Preserving Hopi Identity and Our Hope, One Word at a Time

(Photo associated with a 19th Century U.S. idea about “Manifest Destiny”; entitled “American Progress,” Autry National Center [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

This is a hopeful story about a small Native American tribe, the Hopi. The 2010 Census reports less than 20,000 members are enrolled in this northeast Arizona tribe.

I’ve heard them referred to as “the gentle people.” Other sources say “peaceful people.” In either case, it’s no wonder they exist beneath the radar of the superficial, glitzy, self-centered, capitalist-crazed society we see today in America. The Hopi, in fact, don’t have much time for all of that glitz and superficial self-aggrandizement. Right now, they are merely trying to save that part of their culture that makes them who they are, and by extension, who we are.

History reveals a rocky road once the two cultures met, and in the aftermath, we are left to question a national psyche that continues to grapple with problems associated with disparate groups living together as a free people.

So, what would you think if authorities suddenly abducted your children and forced them into a fearful detention facility where their identities would be completely changed? Where they would be made to learn a new language, accept new societal rules while rejecting your way of life and the culture you embrace? Where mere survival was never assured?

Sound familiar?

Welcome to modern America.

In reality, the heart-breaking immigration crises you witness in daily headlines and on screen along the southern U.S. border reflect a mirror image of weirdly  opposite atrocities marring the Land of the Free 160 or so years ago.  At that time, it was the immigrants who ruled.

In a dominating and brutal westward expansion of American territory touted as “Manifest Destiny,” Federal troops marched ruthlessly across tribal lands to slaughter, starve and subjugate an entire Native American civilization.  And once the carnage had subsided, the survivors were herded onto reservations and subjected to a long and continuing process called “assimilation.”

The tenet was simple: ““Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” This was based on a central goal stated by a government official after a decades-long genocide,  “…it is cheaper to give them education than to fight them.”

So, as seen with so many blood-stained, mind-numbing examples in world history, the U.S. effort to homogenize Native Americans began with pinpointing the most vulnerable to implement what the Soviets used to call “re-education,” that is, the young.

Native American children were forced to attend boarding schools so their minds could be melded to the American dream. It was a long, slow, heartrending, woeful process, made even worse by widespread abuses.

But the story doesn’t stop there.

At last, a new destiny is manifesting.

There exists a resurgence of Native Pride and culture, from political activism to corporate boardrooms, from wisdom teachings to motion picture inspirations and across the broad face of a changing American demographic. It’s not happening quickly, for sure— in fact and regrettably is barely perceptible in the huge majority of American institutions, the elitist , capitalist-oriented ruling class and even among the middle and lower ranks of the general population— but it is preparing for the inevitable change that will morph America into something other than what it is presently.

I pray it will be a better nation because of this, and I actually see the positive proof of it from time to time.

Take, for example, the Hopi School. (Learn more about it on the Thunder Valley Drums site, and from the school itself.)

What a refreshing idea! Teach Hopi children the Hopi ways in an official school setting. Here’s the crux of the school’s mission statement: “Hopitutuqaki, The Hopi School, is dedicated to developing an educational process derived from Hopi Indian philosophy, values and methods.  Always before, Hopi students have been taught in schools using values, philosophy and methods designed for and derived from an outside culture.”

The school began in 2005 and is growing yearly. But a relatively new offering at the school is putting Hopi teaching priorities in news headlines. “Preschool Fights To Save Endangered Hopi Language.” That’s from the NPR affiliate station KNAU of Arizona Public Radio. (Hear the report.) As reporter Melissa Sevigny says: “For Hopi, language is tied to identity. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the U.S. government tried to stamp out that identity: it forced children into boarding schools and punished them for speaking their language.”

The kids are learning word by word the language of their ancestors, and the meaning of their beautiful heritage as stewards of the Earth. They start by learning their own Hopi names, which are rooted deep in a tradition where personal identity is not so much about an individual as it is about being in complete harmony with the Earth and all of life, and of how to care for it.

So, as hard as it sometimes is to follow the news of a degrading America, there is hope. America has always been a diverse place, but it has never managed to embrace diversity.

That is definitely changing. In the case of the Hopi school, it’s changing one word at a time.

Aho & Namaste,
Bob