deep time of American Indian occupation of North America is there.

This area where the footprints, where the tracks were found The discovery was made due to wind erosion.

So between the time they first exposed until they're pretty much gone, it's just a few years.

So this is this is a whole nother issue out there is how to preserve them, how to interpret them.

We know that there are more discoveries to be found.

Every time we look, we find something new.

I went into archeology to try to understand about people to try to understand about who they were, about where they came from.

And looking at these footprints Wander off into the distance took me to that place in a way that no other discovery has ever made.

White sands has given me the opportunity to begin to look really deeply into origins of Native Americans and Native American histories.

The idea that we've added another 8000 years to that deep history is it makes me smile and think about it.

This is going to be one of those stories that people will be continuing to discuss.

Hopefully, my name, the names of my fellow researchers, all of us involved in white sands will continue to be a part of the footnote of history.

From a look into the past.

Next, we go to our southern border for a story that one in the serious news feature category.

Producer Liza Resnick.

Photographer Andrew Brown and editor Maya Long won Emmys for their story.

We are the Water Missing Home (somber music) - We all have dreams and visions, and one of the things that was told to me before wall construction, before COVID, was that there was, there was death coming.

(metal wheels clucking) (somber music continues) My name is Amber Ortega and my father is the late Melvin Ortega.

We are both members of the Tohono O'odham Nation as well as descendants of Hia-Ced O'odham.

My father, he left me breadcrumbs.

I started to look through his research and it pointed me here to this whole area, and I avoided this area for years because it was haunting.

I grew up on a Tohono O'odham reservation, the fourth village from the border.

So my mother was Tohono O'odham, my father was Tohono O'odham.

My father didn't know he was Hia-Ced O'odham, and so that's where the Hia-Ced O'odham piececomes in.

(native chanting) He made a video about the Hia-Ced O'odham.

(chanting continues) - We are Hia-Ced O'odham.

There are still over 1,000 of us living in Southwestern region of Arizona and Northwestern Sonora, Mexico.

In the early 1900s, noted historians, anthropologists and archeologists claimed the Hia-Ced O'odham were extinct.

- There is a strong history of the Hia-Ced O'odham fighting for recognition, fighting for land rights.

Because of a piece of paper written by an outsider, we have been denied, the O'odham, basic human rights.

This is our Homeland, the land of the Hia-Ced O'odham.

- It's felt here.

Our people were from here.

They lived here.

They gathered, they stayed, and it was that way for long before.

and it's been erased from, from even, from even us.

The first time I ever saw Quitobaquito is through a video from my father.

(speaking Oodham language) (melancholic music) - If you're a reader, and you read stories and if you hear about Oasis, you've stepped into that story because this is what it is.

It's an Oasis.

(melancholic music continues) - I am Hia-Ced O'odham, Sonora O'odham, and Tohono O'odham.

My family lived here.

My grandfather lived here.

They had orchards here but our orchard were declared into what is Mexico now.

There was no border there.

- The fence that they're putting in is trying to divide us, and yet, you can't divide family.

You can't divide culture.

- My great, great grandfather's buried there.

I have other family members that are buried there and my grandfather always told me, don't ever forget where you came from.

(car engine starting) Every time he'd bring me over here and we'd be walking around, he'd say, don't ever forget this place.

Don't forget the people here.

Don't leave your people here.

(melancholic music) - Why did, all of a sudden, when the fence started coming nearer and nearer, and you have blasting, - Fire in the hole!

(melancholic music continues) - And you have over a hundred, I don't know how many trucks, go through here.

Heavy, heavy trucks.

And then, they have to dig every five miles to pull water out so they can do their cement.

They're telling us it has no effect whatsoever, but why in the short period of time when they started from that hill, did this happen here?

(melancholic music continues) - One of the things they didn't acknowledge is the generational pain that it kicked up.

The generational trauma.

We've lived it, and as indigenous people, we're continuously living it.

- We are the bulldozed and violated land as well.

We are the cactus displaced far from its home.

We are the turtle that has come out of the shell to face.

We are the water missing home.

(melancholic music continues) - America, let me divide your families, let me get an iron blade and drag it across your heart, and maybe then will you only understand what we feel and what we see here today.

- So we spend the rest of the hour in Arizona looking at how O'odham land and water defenders are leading a campaign against the construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall near a sacred spring inside the Organ Pipe National Monument.

(wind swooshing) (somber music) - [Protester] We don't want anyone to get hurt.

(protester wailing) (indistinct chatter) - You'll never understand the way we feel, that this wall is total destruction to mankind.

(somber music continues) - On September 9th of 2020, construction was reaching the spring.

My heart was pounding and I saw that they were attempting to cut through the land.

- No more.

- No more!

- No more!

No more!

- And we couldn't have them do that.

(native singing) I stood there singing.

That's all I could do is sing as they yelled and they encroached.

I do not give you permission.

No.

And that's how I got arrested.

(wind swooshing) (speaking Oodham language) (wind swooshing) - Accountability was a goal and I knew that there will be consequences, and whether the charges be dismissed or not, it does feel good to say that for that day, we were able to hold them accountable and stop construction.

That day we're able to stop the desecration of our sacred site.

That day, we were able to utilize our voices and speak up against imperialism, and against authority, against greed, against power.

That day we were able to be Hia-Ced O'odham and it felt so good.

(melancholic music) It felt so good.

(melancholic music continues) - There are over 1,000 Hia-Ced, and we would like to tell you that we are alive and working to establish a community made up of our Aboriginal territory.

So we as Hia-Ced O'odham can finally become full participants in our rights as part of the Tohono O'odham Nation.

(native singing) - We are Hia-Ced O'odham.

for a complete list of all of Arizona Public Media's Emmy nominees.

And awardees.

Head over to AC PM Dawgs Emmys.

2022.

Our producer, Brian Nelson won an impressive three Emmy Awards, and he teamed up with the great Bob Lindbergh for this next story.

Mirrors for Magellan, where they were awarded Emmys and the technology content category (upbeat piano music) - [Buell] The Giant Magellan Telescope or GMT is a telescope with seven 8.4 meter primary mirrors that will be connected and supported together to work as one giant 24.5 meter in diameter mirror.

That is 10 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope.

And we'll see details 10 times sharper.

We've completed the fabrication of two of the seven mirrors that we need for the primary mirror of GMT.

We're working on the third, fourth, and fifth at various stages of manufacture.

And we just cast, just started making the sixth mirror.

The seventh mirror will be cast in two years.

We're hoping to see for light in 2029.

(electric door buzzing) (electric door buzzing) (metal screeching) (electric door buzzing) (metal screeching) - [Buddy] Well, the Richard F Caris Mirror Lab is unique in several ways.

Most obvious is that we do make the biggest mirrors in the world.

More important than that, they're the only big lightweight mirrors.

So they're the only mirrors that have the ideal mechanical and thermal properties to hold their shape accurately in the telescope.

I came into this job in an uncommon way.

I started out as an astronomer when I was young a professional astronomer, but I was finding that I was more interested in building equipment than studying stars and galaxies.

Fortunately, I had the opportunity to meet Roger Angel.

(emotional guitar music) Roger work in mostly with John Hill, developed the methods of melting the glass to form this lightweight structures.

They started working on this around 1980, but by 1983, they had settled on the method that's almost identical to what we're still using today.

(emotional guitar music) - So, I got my PhD here at the university of Arizona and I arrived in the fall of 1984, shortly after Roger and John had started developing the techniques that would lead to the spin-cast mirrors.

I still remember going and roasting marshmallows off of one of those early furnaces.

And while that was going on, the plants were being made to build the Mirror Lab under the stands of Arizona stadium.

And then that was completed just a few years later.

- [Stuart] Yeah, Roger Angel's vision was at bigger and bigger mirrors.

So we needed more space.

And that's where this started way back in the late 80s.

The real estate here was available and it started as one hall and it is now three halls.

Is a, we now have a casting hall, polishing hall, and integration hall.

And that's what it takes to fabricate multiple 8.4 meter mirrors.

(engine humming) - So, it takes us roughly four years to make a mirror.

And about the first year of that is the whole casting process including building the mold and the long cooling that has to go on.

(suspense music) We actually do spend four months building this mold that is filled with 1700 hexagonal boxes.

And when the glass melts and flows around those boxes, that'll form the cavities in the honeycomb.

The glass is piled on top of it.

We receive it in chunks.

We buy it from the Japanese company, Ohara and they have a process that is perfect for our needs.

They melt the glass in one ton clay pots and then break it carefully into chunks.

We'll pile those carefully on top of the mold then enclose it in the furnace, heated over about five days.

And at that point, the glass, it doesn't get very runny.

It has a consistency like molasses.

The atoms will finally get locked in place at about 500 degrees C. That gives you the structure that you need for a mirror.

It's got the ideal mechanical and thermal properties but it doesn't have an accurate optical surface yet.

The final three years are grinding and polishing and that's almost all about achieving the accurate surface.

And it's the polishing process that will eventually produce this surface.

It's accurate to a millionth of an inch.

As we're analyzing the structural processes, we always have to be very aware of the stresses that are put into the glass.

There's always a concern about stress because glass is a fragile material.

We all know that.

- [Buell] There's a reason why everyone at the Mirror Lab is fairly conservative in how you handle the mirrors and how you get the final figure that you want.

The current manager of operations, Stuart Weinberger has done a particularly impressive job over the last year during the pandemic.

- The first challenge was just getting back into the lab.

So we sent everybody home back in mid-March and then we had to come up with a plan to describe how was it we could perform operations in a safe manner.

Now, fortunately, these halls are very large so it's fairly easy to keep people separated.

So we only brought in those people that had to work.

Most of our scientists and engineers, they operate from home and that's still occurs to this day.

Keep the personnel density down and we keep people safe.

- Now the Mirror Lab is at its heart, the people, the talented women and men that use their science, their engineering, and their artistry to make truly remarkable and unique optics for telescopes.

- The real motivation for everything we're doing and I feel this is to enable the amazing science the stunning discoveries that are someday gonna be made.

I mean, it's happened every time.

There's a big increase in the size of a telescope.

(calming music) One of these days, these mirrors are gonna be in the world's largest telescope, and they're gonna be discovering things that could not be seen with any previous telescope.

- Roger and John started 40 years ago.

It's going to take us another 10 years to finish it.

And the young women and men that will actually use it to look for life on planets around other stars are probably in their twenties right now.

So it really is our equivalent of modern cathedral building.

We're all looking to the future and dreaming about what subsequent generations are going to learn with our efforts (ambient music) thank you for joining us today.

I'm Tom McNamara, and we'll see you next week for a special holiday edition of Arizona Illustrated.