Remembering Hopi Leader Thomas Banyacya, Sr., (1909-1999) on this eve of a Lunar eclipse

Remembering Hopi Leader Thomas Banyacya, Sr., (1909-1999) on this eve of a Lunar eclipse

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

On this eve of the May 15, 2022, lunar eclipse, it gives me great pleasure to share with you this message delivered by the late Hopi leader, Thomas Banyacya, Sr., (1909-1999) the carrier of the prophecy, from his ancestral community and homeland located in the Four Corners area of the U.S. I encourage you to read his December 10, 1992 speech and Epilogue posted below to the United Nations General Assembly.

According to Thomas Banyacya, Hopi leaders had prophesied that in the future there would be a meeting place that they termed, the “Great House of Mica,” meaning a great house made of glass—that Hopi elders themselves prophesied—located on the Eastern shore where the rulers of the world would meet to solve problems and avoid wars. 

Hopi elders later discovered that it was the United Nations located in New York City that indeed looks like a glass house, putting Banyacya on a mission to address the body. After three rejections, they allowed him to speak while the UN was on recess. Though few were in attendance, the ramifications of his message coupled with his long life of environmental activism are significant.

You must read for yourself his address to the General Assembly that I post below, most especially how it coincided magically with one of the worst storms in New York up to that point in time. Strong winds and high tides at 25 feet resulted in flooding and great destruction in Manhattan, with the storm earning a notation in Wikipedia titled, “December 1992, Nor’easter.”

What was truly miraculous was that on the following day at the UN on December 11^th with the storm in full force—it finally abated, resulting in no further destruction, albeit only after Banyacya had spontaneously gathered mostly Native people (and some non-Native people) emanating from the four corners of the Earth to form a circle and pray.

This was part of a number of other prophesies that had been withheld by the Hopi internally until what turned out to be fulfillment of one of these. Specifically, this was the dropping of nuclear bombs by the U.S. on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively. According to the Hopi, this bombing, built from the uranium and plutonium excavated from nearby lands, was the fulfillment of their “gourd of ashes” prophecy. 

This marked the moment that Hopi elders were to let the world know that they not only anticipated the advent of this devastating nuclear moment, but also to warn those in power what awaits all of humanity if we don’t change course dramatically. Because of wars, greed, and materialism, he speaks of a literal purging by Mother Earth against whom no one can ultimately win. 

We are already seeing this happening at an increasing, if not alarming, rate with eco-system-changing wild fires, tornadoes, droughts, earthquakes, flooding, and the scarring of the Earth’s landscape that when combined with the devastating impacts of war, as well as politics over land ownership and usage, our collective future as human beings is in peril.

The number four comes into focus for me at this moment, a sacred number that also represents the four directions symbolizing the four elements of water, air, fire, and Earth. 

Banyacya originated from the Four Corners area of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. I’ve been there. It’s breathtaking beyond measure.  

The area is surrounded by four sacred mountains, including the Hopi reservation area where Banyacya lived. As prophesied by the Hopi elders, he would succeed on his fourth attempt to deliver his message to the House of Mica that, of course, resides on native land and that is otherwise called the “United Nations.” A final note is that the storm subsided when Indigenous peoples living in harmony from the four corners of the Earth gathered into a circle and prayed.

Is this not our charge today? To gather Indigenous people—together with those that live in harmony with the land and the natural world—to gather people from the four corners of the Earth to meditate and pray so that we might engender a new consciousness as human beings living in respectful, reciprocal relation to our Earth Mother. How else are we to avert either another World War or nuclear holocaust both of which threaten to leave large areas of the planet uninhabitable and to which the gourd of ashes prophecy spoke? 

We absolutely do have choices as humanity. Though possible, we’re not necessarily inescapably steering toward another mass extinction event along the lines of what Banyacya spoke 30 years ago at the UN. However, to avert this disaster, we must certainly evolve, becoming more spiritual in prayer and meditation, living from the heart center, where we fundamentally alter our relationship toward one another and the land, inaugurating a new life and world with no wars and a green planet.

***

Great thanks to local Austin elder, Cynthia Perez, who co-owns and runs with her sister, Lidia Perez, an important community institution, La Peña, located on Congress in downtown Austin. She was a personal friend of Thomas Banyacya, and she brought this to my attention in a conversation pertinent to this evening’s lunar eclipse or “Blood Moon” that will be throughout much of the world, including Ukraine and Russia, as you can read about in this piece by Mathewson titled, What time is the Super Flower Blood Moon lunar eclipse?

While the Earth will completely cast a shadow on tonight’s moon, it’s blood or reddish color occurs because it reflects the sun’s rays.

There is a lot of good information on the lunar eclipse at NASA Science Live. If you’re a star gazer or moon lover like myself, we’re all in for a real treat!

-Angela Valenzuela

References

Banyacya, Sr., T. (2019, July 20). Hopi Prophecy: Thomas Banyacya Sr.'s U.N. Address - 1992 [Youtube] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ5W-rTs-h8

Banyacya, Sr., T. (1992, September 14). Word Uranium Hearing.  [Speech], Day of the Mountains, World Uranium Hearing. Salzburg, Austria. https://web.archive.org/web/20110703114218/http://nuclear-free.com/english/banyacya.htm

Christo, C. (2021, Aug. 4). The Hopi prophecies are coming true—here’s why we should pay attention. Retrieved: https://thehill.com/changing-america/opinion/566362-the-hopi-prophecies-are-coming-true-heres-why-we-should-pay/

Thomas Jr., R. M. (1999,Feb. 15). Thomas Banyacya, 89, Teller Of Hopi Prophecy to World. New York Times, Section B, Page 8. Retrieved: https://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/15/us/thomas-banyacya-89-teller-of-hopi-prophecy-to-world.html

The Hopi Message

An Address by Thomas Banyacya, Kykotsmovi Hopi Nation [Arizona]

United Nations General Assembly

December 10, 1992

Distributed by The Alpha Institute

milo@scicom.alphacdc.com. 

The presentation by Mr Thomas Banyacya, the final speaker, was preceded by three shouts by Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Six Nations, and first speaker of the day. The shouts were a spiritual announcement to the Great Spirit of the people assembled and the intention to give a message of spiritual importance. Thomas then sprinkled corn meal next to the podium of the General Assembly and made a brief remark in Hopi that translates as follows:

Hopi Spiritual leaders had an ancient prophecy that some day world leaders would gather in a Great House of Mica with rules and regulations to solve the world problems without war. I am amazed to see the prophecy has come true and you are here today! But only a handful of United Nations Delegates are present to hear the Motee Sinom (Hopi for First People) from around the world who spoke here today.

(In English:) My name is Banyacya of the Wolf, Fox and Coyote Clan and I am a member of the Hopi sovereign nation. Hopi in our language means a peaceful, kind, gentle, truthful people. The traditional Hopi follows the spiritual path that was given to us by Massau’u the Great Spirit. We made a sacred covenant to follow his life plan at all times, which includes the responsibility of taking care of this land and life for his divine purpose. We have never made treaties with any foreign nation, including the United States, but for many centuries we have honored this sacred agreement. Our goals are not to gain political control, monetary wealth nor military power, but rather to pray and to promote the welfare of all living beings and to preserve the world in a natural way. We still have our ancient sacred stone tablets and spiritual religious societies which are the foundations of the Hopi way of life. Our history says our white brother should have retained those same sacred objects and spiritual foundations.

In 1948, all traditional Hopi spiritual leaders met and spoke of things I felt strongly were of great importance to all people. They selected four interpreters to carry their message of which I am the only one still living today. At the time, I was given a sacred prayer feather by the spiritual leaders. I made a commitment to carry the Hopi message of peace and deliver warnings from prophesies known since the time the previous world was destroyed by flood and our ancestors came to this land.

My mission was to open the doors of this Great House of Mica to native peoples. The Elders said to knock four times and this commitment was fulfilled when I delivered a letter and the sacred prayer feather I had been given to John Washburn in the Secretary General’s office in October, 1991. I am bringing part of the Hopi message to you here today. We have only ten minutes to speak and time is late so I am making my statement short.

At the meeting in 1948, Hopi leaders 80, 90 and even 100 years old explained that the creator made the first world in perfect balance where humans spoke one language, but humans turned away from moral and spiritual principles. They misused their spiritual powers for selfish purposes. They did not follow nature’s rules. Eventually the world was destroyed by sinking of land and separation of land by what you would call major earthquakes. Many died and only a small handful survived.

Then this handful of peaceful people came into the second world. They repeated their mistakes and the world was destroyed by freezing which you call the great Ice Age.

The few survivors entered the third world. That world lasted a long time and as in previous worlds, the people spoke one language. The people invented many machines and conveniences of high technology, some of which have not yet been seen in this age. They even had spiritual powers that they used for good. They gradually turned away from natural laws and pursued only material things and finally only gambled while they ridiculed spiritual principles. No one stopped them from this course and the world was destroyed by the great flood that many nations still recall in their ancient history or in their religions.

The Elders said again only small groups escaped and came to this fourth world where we now live. Our world is in terrible shape again even though the Great Spirit gave us different languages and sent us to four corners of the world and told us to take care the Earth and all that is in it.

This Hopi ceremonial rattle represents Mother Earth. The line running around it is a time line and indicates that we are in the final days of the prophecy. What have you, as individuals, as nations and as the world body been doing to take care of this Earth? In the Earth today, humans poison their own food, water and air with pollution. Many of us, including children, are left to starve. Many wars are still being fought. Greed and concern for material things is a common disease.

In this western hemisphere, our homeland, many original native people are landless, homeless, starving and have no medical help. The Hopi knew humans would develop many powerful technologies that would be abused. In this century, we have seen the First World War and the Second World War in which the predicted gourd of ashes, which you call the atomic bomb, fell from the sky with great destruction. Many thousands of people were destroyed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

For many years there has been great fear and danger of World War Three. The Hopi believe the Persian Gulf War was the beginning of World War Three but it was stopped and the worst weapons of destruction were not used. This is now a time to weigh the choices for our future. We do have a choice. If you, the nations of this Earth, create another great war, the Hopi believe we humans will burn ourselves to death with ashes. That’s why the spiritual Elders stress strongly that the United Nations fully open the door for native spiritual leaders as soon as possible.

Nature itself does not speak with a voice that we can easily understand. Neither can the animals and birds we are threatening with extinction talk to us. Who in this world can speak for nature and the spiritual energy that creates and flows through all life? In every continent are human beings who are like you but who have not separated themselves from the land and from nature. It is through their voice that Nature can speak to us. You have heard those voices and many messages from the four corners of the world today. I have studied comparative religion and I think in your own nations and cultures you have knowledge of the consequences of living out of balance with nature and spirit. The native peoples of the world have seen and spoken to you about the destruction of their lives and homelands, the ruination of nature and the desecration of their sacred sites. It is time the United Nations used its rules to investigate these occurrences and stop them now. The Four Corners area of the Hopi is bordered by four sacred mountains. The spiritual center within is a sacred site our prophecies say will have special purpose in the future for mankind to survive and now should be left in its natural state. All nations must protect this spiritual center.

The Hopi and all original native people hold the land in balance by prayer, fasting and performing ceremonies. Our spiritual Elders still hold the land in the Western Hemisphere in balance for all living beings, including humans. No one should be relocated from their sacred homelands in this Western Hemisphere or anywhere in the world. Acts of forced relocation, such as Public Law 93-531 in the United States, must be repealed.

The United Nations stands on our native homeland. The United Nations talks about human rights, equality and justice and yet the native people have never had a real opportunity to speak to this assembly since its establishment until today. It should be the mission of your nations and this assembly to use your power and rules to examine and work to cure the damage people have done to this Earth and to each other. Hopi Elders know that was your mission and they wait to see whether you will act on it now. Nature, the First People and the spirit of our ancestors are giving you loud warnings. Today, December 10, 1992, you see increasing floods, more damaging hurricanes, hail storms, climate changes and earthquakes as our prophesies said would come. Even animals and birds are warning us with strange change in their behavior such as the beaching of whales. Why do animals act like they know about the earth’s problems and most humans act like they know nothing? If we humans do not wake up to the warnings, the great purification will come to destroy this world just as the previous worlds were destroyed.

(Thomas and Oren Lyons held up a picture of a large rock drawing in Hopiland) This rock drawing shows part of the Hopi prophecy. There are two paths. The first with technology but separate from natural and spiritual law leads to these jagged lines representing chaos. The lower path is one that remains in harmony with natural law. Here we see a line that represents a choice like a bridge joining the paths. If we return to spiritual harmony and live from our hearts, we can experience a paradise in this world. If we continue only on this upper path, we will come to destruction.

Its up to all of us, as children of Mother Earth, to clean up this mess before it’s too late. The Elders request that during this International Year for the Worlds Indigenous Peoples, the United Nations keep that door open for spiritual leaders from the four corners of the world to come to speak to you for more than a few minutes as soon as possible. The Elders also request that eight investigative teams visit the native areas of the world to observe and tell the truth about what is being done and stop these nations from moving in this self- destructive direction.

If any of you leaders want to learn more about the spiritual vision and power of the Elders, I invite you to come out to Hopiland and sit down with our real spiritual leaders in their sacred Kivas where they will reveal the ancient secrets of survival and balance. I hope that all members of this assembly that know the spiritual way will not just talk about it, but in order to have real peace and harmony, will follow what it says across the United Nations wall: “They will beat their swords into plowshares and study war no more.” Let's, together, do that now!

EPILOGUE

The night before the presentations of the native people from around the world to the General Assembly, there was a total eclipse of the moon over New York City and the sky was clear. The evening after the presentation by Mr. Banyacya and the other native spokespersons, heavy rain and strong wind began. The weathermen had been calling for a snowstorm but what came the following day were the worst floods in New York’s memory. Major highways were washed away by the sea and the United Nations itself experienced flooding of its lower subfloors, forcing a shutdown of its heating and air conditioning and all personnel were dismissed at three o’clock. In the ground floor meeting room, where on December 11, native peoples were meeting representatives of various UN agencies, Thomas Banyacya spontaneously called on all the participants, including UN officials, to form a great circle. All the Elders were in the center and Thomas called in some non-native people as well. Each silently said a prayer. The forming of the circle of unity of all people from the four corners of the Earth was more than just a symbolic act. One participant said she had never felt herself to be in such a safe place. Later, several people present noted that no further storm damage occurred in Manhattan and that the storm itself abated that afternoon.

It was my good fortune to attend this gathering at the United Nations in New York city and to be able to add a few words on behalf of the animals whose suffering and extinction would become ours if we did not address all our relationships with the natural world, notably habitat destruction, factory farming, over-fishing, pollution, climate change and genetic engineering.

In Arizona, Drought Ignites Tensions and Threatens Traditions Among the Hopi

As if the the massive oil spill in Huntington Beach California were not worrisome enough, read this gripping story of Arizona's megadrought and its impact on Hopi farmers. This, despite masterful techniques that they have deployed over the centuries leading to the adaptability of seeds to dry climate as noted by archaeologists Wesley Bernardini and R.J. Sinensky:

"Forgoing pesticides, they focused on oasis-like mesas with farmable floodplains, moisture-retaining soils and springs, what Hopi call qatsi suphelawta, or the “perfect location for life."

What a beautiful thought, the “perfect location for life." May we all inhabit such places. For this to be a reality for all of Earth's creatures, we must halt the destruction of Mother Earth. Unfortunately, with springs that are drying up and sand dunes that keep on expanding, this once-in-a-thousand-year drought represents the worst possible situation for the Hopi.

I'm with local Austin artist Daniel Llanes. We need to go to that place of the sacred everywhere and do a rain dance. Daniel says that he likes to get children to do a rain dance, offering that "It usually rains!" 

It's a coincidence, but nevertheless synchronous, that as I spoke to a dear friend of mine last night in San Diego about Daniel Llanes and this very blog, the rain began to pour down with the water level nearly at the top of my friend's doorstep in minutes.

We both laughed. She thanked me, saying that she couldn't remember the last time it had rained in San Diego. I told her, "Don't thank me. Someone's doing a rain dance over there!" As you can see from the San Diego news yourselves, it wreaked a bit of havoc. I'm sure Mother Earth is happy for the nourishment. 

-Angela Valenzuela

In Arizona, Drought Ignites 

Tensions and Threatens 

Traditions Among the Hopi

The tribe has survived for more than a thousand years in the arid mesas. The megadrought gripping the Southwest is testing that resilience.

By Simon Romero

Oct. 2, 2021, 12:00 p.m. ET

MOENKOPI, Ariz. — On the bone-dry plateau where the Hopi people have lived for well over a thousand years, Robinson Honani pulled his truck to the side of a dirt road and pointed to a carcass.

“This is where the cows come to die,” Mr. Honani, manager of the Hopi Office of Range Management, said one morning in September as he spotted the remains nearby of another bovine decaying under the sun. It was at least the 10th dead cow Hopi range officials had found in recent weeks.

Alarmed by the two-decade drought that has dried up springs, withered crops and killed cattle, the Hopi Tribal Council ordered ranchers in August to slash their herds in a bid to preserve water supplies and avoid the cruelty of an even larger death toll.

But an outcry by Hopi cattlemen, who say they are providing families with locally raised food, compelled the council to rescind its edict, a decision that has unleashed a fierce discussion across the reservation over what traditions to safeguard in a time of climate change. The tensions involve farmers who need water to grow crops and ranchers who need water for their cattle. Some Hopi leaders say the tribe should do everything it can to preserve dry farming, a tribal tradition in which crops grow despite scant rainfall through drought-resistant seeds, small fields and terraced gardens.

What both the farmers and ranchers appear to agree on is that the difficult choices feel unfair to the Hopi, who are thought to descend from some of the Southwest’s earliest inhabitants. They have been forced to feud over restrictions, they said, at the same time that cities in Arizona, experiencing breakneck population growth, have been depleting the state’s strained reservoirs.

“Why isn’t the governor cutting off water resources to southern Arizona?” asked Clark Tenakhongva, vice chairman of the Hopi Tribe, which is in the northeast part of the state. “Cut out the pools. Cut out the water recreation areas. Cut out the golf courses, and you’ll start resolving some of the issues the state of Arizona is looking at right now.”

But while Arizona’s booming population consumes ever larger quantities of water, the flaring tempers in one of the state’s poorest corners have revealed how the drought, which has ranked among the most severe in recorded history, has inflicted pain unevenly around the West.

In a parched landscape where the Hopi honed water-harvesting methods over centuries, the tribe estimates the reservation has about 2,200 head of cattle that consume about 66,000 gallons of water a day.

Supporters and opponents of herd reduction both agree they are quarreling over ranching on a scale dwarfed by huge cattle operations elsewhere. The legendary King Ranch in South Texas, for instance, is home to more than 30,000 head of cattle.

“I only owned seven head before reducing that number myself to three because of drought,” said Makwesa Chimerica, a carver of kachina figures who lives in the village of Hotevilla. He said he was stunned when authorities then ordered him to sell or slaughter his remaining cows.

“I was raised going to the ranch with my grandfather,” said Mr. Chimerica, who also practices dry farming. “That’s the future I want for my two sons.”

Still, Hopi officials who pushed for the cattle-reduction measure counter that ranching was introduced by colonial powers, beginning with the churro sheep brought by the Spanish in 1540 before cattle became more common in the 20th century.

“The Hopi consider themselves farmers, first and foremost,” said Priscilla Pavatea, director of the tribe’s Office of Range Management. “Ranching comes after that. We urgently need to take steps to save our land base.”

Outsiders can find it hard to fathom how the Hopi squeeze harvests out of small farms without using ditches or modern irrigation methods in lands traditionally receiving only about 8.5 inches of rainfall a year.

But over the course of centuries, Hopi farmers developed techniques and seeds adapted to the dry climate. Forgoing pesticides, they focused on oasis-like mesas with farmable floodplains, moisture-retaining soils and springs, what Hopi call qatsi suphelawta, or the “perfect location for life,” according to the archaeologists Wesley Bernardini and R.J. Sinensky.

The Hopi have long endured challenges to this tradition, declining to bend to modern farming techniques. But the drought that has gripped the Southwest since 2000 is thought to be as bad or worse than any in the region over the last 1,200 years.

Researchers have estimated that human-influenced climate change has contributed considerably to the severity of the drought. On the ground level in the Hopi Reservation, such conditions are reflected in disappointing crop yields and disappearing springs.

“The sand dunes don’t stop growing,” said Curtis Naseyowma, 58, a Hopi rancher who raises cattle near the village of Moenkopi. “I see this with my own eyes because I’m out there with my cattle every day.”

Mr. Naseyowma said it was possible to ranch sustainably even during times of drought. Before the tribal council’s order, he had already reduced his herd on his own from 23 head to eight since the start of year, he said.

“I understand where they’re coming from, but I don’t get why they didn’t talk to the ranchers first,” Mr. Naseyowma said. “This whole mess could have been avoided.”

The dispute has raised uneasy comparisons with how federal authorities pressured both the Hopi and their Navajo neighbors to reduce sheep herds after the Great Depression because of drought and overgrazing, erasing a crucial source of income.

While some Hopi later shifted to raising cows, supporters of scaling back cattle ranching say that the tribe now has little choice but to move forcefully to preserve water supplies for farmers struggling to grow crops like corn, beans and squash.

“We’re not the dry farmers that we were even 20 years ago,” said Mr. Tenakhongva, the tribe’s vice chairman, who is running for re-election this year. “Maybe I’ll have a few less rancher votes,” he added, “but livestock come and go. Corn is our lifeline.”

An unusually strong monsoon season over the summer has done little to improve the fortunes of Hopi farmers, and in some places made things worse. Water levels remain precariously low even after flooding washed away fields in parts of the reservation.

At the same time, the drought has rekindled some tensions between the Hopi and the Navajos. The tribal nations speak radically different languages and hew to an array of distinct cultural traditions, but they have lived side by side, often amicably, for centuries.

The Navajo Nation, like the Hopi Reservation it surrounds, also is dealing with animals consuming water at a time when water is scarce.  Credit...Tomás Karmelo Amaya for The New York Times

Boundaries drawn by the United States nurture some of the disquiet. The Navajo Nation, which spreads over 27,413 square miles, completely surrounds the Hopi reservation, with a size of 2,532 square miles. The Navajo Nation’s population is also much larger, with more than 399,000 enrolled members on and off the reservation, compared with the Hopi Tribe’s 19,000.

Ancestral migration pathways obscured by the mists of time also left their own legacies. While some Navajo creation stories suggest their ancestors entered the world at a sacred site in northwestern New Mexico, other accounts propose that the Navajos arrived in the Southwest sometime between 1100 and 1500 as part of an Athabaskan migration from what is now Canada.

That would make the Navajos relative newcomers compared to the Hopi. “Hopis say about the Navajos, ‘They just came yesterday,’” said Mr. Honani, the Hopi range management official.

As the drought drags on, herds of feral horses on both reservations have emerged as another point of contention. Like cattle, the horses consume water supplies coveted by farmers and households.

Horses who died from thirst have also recently been found on the Hopi reservation, leading to more finger pointing over whether off-reservation neighbors had been dropping off sickly horses on Hopi land.

“The Navajos know we’ll get rid of them,” Mr. Honani said, explaining how the Hopi Tribe occasionally rounds the horses up and sells them for anywhere from $10 to $50 apiece to a buyer in Gallup, N.M. “This land isn’t meant to take this number of animals.”

Simon Romero is a national correspondent based in Albuquerque, covering immigration and other issues. He was previously the bureau chief in Brazil and in Caracas, Venezuela, and reported on the global energy industry from Houston. @viaSimonRomero

A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 3, 2021, Section A, Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: Unrelenting Drought Ignites Tensions in Arizona’s Hopi Mesas.

Others in the reservation say the tribe is also now grappling with the legacy of mining operations, now discontinued, that pumped billions of gallons of water from the aquifer that both the Hopi Tribe and the Navajo Nation rely on for drinking water. For decades, the coal giant Peabody Energy used the water for a slurry mixture needed to produce electricity for cities like Los Angeles and Phoenix.

A report this year by the U.S. Geological Survey found that over 50-plus years, there was a median decline of 40 feet in water levels under the 5,400-square-mile Black Mesa area where the aquifer is the primary source of groundwater; water levels also dwindled in 15 of 18 wells measured in the area.

Still, some officials argue that the tribe also needs to face relatively new problems involving rising temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns that are squeezing water supplies. “This isn’t a Peabody thing,” Ms. Pavatea, the range management director, said. “This is climate change.”

If we're serious about saving the Earth, we have to start listening to native elders Indigenous people have much to teach about living in balance on the planet.

Friends,

This was published before COVID, as we've experienced it in the U.S., was a thing. 

Mother Earth is clearly in a state of convulsion.  Her entire life support system is clearly at risk.  Going forward, we must center Indigenous voices and epistemologies, or ways of knowing.  

Our very survival as a human species depends on it.

Thanks to Juan Tejeda for sharing.

- Angela Valenzuela

Published on Feb 24, 2020 by Cyril Christo

If we're serious about saving the Earth, we have to start listening to native elders

Indigenous people have much to teach about living in balance on the planet.

By

Cyril Christo

, Opinion Contributor

“Behind this machine comes a century of maniacs and a heat which looks to consume the Earth.”

                                                 – “An American Dream”  Norman Mailer

“If you think the Indian Wars are over, think again!”     

- Carrie Dann, Western Shoshone Elder

“That may be why Western man studies so much but knows so little. That may be why his civilization has to collapse before he knows what's happening to it. That may be why he cannot, or will not, change his ways of life until his ways of life change him. He thinks he can change his way of life by changing his words. That may be his real forked tongue.”               

                                                            - Gerald Wilkinson, Cherokee, Director, National Indian Youth Council

Ours is the time of climate and elemental upheaval, and unfortunately few in the dominant society have listened to the enormous message of honoring the Earth that the native elders embody, chief among them the native peoples of the Western hemisphere.  

Over the last 25 years, I have observed the battle between traditionals who maintain the sacred millennial ways and progressives who are selling their land and culture to the powers that be. The Trans Mountain pipeline supported by Trans Canada and Kinder Morgan threatens the Wet’suwetan people in northern British Columbia. The energy companies face fierce opposition from hereditary chiefs who disagree with elected indigenous officials who have signed benefit agreements with energy companies who will spend 16 billion to build the project. Only 43 percent of Canadians believe the project should be cancelled. Where will the gas go? China. The Wet’suwet’an say their land was never ceded by treaty. Gordon Christie, a scholar of indigenous law at the University of British Columbia, says Canada as a whole is doing its best to “avoid acknowledging the existence of other systems of government.” It seems Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s image as a supporter of reconciliation has to be called into question.

In Brazil, Raoni Mutiktere, 89, tapped for the Nobel Prize and the chief of the Kayapo, has protested the 5-kilometer wide Belo Monte dam on the Xingu River in the Amazon for years. It is upending his and the Munduruku, Juruna, Kuruaya, Asurini, Parakana, and Arara people's land. An entire cosmos has been rent in the largest rainforest on earth. He exclaims, “We, the peoples of the Amazon, are full of fear. Soon you will be too.” In light of the fiery apocalypse that has just overwhelmed Australia, his words are prophetic. He laments the technological society selling its soul to “sad leaves,” the money our civilization seems to be so beholden to. Considering that almost 20 percent of the Amazon has been lost in the last generation and that it could soon turn into a savanna, the largest biological holy grail of life on Earth is in an emergency state. 

Native peoples have had a cosmic understanding of the world that our civilization is wholly lacking. I came to the American Southwest, to understand what some of its most traditional elders were saying. Some said the point of no return is 2020. We have reached that point. The Paris Climate accord needs to be honored. An equally significant treaty, now being compiled at the UN, would be to salvage the world’s species and biodiversity. It needs to become a cornerstone of our civilization this year while we still have some measure of hope.

Hundreds of years ago, the Hopi of the American Southwest knew about the coming “purification” and other changes to the Earth now underway. The European invasion of native lands continues to wreak havoc on the life support system of the planet. The native peoples have decried the flaying and polluting and detonation of the land for centuries and are central to its maintenance, as was written into the Declaration of Independence by the Iroquois Confederacy, “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” They knew their prophecies were as irreducible as lightning over the mesas. Few in the dominant society listened to them because theirs were the words of mystic shamans and medicine men shrouded in “primitive ways.” But like poet D.H. Lawrence, something ineffable from the sky and the mountains moved in my spirit a generation ago as I began to listen and hear testimony from those who are the walking equivalent of the land and eagles and grizzlies and wolves we would do well to honor, and who harbor in their culture the true seeds of continuity and wisdom that our civilization will do well to heed in this late and tested hour. 

I remember the drought New Mexico experienced in 2000 when for six months not a drop of rain fell on a ravaged, parched and depleted Earth. A Diné (peoples of the Wind, widely known as Navajo) elder was asked to do his Ikah, sand expression used in healing ceremonies, of lightning boy, and Tibetan elders were asked to do a mandala for rain. Each did their proper ritual and prayers and that night mixed their expressions together in a sign of solidarity for two cultures who are in essence, two sides of the same coin, and spread them in the dry Santa Fe River. A marvelous thing happened. It started to rain like seeds of miracle from another time and place. One can ponder the seeming metaphysics or ignore them. But explanations will falter in trying to unravel the coefficient of the life force.

The dominant society in seemingly mastering external physical power only has ignored the invisible realities and the great web that unifies life as we know it. NASA scientists even came to ask native elders of their knowledge of climate change because they knew their computer models did not have all the answers, and they needed a different perspective. If Hopi elders had been able to persuade Wall Street and the business-as-usual model, I doubt that carbon dioxide would be such a menace today. It is ironic that the most flagrant methane cloud observable comes from the four corners area of the United States, precisely where the Hopi live. I heard from an eloquent grandmother from San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico that things were underway which would change the world, and that our so-called civilization was living “on borrowed time.” Many come to the Southwest for a job, or simply to live. Some build their overweening, often overbearing mansions with no regard for the genius of the land. They think themselves the masters of the universe. But beneath their feet, beneath America’s arrogant and outstretched maw, a universe crawls with an intelligence about which they have no understanding.

The latest North Dakota protests are about much more than land rights. It is much more than about mere oil and a pipeline. It is about ultimate freedom and living in accord with a much higher law than man’s. It is about the Earth in the very bedrock of place and what remains of the human spirit. The native peoples do not simply feel violated, they are not simply fighting for their rights as peoples as they have for hundreds of years, they are not battling just to maintain their homes and to keep the juggernaut of the petrochemical moloch and oil pipeline out of their backyards, they are not merely shouting for environmental justice, they are not merely defending their souls against the pale inflections of a fabulously belligerent military autocracy we call America; they are fighting for the balance of the Universe.

An elder, Martin Gashweseoma, first told me of the Hopi prophecies and the petroglyphs on prophecy rock in Arizona about 15 years ago. The world had barely reckoned with climate change. Prophecy rock seemed like an outdated piece of prehistory carved on a rock. But at Hopi the underground aquifer that has been used to slurry coal for electricity for Phoenix, Vegas and Los Angeles is about to dry up. The increasing forest fires and massive drought afflicting the Southwest may come in part from the draining of the water table below ground. So, the humble way of living the Hopi have advocated for centuries should come as no surprise; it is represented by a man holding a digging stick used for planting corn, to emphasize the simple, humble way of living.

By contrast there is the zig-zag path that underscored those who would deviate from the humble and simple way of living, and the three earth-shattering events — two of them being the two gourds of ash that fell on Japan in WWII — and our separation from nature. On one visit, Arizona public service was putting in water and electric lines which many traditionals, as opposed to the progressives, did not want. The battle against utilities and whether to be part of the modern world divided the community. A giant backhoe was slicing up some of Hotevilla, the bastion of traditional Hopi. I felt the need to record the violation as a millennial old way of being on the land was being subverted. The traditionals did not want to become federal subjects and pay for water and to be taxed when they had gone to get water from the springs for free, for generations. Now their sovereignty was in question.

I taped the dismantling of Hotevilla, saw a machine embodying the very monster of technological society ripping through the ground of a ceremonial shrine, and I timidly rushed back to my host, Martin. Using cameras of any kind was not allowed, but the video I had taped was a record of what I saw as a violation of Hopi sovereignty. A few minutes later a policeman came and said someone was taking pictures of Hopi, which was forbidden. Martin explained that I was his guest and concerned about the casualties happening at Hopi. The unity of what was once one of the most peaceful places on Earth was becoming two, like a cleaver coming down on the social, spiritual and metaphysical bone of a community. 

Martin asked the young Hopi policeman, if he was so Hopi why did he have two guns on his belt? The young man was at first befuddled, then explained that he was simply doing his job, then backed off, realizing the truth of the elder’s words. He was Ka Hopi, not peaceful and in essence no longer Hopi. For a people who did not have prisons, the very idea of guns was anathema to Hopi. But Hopi, like the rest of the world, was undergoing rapid changes. The Hope prophecies which predicted such things as the talking cobwebs, the House of Mica (the UN), flying villages, and many Earth changes had started to take shape. It is perhaps no coincidence that I first saw the comet Hale Bopp streaking like an incandescent omen over Hopi during these events in 1997. It was perhaps a reminder from the heavens that larger supervening forces were at stake and that it was ultimately up to humans to honor that order. 

Like the pipeline in North Dakota an entire ontology is being torn asunder for the mercenary, power structures of the world economy, and its oil and banking cartels. That the media was turned back and threatened not only underscored the powers of the police state and the abrogation of the First Amendment, but also the fact that an extraordinary lie of severe ecological consequence was being forced onto the people. The lie being perpetuated was an order of reality that was quite simply eviscerating the topsoil of existence as we knew it. The world changes now upon us are irrefutable evidence that the visions of the elders were no mere superstition, but an intuitive depth charge from the deepest part of the human psyche. Hopi has been considered the center of native prophecy for generations. What I beheld at Hopi was ground zero for what was enveloping the biosphere. That was before the tar sands in Alberta, before we realized that 300 feet of the Greenland ice sheet had disappeared. Before we had entered the so-called Anthropocene. Before we passed 400 parts per million for carbon dioxide. What was unique at Hopi were predictions that undermined the very priorities of modern civilization and what the global media understood as relevant or even cared to confront because it did not suit the elite. Red Cloud’s prophecy of the Indian Nations coming together puts the spotlight squarely on what is happening in North Dakota, because Mother Earth’s rights are being abrogated. The lessons at Hopi and North Dakota, British Columbia and the Amazon are a litmus test for the future of the human species about how we should tend to our one and only home planet.

It was on the last Mother’s Day of the 20th century that my wife Marie and I went to pay respect to Corbin Harney of the Shoshone people. Corbin had been protesting the Nevada nuclear test sites for decades. Corbin had fought the military arrogance of the U.S. government, which has exploded over 1,000 nuclear bombs for decades in the belly of the desert. He had tried, like the Hopi elders, to warn the world of our ways, but to no avail. Despite the claims of the U.S. that we are a peaceful nation, we have abrogated every major treaty designed to limit the spread of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. A new generation of bunker-busting weapons would soon be tested on Shoshone land. Corbin understood only too well that the government wants to “take advantage of the earth and use and misuse it. We see that throughout the world. That’s the way I see the white man today — termites — they want to destroy things. They’re putting nothing back — no give, just take. The animals, the berries, the roots — nothing’s here. It’s sad. Pretty soon we’re going to be fighting for water. Somewhere it’s going to come to an end. People are not going to wake up until something terrible happens.”

Between the industrial worldview with its accompanying Darwinian capitalist system and the cosmology of the first peoples of the world lies a titanic gulf. The acts being done under the authority of the U.S. government have altered the political and spiritual status of the Shoshone forever. The laws that are being violated — the very laws that are being rejected by the U.S. in favor of multinational corporate interests — are those that are inscribed in the Declaration of Independence, “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” The fight around Shoshone is the fight for aboriginal people to live by ancestral law before mercantile law, and the modern “civilized” world has taken their sovereignty away.

It was thanks to Corbin that we learned about the extraordinary Dann sisters in northern Nevada who had been trying to hold onto their land against the intrusion and persecution of the U.S. government, eager to get its hands on gold reserves under their land, which was by some estimates the third largest gold deposit on earth after Russia and South Africa. Carrie and Mary Dann had been fighting for their land with all the power of their 5-foot frames for decades. The blistering raw beauty of their land is punctuated by stark brown mountains that surround their valley. The vast irrepressible freedom and openness here and the magnitude of the stars belies the range war that was waged here. Carrie’s face is lined with decades of struggle, like land that is cracking under the weight of two opposing world views. It is a testament to what Carrie Dann calls the “dictatorial powers” of renegade U.S. policies. Carrie answers most questions placed before her with the contention that the U.S. government does not respect her or the Shoshone right to property. It is here, under the phantasmagoric sands of Nevada, that the bones of the Shoshone are buried. It is the birthright of her people. It is here that 900 acres of mining for gold were slated on the scarred peak of the Shoshone, Mt. Tenabo. In the increasing hunger for minerals, dollars and wealth, the globalization process has not had a trickle-down effect. In addition to the extraction of gold and other minerals, Nevada is second to none for what is perhaps the most insidious by-product of the industrial world — nuclear testing.

Carrie is adamant in her belief that there are two sets of rules in America — those that apply to the dominant society and those that apply to native people. The real America has long since been hijacked. Jim Anaya, law professor at the University of Arizona, offers the possibility of joint management between Shoshone and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). He says the solution is one of attitude. There is an “age old premise that Indians can’t manage things for themselves. It’s based on an attitude of paternalism that has plagued policy makers in this country probably since its founding.”  

The idea of being caretaker of the Earth is primary among Native people. The core of the devastation being wrought around the world lies with the abrogation of this relationship. Instead of a living, breathing, reverent model of abiding by an organism that sustains existence, we have within a hundred years brought the earth to a state of convulsion. Upon finishing his "savage pilgrimage" in America, D.H. Lawrence, the great English writer, exclaimed that our “metaphysics are wearing woefully thin.” He arrived in Taos, New Mexico in 1922 on his birthday, Sept. 11. Decades later, that fateful day looms as a reminder of the enemy without and within. Much greater than the so-called terrorist threat is the large-scale global dismemberment of the ecosystem. Already at that time D.H. Lawrence realized that our civilization was in grave trouble and had lost its roots to the cosmos. That is a connection that the Shoshone, and those fighting for their land in the Amazon, the Arctic, Australia, Africa and the world over refuse to give up. But each year there are fewer elders who still bear the knowledge, wisdom and patience to battle what many perceive as the final phase of colonization, because today the outcome is addressing the whole life support system of the planet. “When the people’s connection to the land is broken, something vital will be lost forever,” says Carrie.

One of the most tenacious and remarkable native elders, Roberta Blackgoat, was Diné, Navajo, and waged an incessant fight against Peabody Coal’s usurpation of her people’s land for coal at Black Mesa. Her life, honored in the Academy Award winning “Broken Rainbow,” is a testimony not only to matriarchs of the world, but also for native people’s struggle to conserve the Earth for future generations. Having lived firsthand the harassment of what she considers the tactics of the police state, which wanted her off her land for the prize resource of coal, Roberta would hold up placards that said, “If you want to move me, you must sue the Creator.” Since 1974 when Congress revoked her Creator-given right to live on Big Mountain, she waged a one-woman war against the powers that be. Coal is Mother Earth’s liver, while for the dominant society it is one of the key sources of power that makes the engine of modernity run. She did not move until her death. She stayed for the “entire universe.”

The struggle in North Dakota is the same struggle, but this time the stakes are higher. The oil that would come from Canada is a transnational issue. After the Paris Climate Agreement who can doubt that this time around the fight is not for just one precious commodity, at least for the technological society, but for the future of the world as we know it. This time all native nations know what is at stake. It is not just about conquistadores and Anglos coming for their land and oil and water and coal and target practice with nuclear weapons. It is far greater than that. The spiritual implications of abrogating native title and the multibillion dollar theft of native land underscores the difference between true freedom and becoming subjects to a tyrannical economic system and the worldwide police state. If the current trend continues unabated, traditional wisdom insists, the forced change of gods cannot but invite disaster. The assault on the soil, the militarization of the land, sea and sky, the loss of wildlife worldwide, these Corbin predicted, as well as algae blooms plaguing the sea and 200 mph typhoons. The Diné predicted a time when it would thunder in the winter and snow in the summer, as evidence the holy beings were being upset. For many in the dominant society, such talk smacks of superstition. But global warming and its aftermath are already upon us. 

“We think money is a god,” Corbin declared, “but it’s not.” Carrie, with all her wit and defiance, held up an invisible coin to the sky and squinting, wondered what to make of the inscription, “In God we trust. Is that God? That little coin, that big?” she asked. “It’s strange how you can destroy your environment — all in the name of money.” Will we rush into that once unforeseeable horizon of total ecological collapse, a horizon that now laps at our heels, or can we change course to a renewed horizon? The native elders say society needs to turn around by 2020. There is room for a rebirth, but 2020 is the point of no return. Now is the time to listen to Earth’s native elders.  

I first heard about the vaunted Hopi prophecies in the American Southwest, in the desert, what some might call the middle of nowhere. Far from the glitzy glass and concrete machinations of what passes for modern civilization with its infinite distractions and cultural artefacts that I was told were mere decorations for the highest story of the Tower of Babel, I heard the Hopi elders speak. They warned me about this time. They told me to avoid the coasts. They told me of storms that would be 200 miles per hour. Many things are happening exactly as they predicted. Like their Inuit cousins in the Arctic who predicted that there would be people who “would burn the polar bears.” It is time the dominant society divest itself of fossil fuels and the blood of dinosaurs and beings that lived many millennia ago because our entire society could crumble from lack of vision and care. Our economic system is no longer tenable. In the old days we had to fight sabre tooth cats and mastodons to survive. It was hard to plan days in advance, let alone years. Today we need to plan for a new way to live on the Earth because as some elders say, it is starting to get angry at the human species. Henno Martin, a German who survived like a human leopard in touch with the elements as he managed to avoid being imprisoned in Namibia at the outbreak of WWII wrote: 

“It seemed to me that hunting peoples, like Bushmen, Red Indians and Eskimo, must be happy and contented. They certainly knew danger, sudden death and cruel enemies, but who could say in this year of grace 1940 that modern civilization spared civilized man any of those things? On the contrary it had increased the dangers; it had enormously increased violence and senseless destruction, and in doing so it had deprived the individual of all independence. But the old instincts of the hunter were still alive in civilized society, and millions of men felt elated at the thought of war. The old killer instincts were awake again, but surely they could not give that deep inner satisfaction that this vigil in the night gave me, because operating under civilized conditions they had been robbed of their original significance; they no longer served to defend and sustain life. Those primitive hunters who lived together in small kin groups did not show reckless courage for its own sake. They had to be reckless in order to survive. But the hypnotizing power display of vast organizations which exhibited and glorified power, trained man — without necessity — to recklessness and the unquestioning acceptance of death and annihilation. There lies man’s road to extinction.”

I would like to leave the last words with the granddaughter of the famous holy man Black Elk. Her name is Grace Black Elk. She said about 50 years ago, "One day soon, the white man will come to us and say: help us! We have used up the energy of Mother Earth! We have wasted the energy of Father Sun! We beg you to teach us how to use our energy wisely! So that we can survive! We are afraid! So please help us! You Indians know how! So teach us! And I will say: Sure! Let us see your Application for Survival. Go write your proposal and submit it to us. And we will submit it to our councils of chiefs for consideration and discussion. And then I will say to them: Come back in two years! But they will say, this is an emergency! We have an energy crisis! We know I will say. We sympathize with the plight of the white man. So we will very sympathetically file your plea away. We know this is a matter of life and death for you. So we will have to consider this very carefully. In two years time we will have a meeting on your Application for Survival. Even a conference, even a congressional hearing. This is the way we learned from you to consider matters of life and death. Mother Earth has no 'energy crisis.' Father Sun has no 'energy crisis.' The People, the Indian People, they have no 'energy crisis.' Who does? It is the white man, who has broken the Sacred Circle of Life."

Learn more about Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson's work at their website.

Published on Feb 24, 2020