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168  c h a p t e r 9 “Get over it!” and Other Suggestions patty talahongva (hopi) “When we had our winter ceremonies,” said Patty Talahongva, one January afternoon in her Albuquerque office, “our schedule was like this. My dad was a baker. That’s the wonderful job”—she raised her eyebrows with “wonderful”—arranged for him after the Talahongva family relocated to Denver. “King’s Bakery,” she recited. “He would get off at, say, two in the afternoon. My mom would have the car packed. He would come home, load up, we’d jump in the car, and start driving. We’d come all the way down through here, cross over into Arizona, and go to Second Mesa. We would get there at night. I remember getting in that car and falling asleep. Wake up at my grandma’s house. She always had a big pot of stew for us, and bread. We would come in, she would feed us. That’s the last I would see of my dad for the weekend, because he would go up to the kiva [an underground ceremonial space] and stay in the kiva for the ceremonies all weekend long.” “Then early Sunday morning when he would come out, my mom would have everything packed up, we’d have our meal for the road, we’d get back in the car, and turn around and drive all the way back to Denver. We’d get there in time for him to shower. Then he would go right to work. That was how our life was during the winter for the ceremonies, like coming up pretty soon.” Pretty soon, indeed. On a frigid day later that month, in the Second Mesa village of Songoopavi, ceremonies were about to begin. If you had no knowledge of them and were driving for the first time along Arizona’s two-lane Highway 264 through the lower elevations of the Hopi CH009.qxd 12/14/10 8:12 AM Page 168 patty talahongva 169 Reservation, you would find no clues. Certainly no sign announces “Authentic winter dances today!” If, in fact, you kept your eyes only on the road, you might not even see that villages exist high on all three mesas. If you did wind your way up to them, you might not find clues either. The Hopi Cultural Center on Second Mesa includes a hotel, whose stationery informs guests this is the “Center of the Universe,” but it posted no notice about the dances. Nor did I see any in any of the villages, such as Kiqötsmovi, Hot’vella, or Orayvi.1 There are no notices because none is needed. Like the better-known kachina dances, Hopi winter ceremonials have been going on about a thousand years. Obviously, they are not meant for tourists. Neither are they meant for the Hopi people. They are meant for the Hopi spirits. It is up to them to send rain or, in this freezing month, snow. The Hopis’ ancient mainstay, corn, requires it. The setting for the dances that January was undramatic and monochromatic ; Hopi was in full winter camouflage. Everything from the packed-flat frozen earth of the ancient plaza, to the stone and earthen homes surrounding it, to the unpaved alleys and kivas beyond, to the other villages of Second Mesa, and beyond them to the villages of First and Third Mesas, and farther still to the base of the distant and sacred San Francisco Peaks, was mud brown. Even the overcast sky looked muddy. The day’s bitter brownness was broken only by remnants of snow and, rather startlingly, by neon-colored acrylic yarns. These were blankets nestled around some of the Songoopavi elders who hunkered into lawn chairs lining the plaza. They, everyone, was waiting. Then, heralded by drums and voices, the retina-exploding dancers arrived. Perhaps because the day was so cold and the dun so obdurate, they looked especially resplendent: buffalo dancers, in red sashes and leggings, carrying ponderous shaggy headdresses; eagle dancers, from grown men to small boys, lifting wing arms of feathers; deer dancers, wearing racks of antlers with pine sprigs tied between them. Throughout the day, more and more dancers arrived—men, women, children—all in intricate regalia, most dancers performing barefoot. Each dance lasted close to half an hour, with the dances as a whole lasting throughout the weekend, and preparations and prayers in the kivas lasting throughout the nights. CH009.qxd 12/14/10...

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