Official Hopi Response
For Immediate Release
P.O. Box 123
Kykotsmovi, Arizona 86039
Hopi.nsn.us
For more information contact:
(520) 734-3000
Claire Heywood
Statement
Hopi Religious Practices
Eagle Gathering
Kykotsmovi, AZ, March 22, 2001 - The Hopi people appreciate the U.S. Department of Interior’s progress on rule making to allow the Hopi an opportunity for limited golden eagle gathering at Wupatki National Monument, an ancestral home-site of the Hopi. Built by the Hopi in the distant past, Wupatki and its ruins were set aside as part of the National Park system by a 1924 presidential proclamation. However, the Hopi and eagle gathering have always been associated with Wupatki, certainly before 1924 and long before the arrival of Spanish Europeans to the area in the 1500’s.
Hopi people, who have lived in northeastern Arizona for thousands of years, practice a demanding religion handed down from generation to generation. The spiritual wellbeing of the Hopi and their culture depends on strict individual adherence to a calendar of religious observances throughout the year. The responsibility for eagle gathering is given to only a few Hopi clans whose efforts benefit the lives of over 11,000 Hopi members.
The role of the eagle in Hopi society is that of a messenger connecting Hopi people with the spiritual world. Each spring the eagle comes to live among the Hopi as a welcome family member. The eagle is revered as a sacred emissary and at summer’s end, is sent home with gifts, prayers and messages from the Hopi people to the spiritual deities. This annual journey by the eagle is made not just on behalf of the Hopi, but for the benefit of all mankind and the entire natural world. The relationship between the eagle and the Hopi is intended to ensure that the day-to-day world of the Hopi remains peaceful and productive for another year and that individual Hopis have the opportunity to live and grow in purity, goodness, balance and harmony.
In order to reach their full potential as human beings in this world, the eagle gathering practice is one way in which the Hopi seek to realign their personal behavior with their ideals. Depriving a people of their religious practice risk the loss of more than their religious freedom, a guaranteed right under the U.S. Constitution. It robs them of their identity and perhaps, even their future.
The landscape of the Hopi people and the eagle has changed dramatically over the last 500 years. The impacts of this change on the Hopi and their relationship with the eagle are most easily seen in an increasingly industrial and residential environment throughout the Southwest. The survival of both the Hopi and the eagle are intrinsically connected and together lie at the very core of who the Hopi people are and their purpose on this earth. The Department of Interior’s recent rule making respects this ancient culture and its existence for the last thousand years. (END)