Hopi emergency

Winter, 2010 Editorial
Guest Author: ben Yoseif

Hoa Mitakuyase, Thank you everyone for helping with the Hopi emergency. A job well done and done immediately. Due to your rapid response, trucks with more than 20 cords of firewood are on their way and should have been arriving beginning on Saturday. I believe we also have 7,000 pounds of potatoes on the way, which will arrive tomorrow. These are coming from LDS friends in southern Utah, Native circles of an inter-tribal elder living near the Paiute nation in southern Utah, and one and possibly two groups of Native Americans and LDS being organized in the Phoenix area.. LDS in the Boise area also have made contact with the Polacca stake on First Mesa to assist them financially in obtaining wood. Thus far I’ve heard nothing from LDS in southern Colorado and New Mexico or a peep out of RLDS. In a follow up email to Marlin K. Jensen, historian and member of the Council of 70 of the LDS in Salt Lake (with whom Membreno Leader Jimmy Tenrivers and I and a delegation of others met about two years ago), I will ask Jensen, who thanked us for alerting Salt Lake to the emergency, to get the word out to stakes in those areas. I will also ask him to contact RLDS leaders about the concern. I am not mentioning names of those who have helped Hopi meet this emergency so as to not diminish their reward for this very great mitzvah, although I know there was no thought of reward in anyone’s compassionate response. Saving the life of your brother is so important that all other commands and observances and laws are thrown out when one has the challenge and opportunity to do so. Without this immediate supply of wood, I am all too certain that some of our Hopi brothers would not have survived. But the emergency will last for the next 60 days until the worst of this winter has passed. We must see to it that Hopi are supplied with enough firewood to get them through this period. Today I heard from two sources that the snowpack and lack of a solid ground under the snow damaged five trucks attempting to haul firewood cut on the Hopi reservation. So you can understand how important and vital this firewood is at this time. Mitakuyase, we must look at the Hopi at least at this time of their holiest ceremonies, as those who hold spiritual sovereignty in this land and have had millennium before anything on it was called, “American.” I am confident that the need will be met, but just want to encourage those out there seeing to that need, that you are supporting a very great cause. HOA!! (Ah-Ho) Gah gey you e, Shalom, A’saneh, Hoa! ben Yoseif Hoa, Shalom, O’siyo, This is being sent to all who have contacted me over the past two weeks, friends, family, associates and others with hearts of Joseph. I just returned from Hopi land, (Thursday) and it may be a few days before I can return your emails and phone calls, but there is an urgent emergency about which I thought I would seek your prayers and possibly additional help for Hopi. For the sixth time in their modern history, the Hopi have requested outside help to deal with a federally declared disaster in the wake of a highly unusual snow storm that dumped up to four feet on parts of Hopi land. When I drove into Hopi land from Window Rock on Hwy 243, just to the west of Ganado, when the highway finally opened on Saturday night and Sunday morning, the first thing I saw at first light, was a horse lying frozen and dead beside a fence. There is no telling how many times this scene would have been repeated had I had light to see. Dozens of other horses had come up to the fences lining the highway, seeking some kind of mercy from passing cars and trucks and dozens of Hopi walking on foot between villages. The horses were being fed just about everything to keep them alive. Apples, peanut butter sandwiches, unpeeled oranges. While truckloads of green hay was being delivered to horses on the Navajo reservation, which surrounds Hopi, I saw no such hay coming to Hopi. Arriving early in connection with a film documentary on the Hopi message and the connection of some Hopi clans with Jerusalem, and the film producers caught in the aftermath of the storm in Flagstaff until the roads were opened, I had time to volunteer to help with the relief effort, mostly delivering sandbags in my truck to villages that were otherwise inaccessible. That gave me a first-hand look of the situation, which I would now like to relate. On Monday afternoon, which was two days after the snow had ended, and the sun had returned, the snow pack was still more than a foot to 18 inches across Hopi land with drifts approaching four feet. Only Hwy 243 from Ganado and a road connecting Second Mesa to Winslow, AZ., were opened and none of the villages were passable without 4WD. More than 900 calls for firewood, coal or fuel had been received by the emergency center set up at the Veteran’s Memorial Center between 2nd and 3rd Mesas. Where the snow had been cleared by the few scrapers available, mud was about six to nine inches thick again making travel in the villages impossible without 4WD and stranding hundreds of elderly and infirmed. FEMA had provided two helicopters to fly in medical supplies and prescriptions and check on the infirmed who live in remote areas. Another 150 or so calls had been received requesting sandbags for leaking roofs, and porous foundations. On Third Mesa, many of the mud-brick houses are built directly atop the ground (in these villages the ground is considered sacred so it is not disturbed as much as possible, therefore houses and kivas are built directly atop the ground. Initially, these houses had dirt floors but many have since been tiled over. Still, the water from the massive snow melt was streaming into walls and ceilings. Two FEMA trucks had arrived filled with drinking water, sandbags and other emergency supplies but no firewood. Surrounded by Navajo, the Hopi must rely on firewood from the Hopi Mesas and contiguous areas, the Navajo dealing with their own emergencies, although much better equipped to do so than the Hopi. Two truckloads of firewood were expected to arrive from California to the west on the day I had to leave in order to avoid being snowbound from another storm that hit Wednesday night and Thursday. President Obama the day after the first storm hit, declared the region a major disaster area making it eligible for FEMA assistance. However, the one need of the Hopi – firewood – was not met by the FEMA assistance. The national emergency is to last for 60 days, but the Hopi are out of firewood throughout their mesas NOW. On Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nights, they were surviving in many homes huddled under quilts with NO HEAT. Meanwhile, the four-leggeds, including predators were on the prowl. I personally spotted a mountain lion track about 150 yards west of the Cultural Resources Center on 2nd Mesa, which has the reservation’s only motel and restaurant. It was a big cat whose paws pressed a good inch into the icepack … and there were spots of fresh blood where the tracks of something smaller abruptly ended. The kwahus and other wingeds were nowhere to be seen, except for literally hundreds of crow that also seemed desperate for food which could not be found atop the frozen ground. The first storm hit as the adolescent Hopi boys whose mothers felt they were ready for initiation rites, were being instructed in the rites of the different kiva societies. The second storm stuck on the day they were to come out of the kivas and prepare for the Bean Dance, which begins this weekend. Hopi elders said they were caught unawares because this storm they believe was caused by changes in weather patterns due to global earth changes taking place. Elders had anticipated a bad winter and had encouraged Hopi to stockpile wood, but repeated cold snaps have now exhausted these supplies. The pressing need is for firewood at least for the next 60 days until the coldest of the weather passes. I am especially asking anyone with LDS and RLDS connections to notify their leadership of this emergency and encourage the stakes especially in southern Utah to bring truckloads of firewood to Hopi. They don’t need your money. They are truly self sufficient except for this pressing need which has suddenly been thrust upon them. If the Mormon community truly believes the Hopi are connected with the Lamanites of the Book of Mormon, it is time to reach out to these “relatives.” But all Joes on this list who have the true heart of Joseph are encouraged to pray and if they have the means, to help somehow. Please give me a few days to complete the contacts I promised I would make in connection with this emergency. Then I will read your emails and answer the phone calls I missed while away. Hoa, Shalom, Gah gey you e, Asaweh, ben Yoseif Hopi Veteran’s Memorial Center: (Where firewood should be delivered between 2nd and 3rd Mesas: (928) 734-6686) Ask for “Paul” Hopi Tribal Headquarters (for other forms of assistance) 1st Mesa: (928) 734-3100

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