concerning the relation between Black Elk’s characteriza-tions of traditional Lakota beliefs and religious rituals andhis acceptance of and participation in Christian religion.Neihardt and Brown made no mention of Black Elk’sCatholicism. In publishing the interview transcripts,DeMallie (1984) discussed Black Elk’s life as a Catholiccatechist, and in telling her life story, Lucy Looks Twice,Black Elk’s daughter gave her perspective on her father asa Catholic religious leader (Steltenkamp 1993). A criticalliterature has developed that attempts to disentangleChristian and traditional elements from Black Elk’sreligious teachings. However, Black Elk can best be under-stood as an individual who spent his entire life seekingreligious knowledge to benefit his people. As a young manhe found it in traditional religion, and later, when he trav-eled in Europe, he found strength in Christian teachings.After the failure of the Ghost Dance, Black Elk apparentlyrelied more and more on Catholic teachings until hefinally stopped the practice of traditional ritualsaltogether. But this should not be confused with lackof belief. Black Elk’s descriptions of Lakota religionincorporated more and more Christian symbols and valuesas his life progressed, revealing an increasing syncretismof Lakota tradition and Christianity. In old age he per-formed traditional Lakota religious rituals for the edifi-cation of tourists, not merely for amusement, but todemonstrate that there was goodness and value in the oldways, different as they were from Christianity.

Raymond J. DeMallie

Further ReadingBrown, Joseph Epes, recorder and ed. The Sacred Pipe:

Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the OglalaSioux. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1953.

DeMallie, Raymond J., ed. The Sixth Grandfather: BlackElk’s Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt. Lincoln:University of Nebraska Press, 1984.

Holler, Clyde, ed. The Black Elk Reader. Syracuse:Syracuse University Press, 2000.

Neihardt, John G. When the Tree Flowered: An AuthenticTale of the Old Sioux World. First published, 1951;reprint edition, When the Tree Flowered: The Story ofEagle Voice, A Sioux Indian. Lincoln: University ofNebraska Press, 1991 (with a foreword by Raymond J.DeMallie).

Neihardt, John G. Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story ofa Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux. First published, 1932;reprint editions, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,1961, 1979 (with a foreword by Vine Deloria, Jr.).

Steltenkamp, Michael F. Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala.Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993.

See also: Lakota; Lakota Sun Dance.

P Black Mesa (New Mexico)

In the autumn of 1969, I spent a month in the HuicholIndian village of San Andres de Coahimiata in a remoteregion of the Sierra Madre Occidental of western Mexico.I was conducting field recordings of Huichol music anddocumenting their annual peyote fiesta, as well as theirconstruction of musical instruments. It was duringthis time that I realized that traditional cultures areendangered by the spread of industrial monocultureswhose paradigm is dominated by an economic imperativeand growth for its own sake.

On returning to the United States, I resigned as musicdirector for the Center for Arts of Indian America andco-founded the Central Clearing House in Santa Fe, NewMexico. The Clearing House was committed to gatheringand providing information about threats to the naturalenvironment occurring throughout the American South-west. In early April 1970, National Park Service historianBill Brown informed me of a massive coal strip mine to besituated atop Black Mesa, a land formation located innorthern Arizona bearing the largest coal deposit inthat state. Black Mesa is sacred to both Hopi and NavajoIndians. The ancient Hopi villages are situated on the threesouthern promontories of Black Mesa, a land form con-sidered to be the body of the female mountain by theNavajos.

Brown and I explored the surface of Black Mesa fromboth truck and airplane. We learned that the coalfrom Black Mesa was to be delivered to two electricalgenerating stations, one to be located on the banks of LakePowell near Page, Arizona, the other already constructedin Laughlin, Nevada.

Subsequently, I visited my old friend and Hopi elderDavid Menongye who resided at Hotevilla on Third Mesa.David had heard nothing of this and asked if I would speakbefore an assembly of Hopi elders, to which I agreed.Sixty-three elders gathered in the Second Mesa village ofShungopovi in mid-April. I presented the few facts thatI had at my disposal. The Hopi Tribal Council chaired byClarence Hamilton, and represented by John Boyden, aSalt Lake City attorney who served as the Hopi Tribe’slegal counsel, had signed a lease. It allowed the PeabodyCoal Company of East St. Louis to strip-mine Black Mesa.Coal would both be hauled by special railway to the powerplant at Page, and be transported by water drawnfrom wells tapping the ancient Black Mesa aquifer, thenpumped through a slurry pipeline for 273 miles to theMojave power plant in Laughlin.

The coal commanded a very low price, and the Hopiswere to be paid $1.67 an acre foot for some of the purestwater in America. Three acre-feet is the equivalent ofapproximately one million gallons, or a one acre poolthree feet deep. This water was to be pumped at the rate oftwo thousand gallons per minute, twenty-four hours a day.

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The traditional Hopis were enraged that these negoti-ations had taken place without their knowledge. Many ofthese elders spoke little or no English. After a discussion,David Menongye asked if I would help serve as a bridge tothe world of the Bahannas, or white people, to end thismining, which violated the Hopi’s spiritual relationship toMother Earth. I agreed, and on 17 April 1970, my friendsJimmy Hopper, Bill Brown, John Kimmey and I foundedthe Santa Fe chapter of the Black Mesa Defense Fund. Wewere soon joined by Terrence Moore, Philip Shultz, Caro-line Rackley, Tom Andrews, Hannah Hibbs and a host ofvolunteers. For the next three years, we did everything inour power to stop what we considered to be the rape ofBlack Mesa, but to little avail. We worked closely with theNative American Rights Fund of Boulder Colorado, a lawfirm devoted to serving Native Americans. We also workedwith traditional Navajos and many others throughoutthe American Southwest and beyond to try to thwart thejuggernaut of corporate America as they ravaged theland making every attempt to convert Black Mesa intomoney.

Research revealed that the underlying purpose for theBlack Mesa strip mine was to fuel the Navajo GeneratingStation capable of a 2000 megawatt generating capacity.About 25 percent of this electricity was to be used to pumpwater from Lake Havasu downstream on the ColoradoRiver to the central valleys of Arizona. This massive publicworks project is known as the Central Arizona Project(CAP). The water was ostensibly to be used for agriculture,but over time became far too expensive for farmers, and isnow used for development in Phoenix and Tucson.

It should be recalled that the original proposal forsupplying the electrical needs for the CAP would requirethat two dams be constructed near either end of the GrandCanyon to generate hydro-electric power. David Browerand the Sierra Club called on the American public, andpublic opinion indeed thwarted the proposed dams. Theobvious alternative was to mine coal from Black Mesa tofuel the Navajo Generating Station near Page, Arizona.

In the meantime, traditional Hopis were being repre-sented in the world at large by Thomas Banyacya withwhom I traveled throughout the United States on speakingtours wherein Banyacya revealed his interpretation ofthe Hopi prophecy of coming disaster in the face of “themarch of progress.” In his lecture, Banyaca referred to acloth rendering of the ancient petroglyph situated nearOld Oraibi that bespeaks of the Time of Purification. Therendering portrayed the tools given to the Hopi by theGreat Spirit, Massau. This was followed by two roughlyparallel paths. The upper path was that of the White Manand revealed two white men and one Hopi that hadassumed the ways of the White Man. This path finallypeters out. The lower path reveals the way of the trad-itional Hopi and is strong and enduring. Both World Wars Iand II are represented, as is the coming of World War III

followed by the time of purification. Banyacya said thatthe White Man was doomed because of his faith in tech-nology over that of the way of the Great Spirit. Only thosewould survive who followed the traditional Hopi way andthe path of the Great Spirit.

In my own lecture, I spoke of the necessity for under-standing the facts surrounding the strip-mining of BlackMesa, and attempted to rally university students to protectendangered environments using whatever means wereavailable short of harming fellow humans. I called theCentral Arizona Project the perfect model of totalenvironmental degradation, which included:

• the polluting of aquifers with seepage from strip-minedEarth;

• devastation to landscape through massive strip-miningof coal;

• marring of landscape by the construction of the coal-bearing railroad across the once pristine KaibitoPlateau;

• the befouling of the air of the American Southwest withsmoke emanating from the coal-fired power plants;

• the depleting of the Navajo aquifer beneath BlackMesa;

• the march of the electric powerlines extending fromPage to Lake Havasu;

• providing water from the Colorado River to Phoenixand Tucson, cities located in the fragile ecosystem ofthe arid Sonoran Desert.

All of this would result in the utter disruption of bothHopi and Navajo traditional cultures which would bear thebrunt of devastation to air, land and water in their sacredhomelands in the heart of the Colorado Plateau.

In early 1971, my wife Katherine and I were invited bytraditional Hopis into the kiva, or subterranean sacredceremonial chamber at Hotevilla on Third Mesa. Presentwere twenty or so male elders including David Menongye,Thomas Banyacya and John Lansa, husband of MinaLansa, then the kikmongwi or traditional leader of OldOraibi. Throughout the day, they related their collectivepoint of view, which they asked me to write down andpublish. The following two quotes are excerpted fromwhat was published in Clear Creek Magazine in 1972:

The Black Mesa area is a sacred place. The Hopiknew it to be the spiritual center of the whole con-tinent that contained the heart and soul of theEarthmother. The Great Spirit had granted thempermission to live in that sacred place, to pray forbalance and harmony, and to live within the lifeplan that the Great Spirit had taught them. The Hopipeople still live there in the Black Mesa area, and thetraditionalists still follow the teachings of the GreatSpirit.

200 Black Mesa

The Hopi look to the Earthmother for food andnourishment, for it was from the womb of theEarthmother that the Hopi and all living creaturesemerged in the beginning. The animals and plants,the eagles and people are all kept alive through thepower of the flow of Nature. The inter-actionbetween all living things – the relation of rocks tothe land, the flow of water, the dance of yellowbutterflies in the cornfields – all this marks thebalance of Nature.

The Hopis are stewards of the land. In their kivas,they perform rituals and ceremonies so that Naturewill work in balance with people. These ceremoniesare reflections of the teachings of the Great Spirit,which the Hopi received at the time of emergencefrom the lower world. They achieve a state ofmind through which they perceive that those earlybeginnings and the present are all the same, thattime is not just a linear passage from the past to thefuture, but rather a continuum in which the annualcycles with their ceremonial events touch each otherin reaffirmation of meaning.

In the words of Hopi elder John Lansa as translated byThomas Banyacya,

There is a spiritual seeing of things that can’t beexplained. There are shrines in the spiritual center,which are markers for spiritual routes which extendin all four directions to the edge of the continent.Through our ceremonials, it is possible to keep thenatural forces together. From here at the spiritualcenter, our prayers go to all parts of the Earth. Ourprayers maintain the balance that keeps all thingswell and healthy. This is the sacred place. It must nothave anything wrong in it. It must never be defiled.We want it organic the way it has always been.Leave the land in the hands of the Hopi to take careof everything for all the people. We know how tofarm. Only people who know how to grow thingswill survive. Through prayer, people can develop intheir own way as the Hopi have.

On the one hand, Black Mesa was seen as an enormouscoal deposit, the strip-mining of which would result ingreat economic gain to resource extractors, land develop-ers, politicians, and other corporate beneficiaries. On theother hand, the sacred heartland of an ancient traditionalculture was to be utterly desecrated and defiled. TheHopi deity Massau was in direct conflict with Mammon,the hidden deity of corporate America over the fate of theprecious landscape of the American Southwest. A hiddenvillain in this scenario was the Hopi’s general counsel,John Boyden who was suspected of and later revealed tobe quietly representing the Peabody Coal Company of EastSt. Louis at the same time.

Within their cultural milieu, the Hopi are sophisticatedand knowledgeable with regard to subsistence farming inone of the continent’s most arid landscapes. Hopi spiritual-ity and ceremonial practices help them remain alignedwith the seasons and allow them to recognize that which issacred within the flow of nature. The presence of the BlackMesa mine has greatly disturbed the natural balance ofboth Hopi culture and the ecosystem.

In the spring of 1972, David Menongye, Thomas Bany-acya, two younger Hopis, Katherine and I were scheduledto attend the first United Nations Conference on theHuman Environment in Stockholm, Sweden, in an attemptto bring the Black Mesa debacle to global attention. TheHopis had refused to secure United States passports on thegrounds that they were citizens of the Hopi IndependentNation, not the United States of America. My wife and Ifashioned passports bound in tanned deer hide that borethe inscription, “The bearer of this passport is a citizenof the Hopi Independent Nation. This passport is valid aslong as the Sun shines, the water flows, and the grassgrows.” David Menongye blessed the passports with cornpollen and affixed an eagle feather to each one. It tooka fair amount of time at LAX, but finally a pilot fromScandinavian Airlines agreed to take us to Stockholm.Ultimately, the passports were stamped by Swedishauthorities, thus validating them in the eyes of inter-national bureaucracy. They were later stamped inDenmark.

In Stockholm, Hopis and Navajos met with members ofother traditional cultures from around the world establish-ing a network that continues to today.

But the strip-mining of Black Mesa was begun and con-tinued into the twenty-first century. Water continues to bepumped out of the Black Mesa aquifer. A new generationof Hopis and Navajos use every legal means at their dis-posal to thwart this pumping as Hopi springs and Navajowells run dry. This environmental catastrophe now fostersgrowth in the major cities now located in the SonoranDesert, a fragile landscape ill-prepared to absorb so manyhumans. The Central Arizona Project, originally conceivedas an irrigation project, has become the means by whichpopulation centers in Arizona continue to metastasizeover the land.

In the meantime, Hopi and Navajo culture-bearers fightso that their home habitat and their spiritual values maysurvive.

The human species is an invasive species. The miningat Black Mesa has many parallels globally. Traditionalcultures that have evolved within habitat are gravelyendangered by invading outsiders intent on extractingnon-renewable resources located in homelands native toothers. Peoples whose sensitivities and sensibilities arefinely honed to home habitat are being displaced not onlyby extractors, but more also by the dominant monoculturewhich attempts to reeducate people native to place into a

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paradigm commensurate with that of the more dominantculture. Thus cultural diversity is disappearing. As culturaldiversity and its attendant affiliation with the spirit ofplace disappear, the intuitive ability to perceive the sacredquality of the biotic community seems to atrophy. Finally,the perception of reality is restricted to a “nuts and bolts”point of view that excludes the mystery, the numen, themeaning.

Imagine a collaboration between indigenous peopleswhose understanding of native habitats is containedwithin their lore, music and ceremony, and biologicalscientists who well understand that extermination ofspecies tolls the knell for habitat. Imagine thinking interms of watershed boundaries rather than geopoliticalboundaries. Or that the Earth is a living organism ratherthan a body of real estate to be divided among the mostpowerful humans. Or that we are honored to be membersof the biotic community of our planet Earth rather thanconsidering ourselves to be dominant and separate. Theresult could combine knowledge and wisdom of specifichomelands in such a way as to foster reciprocity betweenhumanity and habitat, and thus reinvoke the Spirit ofNature in our daily lives.

Jack Loeffler

Further ReadingMoving Waters: The Colorado River and the West. A six-

part radio series produced by Jack Loeffler for distribu-tion over National Public Radio. Arizona HumanitiesCouncil, Phoenix, Arizona, 2000.

Sturtevant, William C. and Alfonson Ortiz, eds. Handbookof North American Indians, vol. 9, Southwest.Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1979.

Waters, Frank. The Book of the Hopi. New York: Viking,1964.

Wilkinson, Charles. Fire on the Plateau: Conflict andEndurance in the American Southwest. Covelo, CA:Island Press, 1999.

See also: Abbey, Edward; Brower, David; Earth First! andthe Earth Liberation Front; Holy Land in Native NorthAmerica; Hopi–Navajo Land Dispute; Hopiland to theRainforest Action Network; Indigenous EnvironmentalNetwork; Law; Religions and Native American Lands;Radical Environmentalism; Snyder, Gary.

Blackfoot Cosmos as Natural Philosophy

Our ancestors were strong, powerful and were wellequipped with survival skills. They taught us to livein harmony with nature, the animals and the birds.They taught us that the land belongs to the Creatorand that we belong to Mother Earth. Our legendsteach us lessons (Rufus Goodstriker (Piinakoyim) inZaharia and Fox 1995: 97).

The group of closely related nations of the Algonquinlinguistic stock known as the Blackfoot Confederacy iscomprised of four divisions: the Southern Piegan, orBlackfeet, of Montana; the Northern Piegan, or Blackfoot,of Alberta; the Kainah, or Bloods; and the Siksika, or“Blackfoot” proper. Loosely organized in mobile socialunits described as “bands” in the anthropological litera-ture and relying on the buffalo as its economic base, theBlackfoot Confederacy controlled a vast terrain stretchingfrom northern Alberta and western Saskatschewan inCanada down into the high prairies of Montana in theUnited States. In 1833, their numbers were estimated tobe nearly twenty thousand people (Maximilian 1906).Devastated by epidemics and unequal military strugglewith colonial powers, the Blackfoot Confederacy suffereda steep demographic decline at the turn of the twentiethcentury, which was partially offset by a gradual post-World War II population increase that brought the con-federacy’s numbers to about fifteen thousand enrolledmembers in 1990. Deprived of a bulk of their territorialpossessions, the present-day Blackfoot resist a highunemployment rate, lack of proper medical care andbureaucratic interventions through an intensive focus oncommunal values, personal integrity, local knowledge,and cultural revival, including that which represents astrengthening of the Blackfoot philosophical universe.

Throughout the world, Native peoples seek to be awareof, in communication with, and hopefully synchronizedwith, the rhythms of the natural world. In the Blackfootcontext, spiritually “knowledgeable” or “powerful” peopleare those who know how to do this. The purpose and struc-ture of stories, teachings, and practices emphasize thispoint. Mokakssini, the Blackfoot word that approximatesepistemology – referring also to notions of awareness oftotal being, and knowing – is founded upon deep know-ledge of the environment, the cosmos, and all of life, and isrooted in spirituality. Blackfoot teachings consider humansto be part of a delicate harmonious relationship with boththe Earth and the heavens, wherein the Sun, Moon, theplanets and stars – called Spumatapiiwa (“Sky People”) –have spiritual as well as physical properties. The naturalharmony of the Blackfoot universe is easily disrupted unlesshumans remember their responsibility to maintain it.

The spiritual practices that are related and relayed tohumans in Blackfoot stories hold valuable lessons forseeking deeper knowledge via awareness of the inter-relationships between humans and the rest of theirenvironment. Preparations to increase one’s awarenessduring a vision quest or by participation in the Sun Dance,for example, are not simply about the preparation ofthe mind (i.e., psychological), but rather to bring intoharmony, to synchronize the whole human, with the“whole,” the “multiverse.” Blackfoot vision traditions arecentral awareness-seeking sources contributing to the richbody of Blackfoot knowledge. This tradition survives as

202 Blackfoot Cosmos as Natural Philosophy