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teachers are all better at "your" school than those at another high school. And your city is “better” than another city. And so forth for your state and your country. Yet, the Spanish and then the White government kept telling the Hopi that their religion, their education of children, and their way of governing themselves was not good enough and had to be changed.
And the discrimination extends beyond Hopi’s experience with one another. One White man was stopped by a guard when going to the Home Dance Ceremony at Walpi (First Mesa). He was told that the ceremony was closed to Whites. When the White man said he was invited to the ceremony by a Hopi family, the guard asked who invited him. When the White man responded, the guard said, “That person is not a Hopi, he is a Tewa.” Going back to his friends, the White man told of the incident and the response was that guard “is not a Hopi, he is a Mexican.”
Over time I was able to observe more, understand more, and feel more a part of the environment. After living on Hopi for six years, I courted and married a Hopi lady from Hotevilla. Extended family members allowed me to help butchering, branding, and with home repairs. But mostly, I found I could help with paperwork. I was able to help with tax preparation and interpretation of letters from the Internal Revenue Service, Social Security, and other governmental agencies, even the tribal government. The governmental and legalese jargon of communications from those various agencies was particularly confusing to many Hopi. Later I was able to help with kiva repairs, and I was even called into the plaza by the ceremonial clowns for skits during the katsina dances on occasion. One of my prize possessions is a certificate awarded in 2014 as “Honorary Member of Hoatvel Tsu’kus” (Hotevilla ceremonial clowns).
After a few years at Hopi, I felt it appropriate to ask one of the Hopi school staff to be my “godfather”. Over the years, my relationship with that person has been most helpful in having a person to ask questions of and to sort of guide me about Hopi. He also sponsored the making of Hopi wedding robes and the full wedding outfit for my wife. During the making of the outfit, he and I lived in one of the kivas, something that, so far as I know, has not been done by a White man since Alexander Stephens at First Mesa in the late 1800s.
There were some people at Hotevilla who objected to having a traditional wedding ceremony for me and my wife. Extended family was positive and encouraging, though there were some who resented my contributions to kiva repairs and educational reform efforts at Hopi. Four hundred years of seeing White men as the oppressors is deeply engrained into the culture.
These major honors and a myriad of smaller acceptances from various people on Hopi helped me to feel that I belonged. I had, at least in my mind, changed from being a part of the outside oppressors to an accepted (at least somewhat) local. Admittedly, there are still Hopi who do not accept me. Just recently one man said, “it is you people who have put Christmas on us, and Thanksgiving too.” Also, several years ago I asked two elders who I greatly respected how I could help Hopi. What could I do to help make things better on Hopi? Both, at separate times, said that what I should do is leave Hopi.
There have been movements for a half-century or more trying to show that the definitions used in the “same and different/us and them” process are faulty. Martin Luthor King was trying to redefine that concept. The Red Power movement of the 1950s and 1960s was working for the same thing, as is the more recent Black Lives Matter movement. All are trying to say that the “us” can be humans of any color. That concept has not yet taken root on Hopi.
Over the years I have come to view discrimination and prejudice as a natural part of humanity. The issue is, how do we determine the “same” and the “different”? We are all trying to find our way in the world, in nature, in all environments, with the help of our beliefs and