Thomas Banyacya: The Hopi Prophecy

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, it saved a wreck like me. I'm only one left now who was selected by high leaders. And when high leaders, high religious leaders place you in a position, you cannot neglect it. I'm not a medicine man or spiritual leader, I'm just a simple person, common person carrying this message for my elders, who know I'm versed in things and to carry it as far as I can. That's what they instructed me to do, because worst problems are going to be great. But if I can open a door to a nation for them, then my work is done and somebody might go in there someday. In an old Hopi way. Hopi means peace, kind, gentle. Our mission is to hold this land alive according to the law of the great spirit. We are the original native people, holding this land alive in balance through prayer, and taking care of all these animals, birds and plants that we leave with them. We take whatever with prayer, with the ceremonies, and we protect this. So we are endangered species also, but no one seems to be protecting us. No organization is set up to protect the real environmentalists in this country. And right now, there's much concern about these bare grounds and bones that have been sold, and released artifacts that are buried in the ground for special reason, but they're taking it out. That is planted there just like a seed, to take care of horses' power underneath. They're helping, power underneath, to keep this land in balance. So that's why when you dance, many native people don't know why when you dance your feet. When we do that, we let underground forces, spirit people, know that we're still carrying on this ceremony. So prayer, meditation, ceremonies, from Taos in Mexico and down to Zonia and down to here, is performing that ceremony for the great spirits and following the instructions. I'm trying every way to bring this message to the world, for the elders, for the elders, for the people, and to keep this land and life in balance here in Four Corners area at least, because from this point on, they keep this land in balance around the world. I'm sure that you know that you have a mother, and you should respect your mother. And that's why look at this Mother Earth. She's our mother living being, and we nourished from her breast, and she gave us everything, and that's why we respect her. We cannot sell our Mother Earth to anybody, because she's our mother living being. So now, we say that this Mother Earth is a living being. If it was dead, nothing would grow on it. But we came from that, everything came from that, and we depend on Mother to feed us, to live a long, good, happy life. And it's a powerful being, living being. And just recently, I read in the news article, magazine, big headline, that today white scientists find out this Mother Earth is a living being. They just discovered that, a long time ago. And then we know when you pray, meditate, or you plant something, you pray over it, you fast, you go to ceremonies, and you touch the plant, and come up like a child, and make that grow good. We do that all the time. We did find out too that white people finally discovered that when you play music for that plant, or sing a song or something, pray for that to grow real good. And we knew that a long time ago, but again, white men discovered recently that it helped make things grow. So these are some of the things we found out across the country. There are so many things that I realized that we need to get together like this. We need to share this thing, not only Native people, but all other cultures, religions, and nations coming together, because now the world is in real trouble, which I hope you say it would be. It's going to be great at this time. This is why we are coming together, looking for one another. This land is a spiritual center. No one should take any mineral resources out yet without permission from the elders. But somehow the tribal council, without knowledge from their religious leaders, traditional people, they gave permit to Peabody Coal Company to go up in Black Mesa and start trip mining. And they really ripped up that area, our shrines and burial grounds and sacred things are deposited there. And now they're using a lot of water from underground, which in this dry area is depleting our spring mineral resources. Many of the places are drying up, and that also brings down the moisture. The lower and lower and the ground and that moisture is supposed to have some connection with the rain, and it won't rain, and creating more sicknesses, blindness, cancers. All this is developing. There was a reason for the traditions trying to stop that at the very beginning back in 1966, but the government and the council don't listen, and they're still digging the coal up. They call this a natural sacrifice area. They don't care what happened to the native people. They want to get rid of us so they can go up to mineral resources, these big companies. And I'm sure that they're the ones ripping up their rainforest down there. The same thing goes on all over, which I hope we know will happen not only here but around the world. Because many people, big money people, big corporations, even government officials involved, are going after more money and power and glory just to have a good time. They don't care what happened to the Anambars and people, as long as they get money. That is what is happening today. We just merely take care of it in a way that we're told we're not to disturb things too much. Just get whatever we need from the trees or flowers or fruit or medicine from the hills or fish, animal. Just enough. But the white people, they say someday they're going to come and they're going to just take everything for themselves, seemingly. As you mentioned about David Manangia, I used to take him around a lot. He's about 90 years old man then. But he always say that I guess the white people don't like that. They put that word on the cracker jack. When you pick up cracker jack, there's a word in there, the more you eat, the more you want. Seems like they're like that, people. They never stop eating everything up, you know. My name is Chata Skatum. I'm from Lummi. I'm one of the elders from our longhouse, our shlangan, our winter dance ceremonies that we perform at our home. I'm also the cultural resource specialist for the Lummi tribe. And we're here meeting with our brothers, the Mayan lock and gnomes. I'd like to say a few words I can understand and what your elders are talking about. They said our ways were savage. They were cannibals. They were heathens. Because we prayed to Mother Earth. Because we go up in the mountain and we fast. The ways of our old people, they said, is no good no more. They want us to walk only in their world. They're cutting down 1,000 acres of our forest a week. Every week they're knocking down 1,000 acres of old-growth timber. We've had enough. We want to save what's left here on Mother Earth to save. We're in a whole new land. We're going to talk to our creator and ask him to send down something. Send something down here that's going to make things right with Mother Earth again. We don't have to worry about them blowing up that bomb that's going to destroy Mother Earth. We're going to die in our own waste. It's happening already. The air is no good. The water is no good. The land is used up. Without this precious water, nothing can live. Nothing. And they're destroying it all around us. So I'm thankful that I can be here. His name is Kimbor and he comes from the jungle. They have the same problems that you here. They have problems with promises from the government that the government never makes a reality. They have no doctors right now. They have diseases that are affecting different people of their village. And he's very worried about that. Papandon are peoples from a very large forest. Theirs is a tropical rainforest. Ours is a temperate rainforest. But it's an ancient cedar rainforest. Now our people to us, even though many people know us as salmon people, salmon's everything to us, but the cedar's everything as well. It's our home. It's our sacred drum hoops. It's our sacred rattles. It's our flute. It's our hoops for fish nets. It's our boards. It's our clothing. You name it, we make these things out of the cedar. Inside, you can reach down inside of the ancient trees and find that it gave its heart up. And from that, we get red paint. And so for us, the cedar's very important. And so we have our problems and we're very sympathetic. Whether it's the Mayan Lakandon of Mexico or the Makwashi or the Yanomami of Brazil, we've heard their voices. We've heard their pleas, and we hear that it's the same thing. It's the same industries. It's the same type of greed that's destroying all of this. When the other world was totally destroyed by flood, a handful of spiritual people came up and met the great spirit here. And he met us here, our ancestors, the first one. And he laid down this path for us to follow, a spiritual path. He kept this land in line and balance in that way. So he told us about this and warned us about this. And as long as we follow his instructions, this land and life will go on forever. And so this symbol represents also the sacred symbol. And we've placed on this for thousands of years or more native people alone in this country. But somewhere a white brother separated from us and finally came back again. So he came and he brings some inventions that maybe some of us wanted. The old people told us not, we can have some of this, but stay down here. But some of us fell for it. We go up and follow white man's path, materialistic path, invention of all things without spiritual machinery. So the second one brings more advancement in scientific things. This was a wagon. This was automobile. And this one represents power up in the sky and nuclear power development. And this represents first, second world war. Whoever was given special mission to be purified shook us up two times because we are letting go our spiritual ways. So follow materialistic path and disturbing our life and everything. And there are few left here, so this first one shook us up. There was selected here, three of them. Then it stopped for a while. We go on and then more advancement, scientific things. More TV, radio, all advance airplanes and all the stuff. So we all start going that way. And again, second one really shook us up real hard with the power they have built. Then many lives and property was destroyed here. So they referred to that as one of old people joining them, telling the old people, forget that cultural religion. See, we got all this material advantage, come on, come this way. So that's what they're going to do up here. And as we go along, there will be a lot of world problems developing. And then they said, White Brother was given a special symbol also. We already received that at the beginning. And we separate from here and White Brother went around the world to the other side. And he was given this circle. There's no end to this land and life as long as we follow the love of the spirit. This circle represents that. There's no end to that circle. Lakota said, sacred hoop must never be broken. And so we're all standing on this spiritual circle. And White Man was given that. He was given a religion. And he go away, he's going to invent many things, he's going to record things, and he make life beautiful and clean and lasting. Then he was to come here to look for his younger brother, who was this Mother Earth color, brown color, to help him with his invention. Because we're holding this land and life through spiritual ways. And he was supposed to recognize us, the brothers and sisters. So Native people welcome the White Brothers. They give them food and lodging and everything and let them live in his house and freely. And we did everything to help them survive for the first time they came here. But they bring in instruments of warfare, swords, spears, and other guns and hatchets. And that started chopping down our people. And the Six Nations look at the swords like a symbol of a cross. Because when he comes, he's going to bring a symbol of a cross. They're going to have to purify this water ocean that polluted. Of course, that would be their work to continue on. But there would be people who have really helped us. They would pull out the grout and they would stand by their leader. And they would be respected, honored. Because some White people or some nations who helped them would be respected. They would be protected also. This is what we call pivocation. They would take place here. And after that's done, whoever survives will meet the Great Spirit. So this represents male figure, they said. Male seed of every living thing on this earth. And this other one symbol represents female producer of life. That's why the rent when baby born, you know, blood proposed. And it represents four directions, too. It means different things in nature. Same way with this symbol. So we must not mess with this symbol or seed of every living thing. But it happened in other last world. People went crazy, called it Koyaanisqatsi. Everything went haywire. Everybody didn't care. They danced and gambled and they just used the power against each other. They just had a good time. No one stopped them. And so then at the last stages they started taking all the male and female together and mixing them up and making better flowers, apples, pears. And pretty soon they're going to make babies like that. And they're doing that now, test tube thing. That means that we're getting closer to last stages. They shouldn't do that. They said they can succeed in making babies, but those babies, when they grow up, they're going to be hard to handle. They're going to be terrible. They're just going to do anything that is not right. We can't handle them. So don't go that far or stop there somewhere. And if you have power to get to the moon, don't go up there. If some of you ever get to that moon, don't bring anything down from that moon to earth because you already unbalanced so much nature here. If you bring something from, even a small thing, from the moon to earth, you will have more tidal wave, more earthquake, more mountain blowing their tops, that's volcanic eruption, more sicknesses you can't cure for a long time, and droughts, very strong wind, and severe winters. All these things were told that will happen if we do that kind of thing. That junior, black-eyed children said, white people, they want to go up to heaven all the time, then they go up there real fast. But there's no place for the human being to be up there. It's out here. We messed this up, we better start cleaning up our mess. This is the time for that now. So I think there are a lot of things to do. It took four days to explain this, but I can explain this. This represents this four corners area, and it also represents one side of the world. This side and that side. So this is where we've been all four directions, to the edges of land and the spiritual centers. As yet, we need to develop different areas so that Native people have spirituals gathered there, and other nations will have to join us to survive. This is the basis of our spiritual foundation that we need to bring about. And so we are facing many problems, and it really amazes me, and it makes me encouraged, too, that many people are now coming together. Some of you are looking for this thing. Maybe it's out of your group and other groups who hear this. Somebody hears this about this problem in the future, that we should bring peaceful people together with kindness, with true love, instead of using this to fight for our rights, but use this simple peace sign, which is always used by Hopi and other Native people across the country. Even if they don't know each other, they just come and put up their hand. I'm glad to see you. I'm glad to see you coming by, and I'll see you again. They don't have to say anything, but that's a peace sign. And that's all the healing poem, too, from out of you. If you put your mind and spirit and faith into it, you can help somebody with the palm of your hand. So these are some of the things that the Hopi know, and I hope that that will be brought about so that we can heal ourselves first and heal others. © transcript Emily Beynon