Wednesday we are watching the film: Hopi: Songs of the Fourth World.

Friday we will watch the film: Seasons of the Navajo.

As you review this unit, consider the following questions:

1. What type of environment do they live in?

2. How has each group adapted to the environment? what are the similarities? what are the differences?

3. What is the kinship like for each group? What are the similarities and differences?

4. What is the subsistence economy like for each group? What are the similarities and differences?

5. How is each groups subsistence economy reflected in their cosmology?

Navajo subsistence Type: Who does what work? What is the cycle? What kinds of animals are raised? Who owns the animals?

Hopi subsistence Type: Who does what work? Who owns the land? What do they plant? When is the harvest?

6. What are the settlement patterns for each group? What are the similarities and differences?

Background:

The Hopi and Navajo live on the Colorado plateau in the Four Corners area of Arizona. The environment is dry. Of interest is that these two groups live side by side yet have adapted in very different ways to the same environment. In one case you have a group who are pastoralists, moving their herds of sheep on an annual cycle and supplementing their pastoralism with farming. On the other hand you have a group who are horticulturalists, planting a variety of crops (primarily corn). Both survive in what many would consider a harsh environment. In addition to their different food-getting adaptations, there exist similarities and differences in their settlement patterns and social organization. Students are expected to learn a little about the lives of these two cultures who live along side each other yet have adapted in different, yet successful ways.

The information contained within Monday’s lecture and assigned readings should be considered in conjunction with two videos: Seasons of a Navajo and Hopi: Songs of the Fourth World.

I have located and printed off a brief review of the first film:
Hopi: Songs of the Fourth World

by Pat Ferrero San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle

Reviewed by Edward Guthmann

Hopi: Songs of the Fourth World took 4 1/2 years to finish -- incorporating six production trips and a dozen research trips. Apart from finances, Ferrero's biggest challenge was winning the trust of the Hopi people, and then correctly interpreting their culture for the Anglo audience. To tell her story, Pat Ferrero enlisted "a network of friendships" -- Hopi families and individuals she met over a long period of time. "I only worked at places and with people who wanted to cooperate, who wanted this film to be made," Ferrero said. "It took tremendous commitment from them, just to explain to their neighbors what a film crew was doing in their home."

The reluctance that she occasionally confronted, Ferrero said, stems from the early years of this century, when Hopi land was inundated by visitors. "In looking at historical photographs," she said, "you can see that outsiders outnumbered the Hopi -- that small, ceremonial plazas were overrun with photographers with tripods." (also think about the impression the Hippies left – Nabokov reading)

Once she had established a working rapport. Ferrero faced the problem of finding individuals who would speak on Hopi history and folklore. "Hopi is organized as a series of villages," Ferrero said, "and each Village has autonomy." Even though there's a shared culture Ferrero found that "no single Hopi would presume to be a spokesperson for Hopi."

Initially, Ferrero set out to make a film about women's roles. Since land use, ceremonial roles and clan membership are passed through the mother's family line, Hopi women have economic security and unusually strong social status. Eventually, though, (through the encouragement of both men and women) Ferrero chose to look at both roles, and at the importance of corn in Hopi culture.

It's through corn, Ferrero said, that the Hopi maintain their strongest symbolic link to the past; and it's through the planting of corn that Hopi values are best illustrated. When the farmer plants corn, "it's seen metaphorically: The Hopi see corn as female, as a seed that's capable of regeneration. Planting is an act of faith.

"Even though it's not needed for survival any longer," Ferrero added, "the Hopi still choose to plant corn, because it represents their identity. People say, 'We are corn.' I wondered how this tradition had stood up under the pressure to acculturate." Hopi ritual has survived the onslaught of Western civilization, Ferrero said, "primarily because of their isolation." The 13 Hopi villages (including the oldest continually inhabited settlements in the northern hemisphere) are built on three adjacent mesas close to the painted desert of northeast Arizona. The Grand Canyon is an hour's drive to the west.

According to Ferrero, "Carbon dating shows that they've been there since the 10th century, though they say they've been there longer." I'd say the Hopi are the most intact native American group." Still, since all native American children attend Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, the Hopi frequently struggle between the need to preserve their own ways, and the wish to explore technology and newer fashionable Anglo ways. "They have TVs, cars and jobs," Ferrero said. "There's a wide range of sophistication among the Hopi."

The "fourth world" referred to in Ferrero's title derives from the Hopi belief that the world has been destroyed three times by mankind's greed and corruption. The Hopi believe that they re-emerged from the earth -- just like corn -- at the beginning of the current cycle. The reference to songs is also important, Ferrero said, "since singing is really their way of storytelling. There is no written history." The soundtrack for her film, in fact, is dominated by two elements: The sound of the wind and the recorded voices of Hopi chants and songs.

Review of the Nabokov Reading: Hopi in the Love Generation

Hippies 

constructing a romantic image and relationship between the ideas of the hippy counterculture and the previously subdued Indian culture. 

this is not new - similar movements occurred in the 1840s, 1890s, 1920s, and here again in the 1960s. 

a counter culture movement

Hippies had been sold the archetype of the noble savage and the mystical prophet, but, hippies did not understand the reality of Indian. Hippies were a product of their time - influenced by ideas of PanIndianness, and the interstate highway system.

They picked, of all Indians, the Hopi as representatives of their romantic, “free-love” model.

The irony? The Hopi are one of the most rule-bound, authoritarian, and moral-driven of Indian peoples. 

The Hopi saw the Hippies as rude, immoral, disrespectful, and dirty

Initially Hopi may have taken the Hippies as "clowns"

Clowns are very important in Hopi worldview and they serve a religious function.

Clowns serve to instruct and demonstrate all the things a Hopi isn't. They demonstrate immoral behavior. However, Clowns leave after they've sort of "said their piece" - the Hippies wouldn't leave.