Saturday, 22nd August, Hotevilla: Butterfly Festival at the Hopi Reservation
Now that we have the consent of a Hopi couple to partipate, the two of us leave Tuba City in the Navajo Nation and set off to a neighbouring reservation about 45 miles away at Hotevilla.
The Hopi are American Indians people who primarily live on the 12,635 km² (2,531.773 sq mi) Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona. The Hopi Reservation is entirely surrounded by the much larger Navajo Reservation and has about 7,000 people on it. According to Hopi oral tradition, the Hopi are a gathering of diverse groups representing clans from different areas, now identifying culturally as one group of people with a single language.The Hopi religion is anti-war. To be Hopi is to strive toward this concept, which nvolves a state of total reverence and respect for all things, to be at peace with these things, and to live in accordance with the instructions of Maasaw, the Creator or Caretaker of Earth (that’s from Wiki, natch) Traditionally, Hopi are organized into matrilineal clans. When a man marries, the children from the relationship are members of his wife’s clan.
The whole weekend is one of festivities to celebrate the harvest. More specifically, it’s the Butterfly Festival. “The Butterfly Maiden is represented as a doll and dancer at the Kachina Nature, Earth and Weather spirit celebrations in August. Her headdress (which all the girls wear) is adored with corn and butterfly symbols to call forth a good harvest because butterflies are associated with the pollination of crops. Kachinas who come to earth bring rain and good harvests and they are invoked in dance and rituals” (from Fabulous Creatures, Mythical Monsters and Animal Power Symbols, by Cassandra Eason)
We entered the reservation and it immediately felt other-worldly: the roads were no longer paved, inside the bike wobbled over soft sand paths. Big cars were parked everywhere, outside every house, alongside the sand tracks. The houses were rundown, children and people were everywhere. We were the only white faces in hundreds of Hopi faces. Stalls selling granita, embroidered rugs, dresses littered the route to the slightly ramshackle central square.
We park beside the main square and hear the loud noise of chanting and the jingle of bells. Promptly we are told to move the bike because the dancers will be coming down the road that we are on, so we shift it and race to get the camera out, eliciting sceptical looks from all around – white faces, Evel Knievel suits and the sidecar. I’m uncomfortable. But there’s little time to feel it as the loud procession works its way towards us.
There are around 200 people in the procession. All in traditional costume, with the Butterfly festival headdress worn by the girls. They move forward, then jump causing the bells around their knees to ring in rhythm, then repeat. The crowds watching are big, people are up on the rooves of the houses, clapping along. We film the dance with the big camera, meaning we don’t really blend in… The dance lasts about 5 more minutes, after which the procession disbands, and a handful of people warn us that filming is strictly not permitted by the Hopi elders, and we are lucky not to have had our camera confiscated and/or destroyed.
We scarper.
We then set off to meet our contact, Debbie, and her husband Carroll. They are in the process of building a nice, and big, house on the outskirts of the reservation. They live and work in Flagstaff, but spend spare time on the reservation. As we start the interview, they talk of the challenges of spanning those two worlds, and the effects it has had on their relationship. We got the strong sense that they were happiest on the reservation, though they have made successful lives beyond it. They met and courted in the usual US way – movie theatres and hanging with friends, but they had a traditional Hopi wedding. Carroll is very involved in the culture on the reservation, teaching the Hopi culture to kids on the reservation, meanwhile Debbie is keen to do the same with the outside world. They have been married for 36 years, and still seem to be going very strong. They laughed as they thought about their grown-up daughter learning about their courtship and marriage. A great couple!
