Executive Director Vernon Masayesva’s keynote speech
presented at the 2018 World Parliament of Religions
Toronto, Canada November 2 – 6, 2018
The theme of this panel is reconciliation. What does it mean? How can we bring it about? How can we bring holiness back to earth? How can we, the People of different religious faiths, work together to heal Mother Earth? She is not well and is crying out for help, but few are listening.
For me, reconciliation is bringing mind and heart together. By doing this, we will create the energy to begin the healing process.
Mankind is gifted by the Great Spirit to imagine using our brain, the ability to weave and to communicate. Working together, we can imagine the Fifth World of Hopi, and how we can make it a reality.
Hopi Prophecy is warning mankind that we are standing at the Eleventh Hour of the ending of the present Fourth World. It is turning upside down, and it is caused by political leaders fighting for political and economic dominance. We see the chaos on television. We see homeless children, dying of hunger, not enough water to drink. What have we humans become?
I want to briefly talk about bringing the mind and heart in a broader context.
The mind represents the world of Science and Technology. It is a material world where science and technology has brought about marvelous achievements. We can now visit the moon. Scientists are close to curing cancer. They have a good explanation of how our brain works. They have made great advances in how the universe work.
But science and technology has also created weapons of mass destruction we call atomic or nuclear bombs that is capable of putting an end to the Fourth World. Today, we worship science and technology.
The heart represents the Spiritual World. It is our soul. The mind has no heart.
I suggest that the mind and the heart must come back together, like it was at the beginning of time. I do not have time to elaborate and share my thoughts with you, but I have planted a seed, food for thought.
I now want to bring attention to a serious crisis, we, the Hopi Senom (People) are facing. We live in Northern Arizona in the USA, near the world-renowned Grand Canyon.
Our ancestors were the first people to settle on Tuuwanasavi, known as the Colorado Plateau. The Village of Old Oraivi is the oldest continuously inhabited community in the United States. Archaeologists estimated that this village was settled around 1000 A.D. It is, however, not the oldest community.
The Colorado Plateau is a vast spectacular cultural/ecological landscape, unlike any other landscape on Planet Earth.
It is the Fourth World of Hopis World. We call our Mother. The heart of our Mother is Sípàapu. Some call it a sanctuary, a safe place for mankind. Others call it a learning plaza where one day people of all faiths, talents and skills will gather to fashion the Fifth World, using their mind, hands, and language.
This was the place the ancestors met Màasau, a farmer on a desert where no rivers and lakes exist to irrigate the fields. The story of why our ancestors decided to stay here and to carry on our farming traditions takes days to tell.
Màasau, the ancestors learned, was a prophet, a teacher and caretaker of Mother Earth. The first one living in Tuuwanasavi.
Our ancestors asked permission to stay. Màasau said that is your choice, but if you decide to stay, you must agree to live my way of life, and you must help me take good care of our Mother.
Our ancestors decided to stay and made a sacred agreement to help take care of our Mother.
Today, the Sípàapu, the heart of Mother earth is slowly dying. An elder who made a pilgrimage to Sípàapu told us that water no longer comes out and back in. The heart is weakening and he wonders what is causing it.
I believe the major cause is the depletion of surface and groundwaters in the Little Colorado River Basin that feeds Sípàapu. The depletion is caused by over 300 parties who have water rights claims.
The claims are now adjudicated in Arizona State Superior Court. Hopis claim to waters in the basin has been rejected by the Lower Court.
The Hopi elders are very concerned that the Superior Court Judge will uphold the Lower Court’s decisions. If this happens, Sípàapu will be could die.
Sípàapu is called a place of emergence of Hopi ancestors from the Third to the Fourth World. It is our umbilical cord to the Spiritual World. Hopi religious beliefs, history and memories are tied to Sípàapu.
Therefore, if the Arizona Superior Court Judge upholds the Lower Court’s decision, it will have the effect of violating our rights as U.S. citizens to practice our religion, which is protected under the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution.
I ask the question; can Judaism and Muslim survive without the Mecca? Islam without the Qu’ran? Christianity without the Bible?
Hopi religion, like other indigenous religions, is not written down in sacred texts. We have no priests. We have leaders of various religious societies. We have no synagogues, temples, mosques, churches.
Our place of meditation, prayer, and contemplation is the corn fields, which is why a fundamental Hopi law is never ever abandon the fields. Every Hopi man is mandated to farm in the ancient traditional way.
On behalf of the concerned Hopi Senom and elders, on behalf of our ancestors, I appeal to you for help.
Black Mesa Trust, which I founded in 1998, has prepared two declarations. One, calling on the U.S. government to set aside Sípàapu as a federally protected cultural-ecological landscape. The other is a U.N. Declaration to protect cultural, historic places all over the world.
These documents are available on www.blackmesatrust.org. Also, please consider giving a donation to Black Mesa trust, so we can use it to prepare an appeal of the Arizona Court’s decision to Federal Court, and possibly to the International Court of Law.
Attending this World Parliament of Religions has inspired me and gave me hope that peoples of all religious faiths are coming together in pursuit of common good to bring holiness back to earth.
May there be life,
May it be a good life,
May it be forever.
Kwakwa – Thank you!
