Hopi Reservation

Diné or Navajo Nation borders Arizona, Utah and New Mexico. There are four mountains that act as landmarks are Tsisnaasjini' (Mount Blanca), Tsoodzil (Mount Taylor), Doko'oosliid (San Francisco Peaks), Dibé Nitsaa (Mount Hesperus). Navajo Nation is the largest Native American Reservation in the United States, occupying 17 million acres.

The Hopi Native Americans tribe was originally from present day Arizona. The tribe lived in adobe houses. Adobe houses were made of clay,straw, and stone. Each adobe house had one family. The Tribe did not have horses until the Americans arrived. The Hopi Indians walked where for transportation.

The Navajo Indian is the largest tribe in North America, how did their culture develop over time and where are they today in regards to modern times?

The Navajo are the largest federally recognized Native American Indian tribe in the United States. The Diné Bikéyah or “Navajoland" encompasses 27,000 square miles residing within Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico and contains a population of over 220,000 natives. The

Numbering roughly 250,000, the Navajo reservation covers approximately 25,000 square miles. Window Rock located in the North Eastern part of Arizona is the capital of the Navajo Nation. As one of the poorest regions in the country, isolation, culture, traditions, as well as economic status affect the Navajo communities’ wellbeing and healthcare. While the elderly Navajo population grows about three percent a year, life expectancy is “73.7 years compared to 76 years for the general population” (Mercer, 1996, p 184). Elderly Navajo members are revered due to their wisdom and life experience. Other things that negatively affect the healthcare of the Navajo are little running water or electricity, no phones, rough rugged terrain and most must drive more than one hour to a facility that provides health care. The Navajo home or hogan entrance must face east to welcome the sun for daily blessings. Made of tree bark, mud and wooden poles, the hogan is windowless. The majority of the Navajo population has no indoor plumbing. Merely 38% of Navajo people actually have electricity, heat and plumbing (McCauley, 2004, p. 47).

The Hopi Indians are Native Americans who lived on 1.5 million acres of reservation in Northeastern Arizona. In the beginning, the Hopi Indians were a hunting and gathering group divided into small groups that lived in pit houses. (A pit-house is a building that is partly dug into the ground and covered by a roof.) Around 700 A.D. the Hopi Indians became an agricultural tribe by growing blue ears of corn by using runoff from the mesas.(A mesa is an isolated flat-topped hill with steep sides.). In the late 1200’s a ginormous drought forced 36 of the 47 villages on the Hopi mesas to be abandoned. Following the massive drought, the 11 remaining villages increased in size where then three new villages were established in Northeastern Arizona.

The Hopi tribe were villagers and farmers. Their villages were located in the lofty plateaus of northern Arizona. The Hopi tribe have kept their culture intact due to living

American culture is made up of many different people, and many of those people come from Indian tribes. The United States Governments Federal Register lists 566 tribes recognized as of August 2012. One of those tribes is the Navajo which can be found primarily in the states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Navajo culture is one that many people associate with by what is portrayed in movies. People view the culture as land raiding individuals that pillaged and wreaked havoc with anyone and anything they came in contact with.

The times have changed, but the spirit lives on. The Navajo are a Native American tribe that resides as their own nation in the southwestern part of the United States. The land consists of desert and mountains, so the Navajo had to learn many skills to live and adapt with the land. They gathered plants and nuts to eat, hunted animals for meat, and used the skins to keep warm at night as the temperature in the desert drops to below freezing. As times changed the Navajo adapted their skills to benefit them. They got herds of goats and sheep and used wool from the sheep to weave amazing blankets. Today, the Navajo tribe teaches their cultural traditions and beliefs to their children and followers. They believe nature is sacred and they give thanks to the animals and plants they use for food. The Navajo passed on their beliefs that the people emerged into the world to escape a flood in the lower world. The Navajo also tell many stories to show respect for nature and the spirits and neglect the ones of being treated unlawfully. The Navajo Nation allows these people to try and maintain the lifestyle that their ancestors lived, with some modern exceptions. Most Navajo people live on the reservations, but sadly, they are poverty stricken. However, it is a place where they are sheltered from a growing society. Due to all of this, the Navajo’s unique traditions and beliefs, along with its prior mistreatment, justify the formation of their own nation.

The Navajo people were non-existent at a point in time, many different people from a conglomeration of many different tribes made up the Navajo, or Dine, people. The people came together to form their own distinctive culture less than one hundred years before the Spanish Conquest. In the Navajo culture many aspects of life are important. Some of the most important aspects are the ties to their spiritual beliefs and the way that they tell stories and creations of those beliefs. Many Navajo men and women are tied to their culture by the items they create, these sacred items include rug weaving, silversmithing, and pottery making.

The Navajo believe there are two classes of beings, The Holy people and the Earth people. The Earth people of the Navajo must do everything they can to maintain the peace and harmony of Mother Earth since they are an integral part of the universe. According to Discover Navajo, “it is believed that centuries ago the Holy People taught the Navajo how to live the right way and to conduct their many acts of everyday life“ (Navajo culture, 2008). The Navajo people were taught to live one with animals, insects, man, and plants. Mt. Blanca to the east, Mt. Taylor to the south, San Francisco Peak to the west and Mr. Hesperus to the North near Durango, Colorado, were put in place by the holy people in the four different directions. Jet Black, Turquoise, White Shell, and Yellow Abalone represent the four directions. The Navajo culture uses the number four to symbolize many other different things. For example, there are four seasons and four distinct directions.

It all starts with raising the sheep for the wool. This is where the major difference between the Navajo and Hopi tribes are more evident. The Hopi men did all of the weaving; on the other hand, the women did all the weaving for the Navajo tribe. This is all because the Hopi men thought since they were the ones who raised and

There are many important issues facing the Hopi tribe. these issues have potential effects of long-term and devastating for the tribe. some people have organized a Cultural Center and to gather each Thursday at 5:00 p.m to discussion and dialogue about the issues that they see and going through in the hopi land. some of these issues are the APS Right-of-Way, Law & Order Code, Snow Bowl, Grand Canyon Escalade Project, Shingoitewa new effort to revise the Hopi Constitution,

The world view of the Navajo who had lived for many centuries on the high Colorado Plateau was one of living in balance with all of nature, as the stewards of their vast homeland which covered parts of four modern states. They had no concept of religion as being something separate from living day to day and prayed to many spirits. It was also a matriarchal society and had no single powerful leader as their pastoral lifestyle living in scattered independent family groups require no such entity. This brought them repeatedly into conflict with Spanish, Mexicans and increasingly by the mid-nineteenth century, Americans as these practices were contrary to their male dominated religiously monolithic societal values. The long standing history

"By A.D. 700 they had built houses above ground in adjacent clusters, which over time developed into the typical pueblo structure. (1)". In these structures were built a large number of kivas. A kiva is "an underground ceremonial room which are believed to provide entry from and to the Underworld" (2). "Each Kiva has a symbolic representation of the Sipaapu, the hole to the underworld from which the Hopi believed they came and the pathway to the upper spirit word, the symbol of emergence in Hopi belief. As in the modern Hopi kivas, the prehistoric structures had a fireplace or stove with a heat deflector, benches along the kiva walls, and niches for ritual objects. Then as now, the entrance to the kiva was by a ladder through the roof." (3).