Energy and Environment Solar Self-Reliance
(Page 2 of 6)
“We were all working at the Hopi Guidance Center,
most of us who founded the Hopi Foundation,” Dalton
says, “and we kept seeing the same people.”
They would come in for help, and then be back two years
later, needing assistance again.
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“We started to talk about what was happening at Hopi.
Most of our people were unemployed, and we wanted to find
some employment for them. And, we wanted to make a
difference here,” he says.
Since its founding in 1985, the Hopi Foundation has
restored ancient ceremonial houses, offered language and
cultural classes, developed a health program with the
tribal government and initiated several cottage industries,
including Native Sun and Gentle Rain Designs, a clothing
company that uses recycled fibers.
In an unusual move for the isolated Hopi community, the
foundation even reached beyond the borders of the Hopi
Reservation to create a Tucson, Ariz., sanctuary for
indigenous refugees from Central America — an
expression of traditional Hopi teachings of peace.
Culture and Power
The Hopi Foundation began in order to stave off an
impending cultural crisis. “Non-Hopi influences
brought onto the reservation were creating problems,”
Dalton recalls. “It was basically Hopi trying to find
themselves — being torn between the Hopi way of
living and the modern way of living, and not being able to
reconcile the two.”
Loris Taylor, the foundation’s associate director,
says, “We’ve been taught through Western models
for a long, long time that the answers come from the
outside. When you focus on the deficiencies of people, then
the perception is that the people are weak and that
they’re unable to do things for their own conditions.
Our approach is that the strengths are inherent in
communities.”
Many Hopi have resisted electrification of their homes, and
one-third of the villages have not allowed electric power
lines within their boundaries. This has posed an
interesting dilemma. “The Hopi had no objection to
electricity itself,” Dalton says. “It was the
power lines.”
Debby Tewa, a Hopi solar electrician who has worked on
Native Sun and other solar projects in the Southwest,
explains: “The traditional Hopis don’t allow
power lines into the villages because the utilities will
have right of way onto Hopi land. Village leaders think
that if we don’t pay the bills, the utilities will
take even more land.”
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