In one Tohono O’odham story, there was a boy whose mother loved to play tóka, an Indian game akin to field hockey. The boy followed his mother to faraway matches, only to be ignored. Forgotten and lonely, the boy wandered into the desert, crying, and turned into a saguaro that grew strong and stately.
That story is why the saguaro is symbolic of the Ha:sañ Preparatory & Leadership School, a charter school with about 150 students — 99 percent of them American Indian and most of them members of the Tohono O’odham Nation.