#first mesa

[pogphotoarchives]

Walpi, First Mesa, Hopi, Arizona Photographer: Ben Wittick Date: 1880 - 1890? Negative Number 016350

[teconozcomascarita]

Watching the Dancers. Walpi, First Mesa, Arizona. Edward S. Curtis, 1906

[pogphotoarchives]

Corn field on First Mesa, Hopi, Arizona Photographer: Wesley Bradfield Date: ca. 1915? Negative Number 043290

[teconozcomascarita]

Mujeres hopi, Walpì, First Mesa, Arizona. Edward S. Curtis, 1906

[teconozcomascarita]

Walpi, First Mesa, Arizona. Ansel Adams, 1941

[teconozcomascarita]

Walpi, First Mesa, Arizona. John K. Hillers, 1873-1881   

[pogphotoarchives]

"My adopted father Harry Shupla, Tewa, at Walpi, First Mesa, Arizona” Date: circa 1930? Negative Number 091581

[oneworldmatters]

The Hopi and What They Can Teach Us

Walpi Village. Hopiland. Photo by Ansel Adams

Last night I was writing a letter to a Hopi elder.  It is interesting to write a letter to someone who is not from my tribe.  Sure, in the larger sense, we can say that we humans are all from the same tribe.  It sounds pretty.  It's a lovely sentiment engendering notions of universality.  But this man is a standard bearer of the Hopi traditions, tasked by his tribe and elders to not allow the old ways to disappear...and here he is attempting to do this, in this day and age.

As I wrote to him I realized without meaning to that I have no idea what it is like to lose hundred year old traditions....I just know what it is like to live in a society that has really none to offer.  Oh sure, we have our apple pie and foods and holidays.  But sacred rituals and rites of passage and ways of being connected to the land are non existent in Western cultures...historically speaking.  As I wrote to him it amplified my sense that it is this lack that drives the momentum of progress.  It also informs why it is so very hard to wake up or find support for intense spiritual awakening.  It explains why the shamans of the white culture are mostly hiding, or denounced...or more commonly...using their "gifts" in a strange miasma of profit and healing.  Without the grounding of an ancient way, there is little support for ancient ways of being.

Ancient ways of being, which promoted harmony and simplicity do not fit well into how things currently move or flow.  Peace happens at a slower pace.  Silence and stillness are necessary.

Essentially what I felt to be truer than ever, as I wrote to him, is that the way things are currently vibrationally organized here in the modern human world...it is a miracle when any single one of us experience harmony or true connection with spirit.  We are so accustomed to living without the essentials...that the spiritually real seems magical, apart, rare and at times ostentatious.  This allows "spiritual" people to appear specialized and amazing.  What happens if everyone is awake to the same things?  There are going to be a lot of unemployed healers.

Anyone with an open heart and a slow silent way about them that is genuine need not be qualified as a healer.  It isn't hard to do...it isn't hard to help others heal.  Anyone who is genuinely coming from the right environment inside of themselves will create a healing effect of presence upon others who are not currently experiencing a healthy balance inside of themselves.  That is what we must do here though...for the outer environment is in scarce supply.  In a real way we must supply to ourselves what our forefathers and manifest destiny removed from our reach (and from the reach of native americans) somehow.  Without the external natural world as a beautiful means of support...the search is elongated.  The journey, for many of us trapped in cities, must be an inward one.  It is not impossible.  But what should be protected are those places that still remain where there is yet enough nature to shorten the recovery of the natural self.

And that is all I am really speaking about...the recovery of the natural self.  A true self that does not find fault with what is natural.

As I wrote to him I again how it is nearly impossible to live in this world of the mind and truly expect the heart to reemerge.  The mind is happy with the shiny things.  The heart could not care less.  Without nature how will we cultivate the heart's virtues then?

We must look into the most naturally abundant "thing" available to each of us.  Seen people lately?  They are all around.  There they are with their foibles, their guilt, their loves, their sins, their freedoms and their shackles.  Get to where you spend time really climbing inside of another person.  Be with what a lack of nature, has done to their nature.  Be with how a lack of tradition has undone their sense of belonging and led them to places they bear the shame of due to how they have consequently treated others.

Do these things and you will never see an enemy again.  Find the nature where it stands right in front of you.  Every person you meet is a story of the fall from grace....and the potential of redemption.

Someday we just might make a sacred place again out of this mess.  And luckily for us, tribes like the Hopi have preserved some of their true ways as pointers to what it may take for that to happen....connection to land, community and traditions based upon a covenant of peace.  Walpi Village is pictured at the top of this post.  Google it.  It's cool.  It has been continuously occupied for at least 1,100 years.  This place was older than America is now, before Columbus was even born.

From this site:  "The village of Walpi is a living village where the homes are passed down through matrilineal clan lineage. Just as it has been over the centuries, there is no electricity or running water in the old village of Walpi. You will witness life as it has been lived over the centuries and you will also learn about the contemporary life of the First Mesa Villages which includes economic development and cultural preservation."

Walpi Village