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Flag of the Hopi

Hopi

The Hopi are a Native American tribe who live on a reservation in northeastern Arizona. The Hopi are known for being "The Peaceful People," their deep-rooted spirituality and their agriculture based sustenance. The Hopi “people sustain the corn and the corn sustains the Hopi culture.” The religion and culture is fused in the lifestyles and values of the Hopi culture and the glue that bonds it is corn. [5] For the Hopi, corn is sustenance, ceremonial object, prayer offering, and art, and the connection between the people and corn is sacred. [5]

Culture

Emergence Myths

The Hopi believe that “Spider Grandmother” is the creator of the world. She “thought outward into space and breathed and sang and spun the world into existence.” [1] The Hopi people understand life to be a part of an infinite pattern, a “continuum of cycles within cycles,” and that this larger pattern is mirrored within the circular journey of human life. [1] In Hopi understanding, there were three worlds before this one, and in this fourth world, the Hopi look to nature for knowledge to gain a better world. [3] In the previous worlds, mankind’s greed and corruption brought terribleness upon the world, but out of this greed and corruption, humanities most honest and sincere sensed a world that was better. [5] The Hopi believe that when the people emerged from the world below up into the fourth world, the Great Spirit gave them “a choice of destiny by offering the different corn.” [1] The Hopi chose the smallest ear of blue corn and this corn would provide them with sustenance but their life would be not without difficulty. [5]

Spiritual Agriculture

The Hopi have been growing corn for over a thousand years without irrigation in very dry land. [5] The Hopi believe that they have a certain responsibility to raise and grow the corn. When they were given the choice of destiny, the committed themselves to live by the law of the corn. [5] The Hopi regard the seasonal cycle of corn to mirror the human journey, and that we all share a pattern that is discernible in their cornfields. Hopi villages are the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in North America, and since 1540, they have resisted religious conversion, and have kept their traditional ancient agricultural practices and values. [1] The Hopi world is marked by the four cardinal directions, these points of the sun determine time for planting and ceremonies, they are represented by four ears of corn, blue, red, yellow and white. [4] The Hopi believe themselves to be rooted into the cornfields, they believe in the sacredness of working the corn and the faith of growing the corn in a very dry climate without any irrigation. [5] The corn is sacred to the Hopi, while their farming techniques are dated and economically futile, it is the sacred act that keeps the Hopi coming back into the field to grow corn continuously. [1]They believe that when corn is placed into Mother Earth, it is placed into her womb, and it’s during its emergence out of the ground, it must be cared and loved. As the corn grows, farmers must sing, because the Hopi believe that we emerged into the world in the same way that the corn does. [1]

See Also

Hopi mythology

Hopi Reservation

Kachina

Hopi language

Puebloan peoples

External Links

 Official Hopi Website

Hopi Cultural Preservation Office