Hopi in the Hohen Land
Duane Mapatis © 2008 Susan Johann / susanjohann.com
This morning our plenary session was addressed by Duane Mapatis of the Hopi Tutskwa Permaculture Center in Flagstaff, which is part of the Native Movement and a node of the Bioregional Lifeways Network.
Duane and his son Rad were invited to attend by Catherine Austin Fitts when she discovered a Hopi Permaculture movement was happening and thought it could help inform our process here. Duane and Rad’s home in the high mesa is a strong contrast to our home in the high forest but the similarities far outnumber the differences.
You can see more about Duane’s family life here. Rad’s grandfather and grandmother, on his mother Dawn’s side, are Radford and Lorna Quamahongnewa, who are elders of Sinopovi, the mother village of Hopi and center of the Hopi religion. From Sinopovi village, all other Hopi villages were established. Rad’s mother and father organized the tribe’s opposition to casino gambling, putting out a flyer that said ‘Gambling is kaHopi,’ meaning ‘not Hopi,’ because the Hopi are a communal society, always giving to each other. They have thousands of years of experience with that, and it is why they stay where they are and live like they do. The casino development effort was defeated.
Hopi Tutskwa Permaculture is giving workshops and demonstrations in solar ovens, PV electricity, native plants and medicines, traditional agriculture, health and wellness, strawbale and earth building, traditional knowledge and culture, and environmental and media justice.
Duane told the plenary, “Tutskwa means land. We don’t separate religion and society. It’s all connected. It’s connected to the land. From time immemorial we have subsisted on the land. We were told that if we take care of the land, it will take care of us.
“Before money, before banks, before credit cards, everything we traded – wood, pottery, baskets – they all came from the land.
“The elders told us to go to school and learn the white man’s ways so we could be the eyes. We are put on the Earth to keep the bad things out. So that is what we did as young people, we went to school. Some young people could not separate what they need from what they want. They have problems like the influence of gangs, of alcohol, of drugs. They see it, they feel it, the want it, they bring it onto the reservation. They can lose track of what we offered as a culture. And so reservations – not just Hopi but all native peoples – have the highest dropout rate in the US, the highest suicide rate, the highest alcoholism rate; those are all on reservations.
Rad Mapatis at the crossroads © 2008 Susan Johann / susanjohann.com
“Everybody wants to be happy and to survive. We pray for that all the time. We don’t pray for ourselves. We pray for everybody.”
“I am part of Tutskwa, which is being prepared by caring for the land. There may be bad times coming, but we don’t need to be afraid of that. We don’t need to be afraid of food supply, or cooking fuel. Instead of being afraid we can prepare for it. When we prepare, we will get through.”
Duane was asked a question about the Hopi prophesies. He replied, “A lot of people have heard about them or read about them. The way my village and clan look at it, there are plenty of signs of what will happen. We don’t have to fear that. We have the will and ability of reversing it. The prophecies are not set in stone. We know that the prophecies are made for us, not us for them. We can change the path we are on.
“We cannot destroy the earth, we can only destroy ourselves.
“Everyone involved in permaculture is involved in changing the path.
“We noticed that our youth did not understand the necessity of a relationship which grows food. Every generation we lose half of our youth. Each generation is half of the half from the previous generation, so after a few generations they will be all gone. So we have started with community gardens and teaching children. We show a better way.
“The Hopi know that life is not supposed to be easy, it is supposed to be hard. If you work hard you will be happy,” he concluded.
Over lunch, I asked Duane if they were experiencing in the Southwest the same climate change we were feeling in the Southeast. They were. It is hotter and drier. They had the same late frost we had last year, and it killed a lot of their fruit. They had to get corn for their summer ceremonies from far away. He said there was a Hopi prophesy that predicted that the big change would happen when they had to wear coats and gloves to plant corn.
“We’re there now,” he said.
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