The Hopi Ontology: Preservation and the Indigenous

Among contemporary Native American groups, few have achieved as much renown in the popular culture as the Hopi, whose artifacts are frequently cited in commercial magazines and journals, and whose feuds with the Navajo are reported throughout the Southwest.1 Indeed, the Hopi figure so prominently in the lore of the Arizona-New Mexico region that even reporting on other tribal groups often mentions their culture and the impact that they have had in the area.2But comparatively little has been written on the Hopi ontology or worldview, its importance among other indigenous metaphysical systems, or why features of the ontology might be deemed to be intrinsically appealing and useful to us today. It will be the argument of this paper that the Hopi ontological structures are underrepresented in compendia of views about indigenous cultures, and that their overall metaphysics -or views of reality-are worthy of closer examination, especially from the standpoint of ecology.IThe Native Americans of the Southwest are often designated in certain ways in contemporary journalism, specific focal points of their belief systems having gained a toehold in the larger imagination, with consequences in the mindset both of those who live in the region and of those who visit the areas in question. The Havasupai are known for their identification with the Grand Canyon; indeed, entire books have been done about their battles with the federal government surrounding what they feel is not mere ownership of parts of the Canyon, but a sense of belonging to it so profound as to be difficult to articulate in Eurocentric terms. The Navajo are seen as sheepherders and the possessors of the traditional dwellings known as hogans; the fact that they are statistically the most numerous group of Native Americans extant makes them loom large in the mind of most Americans.The Hopi are often seen in terms of kachinas; some objects from their region are known as kachina dolls, and to possess one that has been made carefully or actually used in ceremonies gives its owner a certain cachet.3 But the status of the kachinas for the Hopi, cast in terms more comprehensible to Western cultures, is by no means clearcut. Here is JJichard Bradfield on the place of the kachinas:Not all katcinas are the of deceased human beings - some represent animals, some plants or other inanimate beings -but most are, and the common belief regarding their origin appears to be, in Kennard's words, 'that the of the dead go to the west where they become Kachinas and return to the village as clouds.'4Bradfield goes on to say, however, that he believes that it is a mistake to refer to the clouds themselves as kachina; rather, he calls them spirits standing in very close relation to clouds.5 Like many indigenous cultures across the globe -and, for that matter, in a vein similar to many of the ancient cultures of which we have a great deal of knowledge, such as the Middle Kingdom Egyptians -the Hopi appear to venerate the dead, and to accord them not only their own mode of existence in the spirit realm, but even their own locale. Thus it is that a directional sense for the Hopis encompasses information about the kachinas and other deities, and it is not possible to make meaningful statements about crop growing, cycles and so forth without advertence to this mode of being.In addition, the Hopi hold important and somewhat unconventional views about various flora and fauna. These views, again, vary from indigenous nation to indigenous nation: for the Havasupai, attitudes toward plants and animals are consistent with an identification worldview or metaphysics-informants such as the anthropologists' often-cited Mark Hanna have an attitude toward animals that places them squarely within the context of everyday use.6 But for the Hopi, not only are certain animals sacred, various objects indicating parts of the animals are also sacred, and used in ceremonies. …

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