Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/132

CHAPTER 6. LIFE AT HARD LABOR—THE HOPI 119 village at which our highest chief, Talaftewa, of the Bear Clan, was present. We have read your letter carefully and thoughtfully.


 * As village advisers of Hotevilla, Shungopovy we speak for our respective head-men and for these villages that are still following the traditional form (self) government.


 * You know as well as we do that the whole mankind is faced with the possibility of annihilation as it was done in the lower world because of greed, selfishness, and godlessness. People went after wealth, power and pleasures of life more than the moral and religious principles. Now we have floods, strikes, civil wars, earthquakes, fires and the H Bomb! To the Hopi these are but the smoke signals telling us to set our house in order before our "true white brother" comes. Whom will he punish, a white man or an Indian?


 * Because we know these terrible truths and facts we the religious leaders of the Hopi people have been continuously opposing the $90,000,000 long-range program. It will not solve these larger issues for us. It will only destroy our moral and spiritual foundation thereby destroying the peace and prosperity of the whole world. This the traditional law of this land. It cannot be changed because it was planned by the Great Spirit, Massau'u. He has given us these laws and Sacred Stone Tablets which are still in the hands of the proper leaders of Oraibi and Hotevilla villages, Shungopovy holds all the major altars and fetishes, being the mother village and which represents the true Hopi.


 * You stated that the $90,000,000 "will be of real assistance to the Hopi people, but it cannot succeed without their understanding and wholehearted cooperation in achieving these desirable goals."


 * Yet the Land Claims Commission, we understood, will deduct these "helpful assistances" when and if the Indians file their land claims and win their cases against the government. No, we do not want to be indebted to the United States government at the present time.


 * In a letter to Dan Katchongva of Hotevilla you mentioned the fact that, "you stated that the money is not needed by the Hopi Indians, although you admit that the Hopis have been made poor by the reduction of your land and livestock... the reduction of your stock was forced upon you by the severe droughts of the

past years."


 * Suppose you had spent most of your life working hard to accumulate large stock and land only to have someone come to you and force you to reduce your hard-earned stock and land because of "severe droughts". Wouldn't you too say that you have been made poor?