My reaction to the Common Roots Conference
Ferrell Secakuku
December 10 , 2006
I express my gratitude for bringing the Native-Indigenous people from Mexico and the American Southwest (Hopi and other Pueblo Natives) together in a formal way and commend those whose efforts made this meeting possible. This may have been the first ever meeting of its kind and it should continue so that our knowledge may be used as worthwhile teaching tools and to support science in its interpretations and to implement the process in restoring our world for a better future. I hope that this basic Indigenous knowledge, which has been molded together over hundreds of years, will assist that goal.
This dialog needs to take place because our cosmological observance of this world indicates that our world, life and means for survival is changing swiftly and will come to a close very soon. Our culture is being transformed based on an apparent biased nature. This means to me that transformation of our cultures are not natural in the way that many of our indigenous people experienced over a millennium. The present transformation is rapid and a result of and enculturation process that teaches that the most successful groups are those whose lives are primarily based on monetary values. People who emulate the belief and behavior that money is most important aspect of life lose the essence of spiritual integrity. The human race must become aware of their responsibility to assist with the care of our earth, which was the instruction first learned at the beginning of time.
We went through many advances that we call progress, but these changes happened only within the last 100 hundred years. The global industrial economy has created not only individual wealth, but the power to control people, land and even the earth’s environment. This type of power will eventually disrupt the earth and its ability to continue our life. We can see earth’s disgraceful and hurtful cries. Eventually our earth, and all life on it, will die. My objective to continue this dialog is to find out whether other indigenous prophesies might tell us what lay ahead and to learn the suggestions they may share for the preservation and the appropriate ecological practices that are necessary to sustain life. We may also learn our distant relationships to each other.
For this reason, in my response, my emphasis is concerned with how and why the Hopi and Snake cultures are similar and how these cultural traditions may have infused into the southern regions of the Americas such as the Mexico, Guatemala and Central America. I read books and journals written by the experts who have been studying and comparing the similarities of cultures of both the American Southwest and Mesoamerica. Some markers of the likely diffusion of Mesoamerican cultures into the Southwest Hopi are corn and bean agriculture, architecture, ceramics, language, and the rituals like the Katsinwimi, Katsina ritual, Tsu’wimi, Snake ritual, and other Hopi religious rituals that are practiced on Hopi today.
I often heard in our Hopi oral histories recited by our elders that many, if not all, of our people, the Clans, came from a place called Palakwapi, Red Knoll Village. This mystical place, they say, might be located in Central Mexico. They say that it was at this place that our people learned their major religious practices, beliefs, received their religious regalia, arts, ceramics and architecture and brought them all north when they migrated to their current home in the Southwest United States.
The Hopi language belongs to the Uto-Aztecan language family, perhaps one of the oldest and largest in the New World. This language has been spoken in three geographical areas: Central America, Mexico, and Southwest United States. It is these scientific records, hearing our Hopi oral stories and teachings from my elders, reading books and journals of the archaeologists and visiting the sites in Mexico that inspired me more to think about our past and generated more questions than answers about my people. I want to find out who the Hopi are, from where did they come, and why they came here, to this desolate place, to live.
Today’s archaeological studies that represent the Hopi past are, for the most part, limited to the Colorado Plateau. There is known archaeological evidence, I believe, that will support the oral Hopi tradition of their mass migration, tracing their “footprints,” stemming from the Valley of Mexico to the Southwest of the United States. It is for this reason I am recommending that the Indigenous people of both Mexico and the United States continue their important dialog that was developed in their first Common Roots Conference. If Indigenous people exchange their stories and ancient teachings, we might further learn our roots and learn the basic teachings in caring for our earth. It is also important that the partnership of the American and Mexican anthropologists and archaeologists coordinate their studies to carry out the appropriate interpretation of the indigenous cultures of both countries. The conference provided a way to build a bridge of ethnic evolutionary concepts to bring back together the cultural gap that has been blocked for over 500 years and is still being implemented to restore the so-called legal boundaries.
There is a global interconnectedness of the indigenous world of the Americas. I believe we all received the teachings to save this world as instructed by Masawau’, and that we all accepted to be stewards of this mother earth. It is critical for us to truly understand our purpose here, that we are the keepers of the world. But in order for it to be understood by the world of the dominant society, and to foster this very important teaching so it will be consistent, reliance on the science of anthropology, archaeology and sociology is the mechanism to break the barrier of the Western Culture that all societies have the right to exist and to tell their stories. The Western cultural evolution has risen to such a high level of technology that it resorts to exploiting the environment for energy consumption. At the same time, it replaces and displaces the indigenous cultures that are different, and who, by virtue of their traditional teachings, were taught to be adapted to their local environment and to live according to the laws of nature.
Lastly, indigenous dialog is a mechanism for those of non-indigenous cultures to enhance their understanding of their past. It is from this understanding that a better path for the future of our world may be derived.
