The Hopi consider the Sípàapu on the Little Colorado river to be the place from where their ancestors emerged from another world into this one
The Little Colorado River gets this light blue colour naturally from large amounts of calcium deposits. Photo: iStock A site located in Arizona, United States and sacred to the Hopi Native American Nation has been awarded a ‘Water and Heritage Shield’ by the International Committee On Monuments and Sites International Science Committee.
The Shield was awarded to the Black Mesa Trust (BMT), a Hopi grassroots organisation, on March 25, 2023, in a ceremony live-streamed on Zoom.
“The purpose of the Shield is to help the public become aware of the significance of water and indigenous sacred sites all over the world and the right to cultural and historical memory,” a statement by BMT noted.
Ian Travers, president of ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on Water and Heritage, had noted in a letter dated March 22 to Vernon Masayesva, chairman of BMT:
We are extremely pleased to be able to take this step to raise awareness around this sacred place. We hope that the award helps the BMT and the Hopi people in their work to improve water management, to preserve and protect the place in its natural state and so safeguard the continuation of their traditional ceremonial spiritual practices.
ICOMOS ISC is a non-governmental international organisation dedicated to the conservation of the world’s monuments and sites. It helps the United Nations to recognise heritage globally.
The Sípàapu is a rocky dome made of limestone as well as a spring located on the Little Colorado river, a tributary of the Colorado. The Little Colorado joins the main stem of the river within the Grand Canyon, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Hopi have been known for their unique reverence to the environment.
According to the portal westernriver.com, “the ancestors of the Hopi dwelled throughout the Grand Canyon before 1250 Common Era. They left for reasons of drought and other external pressures, re-locating to mesas (highlands found in the area) to the northeast of the canyon. The Little Colorado, especially the confluence, is sacred not only to the Hopi, but also to other Native American groups such as the Navajo and Zuni”.
Author Daniel Pinchbeck had told Down To Earth in an interview last year that according to a theory, the Hopi long ago chose to live in a high desert environment where nature was delicate so that they would be forced to attune their perceptions in a way that would lead to their spiritual growth.
The Hopi consider the Sípàapu to be the place from where their ancestors emerged from another world into this one.
The ceremony came even as the United Nations 2023 Water Conference ended a day earlier on March 24 in New York City.
Mona Polacca, a Native American spiritual elder from Arizona and indigenous water ethics coordinator, mentioned this during the ceremony:
All over the world, indigenous people like us have maintained their connection to their place of origin, their land and water. They sent their representatives to the UN to remind the leaders of nation-states that they as indigenous people are upholding a sacred responsibility given to them to take care of their home, land, water, life on earth.
“We are not the only forms of life on earth. They are many other life forms that we must keep in balance to continue life on earth,” she added.
Polacca said an indigenous peoples’ water declaration was drafted and adopted during the conference.
Sérgio Ribeiro, director general for International Centre on Water and Trans-disciplinarity, said during the ceremony that water is very important in people’s daily lives. But it has many angles, connections and perspectives that have been forgotten and need to be reconsidered.
He added that the Sípàapu faced threats such as mining and dams and so it was important to have international recognition.
Ribeiro’s statement was a reminder of the Hopi’s painful history. In the 1960s, coal mining company Peabody Energy signed contracts with the Navajo and the Hopi to begin mining coal in the Black Mesa Plateau.
Disaster followed as the company opened two mines in Black Mesa. They wanted to transport the coal through railroad. But when that did not happen, the company developed a coal slurry pipeline to transport the coal to the Mohave Generating Station in neighbouring Nevada.
The company extracted groundwater from the Navajo Aquifer which was used by tribal farmers to grow their crops. The tribes and environmental groups have claimed that this caused the water in the area to get contaminated.
“The mines are shut but 50 billion gallons is gone, most of it groundwater. It was mixed with coal to make slurry and then transferred to Nevada to generate power. The US Secretary of the Interior allowed that. We were paid 1 dollar 67 cents per acre feet. One acre feet holds 326,000 gallons. The water in the aquifer has been pumped out. It can never be recharged,” Masayesva said at the ceremony on receiving the shield.
“We shut the mining company. The federal govt allowed them to go so that they can go home and shut shop and leave us a wreck,” he added.
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