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Hopi Corn/Wedding

21 images Created 6 Jul 2013

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  • Kara Honanie, Watson and Sarah Honanie’s daughter, rubs corn meal on the face of a Nuvatukya’ovi Sinom Dance Group member before they dance in the 2009 Fiesta Bowl Parade.  Kara’s dance group has traveled as far as New York City to perform. The Honanies opened the doors of their Hotevilla home and allowed photographs to be made only of them and their extended family.  What resulted is a rare inside look at one of the few remaining families living the traditional lifestyle on the Hopi Reservation in northern Arizona.
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  • Watson Honanie and Lester Honavema plant blue corn in their sandy desert fields located eight miles southwest of Hotevilla.  The Hopi men clear, plant and harvest the fields while the Hopi women are responsible for the seeds and harvest products.
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  • After being up all night for Hotevilla’s Basket Dance, Sarah and her granddaughter, Serena Honanie eat hominy stew for breakfast.  The Basket Dance is an annual Hopi tradition celebrating the end of harvest.  “Corn is very important, my family belongs to the corn clan, all the way back to our grandmothers, we belong to the corn and water.  When I was growing up, I grew up to corn,” said Sarah Honanie.
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  • Watson Honanie cuts wood for the winter.  The Honanies use wood and coal to heat their home and solar power and a gas generator to run the lights.
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  • “ We have six different colors of corn. We have the yellow, blue, red, white, coma, which is a purple and sweet corn.  Blue and white corn are the most important.“  Watson said.  “White corn is used for making hominy stew.  We make stew for all the ceremonials, to bring all the people together.”
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  • Sabrina Kyasyousia eats watermelon while taking a break from picking blue corn.  Corn is still harvested by hand.  Last years corn harvest was excellent, the family picked seven truckloads of blue corn and four truckloads of white corn.
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  • Watson uses corn meal during an autumn blessing in his fields.  Watson gives thanks for their harvest and prays for a wet winter. “In Hopi we only pray for good longevity, good long life, and a healthy one also.  That is what we pray for.  We also pray a lot for rain, for without water nothing will exist. Plants grow with water, and we have to have water to live on.  Its just that.... good living, prosperity, good health, longevity, no sickness.... that’s just the Hopi way,” Watson said.
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  • The sun set hours ago, Sarah sits by herself, surrounded by boxes, sifting grounded sweet corn meal for qomi.  Sarah and her family have been working for months or years if you count when the corn used for the engagement ceremony was planted.  Sarah will be the first one up tomorrow, hours before the sunrises, for last minute problems.
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  • Tiah Honanie’s clan relatives; her sisters, her aunties and her grandmothers make qomi for her engagement procession.  Qomi is ground sweet corn, sugar and water.
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  • The Harvest Moon sets behind the Honanie home on Third Mesa.
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  • Shawna Kyasyousia, a relative the Honanie’s have raised, falls asleep after a long day.  Shawna spent the day at a Basket Dance in Shongopovi & the evening trick-or-treating in Hotevilla.
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  • The families of Kara Honanie, the bride, and Lester Honanveama, the groom, came together to host a 10-day traditional Hopi wedding. “It’s a lot of work but it’s something that you should be proud of for the rest of your life,” Sarah said.<br />
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Bunny Coriz (Lester’s dad) is mudded. When the excitement wore down, the crowd separated and a howling erupted from the women in the groom's family, who stood in front of the house. The group of women walking back down the road responded with a growl, bringing the mud fight to an end.
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  • Hours before the sun came up on the fifth day (March 23, 2019), Sarah Honanie, in the green sweater, mixes yucca root with water, while Gloria Phillips (top left) takes Kars’s hair down. When yucca root is mixed with water it turns into a natural shampoo. The couples’ hair was washed, then it was intertwined and washed together, bonding them in marriage and signifying their union as husband and wife.
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  • As night falls on the fourth day (March 22, 2019), the red stone house has mud splattered across the front door and muddy handprints smeared across the windows. The family can't wash the mud off the house after the fight. They have to rely on the rain to do it for them.
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  • Kara waits for her auntie to give her a bit of sheep brains from a plastic container. The brain serves as grease to help cook the piki. Kara's godmother and aunt sat with her as she made the bread in her mother-in-law's piki house. They offered tips, added more wood to the fire beneath the stone and chatted in Hopi.
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  • As each sheep was butchered, a group of women cleaned the intestines so they could be cooked and served the next day.
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  • Food is handed down to the men in the kiva, March 24, 2019, Moenkopi, Arizona. It's the groom’s responsibility to help gather the materials needed for the robe and the reeds for the wedding suitcase. They are both made inside the kiva, a traditional structure built underground and used for ceremonies by the Hopi people. The length of the wedding varies, depending on how long it takes for the bride's robes and suitcase to be completed. Weaving starts on the first day of the wedding when the bride arrives at her in-laws’ house, and she stays until they're completed, so she can wear them on her return journey home.
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  • "She's coming!" a little girl shouted. Wearing a black manta, covered by a white cape, Kara walked up the dirt road in her white buckskin moccasins holding the traditional bridal suitcase of woven reeds rolled around her wedding sash. The tassels from the sash hang out from the side, each tassel symbolizing rain. Walking behind her, Lester carried a freshly butchered sheep on his shoulder. March 28, 2019, Hotevilla, Arizona.
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  • After unpacking Kara’s suitcase and placing the contents on a mound of sand, Lester and Kara’s uncles pulled out their pipes to smoke mountain tobacco. The men smoked to bless the clothes and corn that was brought in with the suitcase because they were all brand new.
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  • Once the gifts were brought in, everyone gathered at the tables set up in the dining and living room to have a feast.
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  • Kara is hugged by her auntie, Tresa Sufkie. Kara and Lester and their family had dinner at Denny’s in Tuba City after the 10-day Hopi Wedding ended,  March 28, 2019.
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