Native Language Revitalization
Without the Language, How Hopi are You?: Hopi Cultural and Identity Construction in Contemporary Linguistic Ecologies — Sheila E. Nicholas
“The world looks at the Hopi with great admiration because of our culture. If we don’t work on this language issue, we’re just going to be Hopis in name only. There will be no meaning beyond that. Because of our language and culture, we have a lot to contribute to the world. When you learn about Hopi, you learn about that balance between your responsibilities to yourself, your society, your whole world. That’s how the Hopis think about it.” (Translated from Hopivalayi) — HLAP Orientation Meeting; December 23, 1996
Hopi culture has changed from previous generations because children are no longer learning the Hopilavayi as their primary language. Concern around modern society’s impact on indigenous experience has driven researchers to understand how indigenous people identify with their native culture. In this chapter of A World of Indigenous Languages: Politics, Pedagogies and Prospects for Language Reclamation, Nicholas examines the connection between Hopi language and culture by observing the intergenerational language contexts of Hopi families and documenting their felt challenges and strengths.
The Hopìit, or Hopi people, reside in the Black Mesa Plateau region amidst the Navajo Nation in Northeast Arizona. This region is considered dry and barren, which led these original inhabitants to conceive and uphold a deeply spiritual and reciprocal relationship with the land. Modernization has made its mark — state and federal highways have introduced a cash economy, Western education, and mainstream influence; and families have shifted from living in multigenerational and extended family households to nuclear family units —meanwhile, traditional culture still flourishes within Hopitutskwa, Hopi lands, by means of Hopivötskwani, the Hopi path or way of life.
Hopivötskwani is philosophically linked to Natwanit, the custom of planting corn by hand. This thoughtful agricultural practice connects the Hopi people to the Hopitutskwa (Hopi lands) and Maasaw, the ancient caretaker of the earth, both literally and metaphorically.
The saliency of Hopivötskwani, according to Nicholas, is directly supported by participation in the Hopilavayi language. The Hopilavayi story of Emergence, for example, captures the fundamental components for developing a Hopi identity. Nicholas also references the Hopilavayi phrase, nami’nangwa, sumi’nangwa, which essentially translates to ‘to live with mutual love toward one another,’ because it captures key elements of Hopivötskwani. Even though Hopi youth now learn English as their primary language, Hopilavayi lives on in spiritual traditions. Grandmothers offer hope for the future by pointing to the adherence of Hopivötskwani and the use of the Hopilavayi language to define these practices and values.
Nicholas’ interviews with older generations capture the resilience and fortitude of the Hopìit. Grandmothers recounted their parents’ reflections on the importance of living two ways of life: one way embraces Hopivötskwani, and the other way accepts the Pahaana, or white man, perspective as a way to survive and prepare for the change to come. They reported that following Western educational experiences, their parents never forgot their Hopi language or values. In fact, one grandmother named Marie recalls her mother repeatedly saying that the schooling and mainstream experience just “strengthened what she already had [her cultural foundation]” (182). Similar to this ‘great-grandparent’ generation, Marie and her peers were placed in local Western educational settings from grades 1–8, then were sent to off-reservation boarding schools from grades 9–12. Of the three grandmothers interviewed in Nicholas’ study, all lived within mainstream society until either the birth of their children or retirement, upon which they returned to Hopitutskwa. The grandmothers smoothly transitioned back to speaking Hopivalayi since it was their first acquired language.
In accordance with elders’ direction for embracing the two ways of life, the following Hopi generation learned to speak both English and Hopivalayi; and they also attended boarding schools and other Western educational institutions. This generation reported having felt lonely and ashamed throughout their language experiences. In mainstream contexts, they struggled to learn English and supressed their Hopi toungue; with the Hopìit, they struggled to maintain Hopivalayi fluency. Despite these challenges, parents continued to speak Hopivalayi and ‘have their hearts in the Hopi way of life,’ Hopiqatsit aw unangvakiwyungwa.
As Hopivötskwani is embedded in Hopilavayi, so is culture embedded in language. The languages that live on within the Hopi and other First Nations carry ancestral story and perspective. In a life now saturated by Western ways of thinking, being, and doing; native language holds a sacred and symbolic power. As such, today’s Hopi youth uphold Hopivötskwani by participating in spiritual practices that involve Hopivalayi explicitly, like oral traditions and ceremonial songs, or representationally, like Natwanit.
Speaking the Hopilavayi language in mainstream settings, like schools, however, feels challenging. As exampled in the the aforementioned interviews with Hopìit, generations of native peoples have been impacted by Native American boarding schools, which were intentionally designed to erase students’ indigenous cultural identities. As a result, many indigenous languages have become extinct within the past four generations. According to the latest records collected by the Native American Boarding School Coalition (NABS), Arizona had 59 boarding schools, making it the state with the second highest number of boarding schools in the US. Moreover, in 2000, Arizona voters passed Proposition 203, which requires English learners to be taught exclusively in English. This law led to the banning of bilingual education for learners of English until 2019, when it was partially repealed to allow for some, albeit limited, bilingual flexibility.
The Hopìit pursue language revitalization within school settings despite these oppressive factors. NABS has compiled an interactive digital map, which shows that some of the former boarding schools in Northeast Arizona are still open as day schools but now operate under tribal control. Nicholas reports that Hopi inclusion program development seeks to establish institutional change that goes beyond ‘allowing’ Hopilavayi in schools by reiforcing native agency in determining the future. “Moreover,” Nicholas writes, “it is about gaining voice — being heard and hearing ourselves — and reasserting Itamyani, which captures the collective will: ‘WE will carry the Hopi way of life forward.’”
This direction towards empowering Native American youth with agency and voice feels important, especially when considering how to support the Navajo and Cocopah schools in Arizona that are affiliated with Heal Historical Trauma’s initiatives. Creating time and/or place for indigenous language in classrooms may help schools build cultures where students’ ancestral perspectives are represented and integrated.
