From: Hart Williams (webmaster@hartwilliams.com)
Subject: Re: Camp Anna Mae Sundance
Newsgroups: alt.native
View complete thread (15 articles)
Date: 2001-08-09 02:47:41 PST

I suppose that someone should present something of the Hopi view of all this. It's too bad no one wants to listen to them. The following is based on more than just a few years' research, it's also based on phone calls to Second Mesa last week:

Who are these people, these Bahanna and Lakota who tell everyone that they know more about the Hopi than the Hopi? Every Navajo "resister" will tell you about Hopi tradition, and Hopi religion, and tell you that the tribal council is out of touch, but we haven't been able to find anyone on Hopisinom who thinks so.

Dakota Lakota Sioux "Chief" Looking Horse invokes dead Thomas Banyacya, who, now that he has passed on, it may be said, lost his esteem on Hopisinom — "a good Hopi stays at home and prays with his people," but Thomas gallavanted far and wide, pretending to speak for the "traditional" Hopi. As near as can be told, these are very, very few now, and Hotevilla finally had to issue an internet press release *warning* people not to give money to Thomas or to Dan Evehama, nor Martin Gaswesoma (the self-titled "keeper" of the Fire Tablets, which Hotevilla residents will tell quite another story about), or Thomas Mails ("The Hopi Survival Guide" and Hotevilla: Village of the Covenant"), and "Don't Waste Arizona, Inc. (the SDN's designated money gatherer at the time) etc.

But perhaps now the independent village of Hotevilla (which won't send a representative to the Tribal Council) isn't "Hopi" enough for the Dakota Lakota "chief" either.

If there is supposed to be respect for the old ways, how is it that NO ONE respects the Hopi, who are the eldest of the 500 nations? Old Oraibi is the oldest continuously occupied settlement on the continent (though those on Second Mesa will note that Second Mesa is older, they just moved to the top of the mesa later than the Oraibi settlement did).

Why is any Dineh "elder" a venerated figure, but the elder Tribe of all tribes can be belittled and insulted with impunity?

The Hopi Tribal council told Ruth Benally in 1999 that she could have a permit to conduct the Camp Ana Mae sundance, but that it would have to end. No more Sundances after that. She signed an agreement to this.

(Do you hear this from the well-organized and slick resistance?)

No. Of course not. The "grandmothers" knew that no one would make them honor their word. They would continue to do and say as they liked. And so they did.

No, what you hear now are the same two-faced lies — mostly spun by white women who think they know better than anyone else who is right and who is Hopi.

When I met Dan Evehama in his house just outside of Kyukutsmovi in 1997, I asked him whose land it was: Hopi or Navajo? Dan replied (he'd let us in, and his "keepers" weren't yet there to tell him what to say) HOPI! "Should the resisters give the land back?" I asked. "Yes!" Dan said. (I have a witness to this).

So even the story of how the "traditional" Hopi are backing the resisters is at least partially a lie.

And now the last two are dead. But that doesn't stop Looking Horse from invoking dead Thomas to show that Looking Horse knows more about who is and isn't a Hopi than the Hopi do. And that's good enough for "antoinette."

I guess he can tell, just by looking, since the Hopi Rangers are Hopi, too, and the Hopi Tribal Council are Hopi. But Looking Horse knows better than they. So their laws and land don't apply to him. And he has decided that they shouldn't apply to the SDN, either.

Is that the Lakota Way?

The resisters love to proclaim how "in touch with Mother Earth" they are, and yet, if you have been to Camp Ana Mae, not a single blade of grass grows! In a marginal land, the years of the sundance have trampled the land to dust, and it might as well be used for dances, since it will be years before it could supply forage to the (Spanish) sheep that the "elder" grandmothers claim the Creator gave them.

The Hopi joke that this must mean the Spanish created the Navajo.

A more charitable interpretation is that Navajo oral tradition changes to meet current needs, just like everyone else's family stories do. Sometimes it's the truth, and sometimes it's a convenient lie. Clearly the Creator didn't give the Navajo the sheep directly at the dawn of time.

It's sort of like that often repeated story that the Navajo and Hopi have lived together in peace for ages and ages. Try finding a Hopi who will say that. Go ahead. I dare you. But then, Navajo resisters always know more about history, archaeology, tradition, Hopi religion and sheep than anyone else, right?

The simple fact is that the "resisters" represent ten families and countless whites (like Harald of Germany, who handed a petitition with 5500 signatures to Gale Norton in Flagstaff last week) who can't seem to understand that NDNs have pickup trucks and TVs too, and that they support their IDEA of what NDNs are, and don't know anything about the politics of the Southwest tribes — and, more importantly, don't WANT to.

They are like every white you have ever met who is "part indian" and of course when you ask, they have a "Cherokee Princess" in their bloodline.

They don't WANT to know the truth. It would get in the way. So they sob and insult the Hopi directly (as the White Woman from Taos did on Native American Calling to a member of the Hopi Tribal Council, the head of the Hopi Lands Team, Cedric, after reading from a paper the same old tired lies about Peabody Coal) and call them every name in the book, and no one here would accept this racism for one moment were it not always surrounded by a cloud of stories about a corrupt Mormon lawyer, radioactive wastelands, black helicopters, International Corporations, puppet governments, etc. etc.

Banyacya, while he was alive, was happy to go along with this, because the white support network for the "grandmothers" was lucrative, and more than one Hopi has told me stories of Thomas' excesses.

But do not fool yourself:

You have no right to claim you know who the Hopi "elders" and "traditionals" are, and who the "puppet tribal council" is. Ferrell Secakaku, the previous Hopi Tribal Chairman is a priest of the Snake Clan, as is his brother, Alph, who worked for the BIA in Keams Canyon for many years.

But any "resister" or white wannabe woman will instantly tell you that THEY know more about the Hopi people than Ferrell or Alph do. And they will invoke "Chief" Dan or Thomas, and no one will ever say: "What gives you the RIGHT to judge who is Hopi and who is not?"

Looking Horse judges. "antoinette" does. Marsha does, and Arlene does and Ruth and Louise and Bonnie all do. You wonder why the University of Oklahoma doesn't have scribes taking down their every word on Hopi traditions, customs, history and religion. They certainly present themselves as experts often enough.

I say: if you care at all about the 500 Nations, and their place here on Turtle Island, the first step is to give the eldest tribe the *minimal* respect of asking THEIR opinion, and not leaving it to travelling Lakota Sweat Lodge salesmen [and] white women who feel it is their business to tell everyone else how to live (ESPECIALLY the Hopi)....