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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.
    hopi001.jpg
  • 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.
    hopi004.jpg
  • Tiah Honanie carries piki during her engagement procession in Hotevilla.  The Honanie’s presented baked goods to the groom’s family, after being accepted, the couple is considered engaged.
    hopi012.jpg
  • 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.
    hopi003.jpg
  • 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.
    hopi014.jpg
  • The Harvest Moon sets behind the Honanie home on Third Mesa.
    hopi015.jpg
  • 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.
    hopi002.jpg
  • 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.
    hopi011.jpg
  • 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.
    hopi006.jpg
  • Watson stands a prayer feather ravaged by winter storms.  The Hopis are dry farmers, they don’t irrigate, and they rely on the winter snows and summer monsoons to supply adequate moisture for their crops.
    hopi005.jpg
  • “ 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.”
    hopi008.jpg
  • 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.
    hopi010.jpg
  • 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.
    hopi009.jpg
  • Family and friends attending the engagement ceremony feasted on hominy stew.
    hopi013.jpg
  • September is spent chasing the crows from the fields.  Today, Leland Dennis, Program Coordinator for the Hopi Natwani Coalition, a project of the Hopi Foundation, estimates there are eighty families continuously practicing farming.  Twenty-five years ago, Dennis puts that number at 150 to 170.
    hopi007.jpg

Mark Henle Photography

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