Name David Yetman Role Presenter | TV shows The Desert Speaks | |
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Books Conflict in Colonial Sonora: I, The Opatas: In Search of, The Great Cacti, Mayo ethnobotany, Sonora: An Intimate Geography | ||
In the americas with david yetman trailer
David Albert Yetman (born 1941) is an American academic expert on Sonora, Mexico and an Emmy award-winning media presenter on the world's deserts. He is a research social scientist at the University of Arizona.
Contents
- In the americas with david yetman trailer
- College of Social and Behavioral Sciences David Yetman 64 66 72
- Background
- Contributions
- Books
- Media
- Awards
- References
College of Social and Behavioral Sciences: David Yetman '64 '66 '72
Background
Yetman was born in New Jersey, USA. His father was a minister for the Methodist Church. Following the onset of acute asthma, his family moved with him to the dry climate of southern Arizona when he was a teenager. They arrived in Duncan, Arizona in 1954 and then moved to Prescott in 1955 where he went to high school. In 1962, while living in Tucson, he had the honor of meeting Martin Luther King Jr. and spent sometime with the civil rights leader. He gained three degrees in Philosophy from the University of Arizona including a Masters on B.F. Skinner (1966) and a PhD on Ludwig Wittgenstein ("Criteria: an essay in the philosophy of language", 1971).
Remaining in southern Arizona, in the 1970s he began trading carvings made by the Seri Indians of Sonora, Mexico and began to investigate their livelihoods and culture (Yetman 1988). He also worked in the Chiricahua Mountains. In 1977 he ran for political office and was elected to the Pima County Board of Supervisors, serving until 1988. He used this role to preserve public lands in and around Tucson. He then worked as Executive Director of the Tucson Audubon Society, and then from 1992, joined the University of Arizona’s Southwest Center as Research Social Scientist. His TV career as host of The Desert Speaks began in 2000.
Yetman lives in Tucson.
Contributions
Yetman is a 'voice' for desert regions and their peoples. Like colleagues at the University of Arizona, Gary Nabhan and Joe Wilder, his focus is on the desert regions of south-west USA and Northern Mexico. He specializes in the plants, geography and the lifeways and cultures of the people of northwestern Mexico. His publications date back to the 1980s and often deal with the plant use of particular tribes and peoples.