BETWEEN TWO WORLDS FOREWORD ~~~~~~~~ AL Q”yawayma (Hopi, pronounced: Ko-YAH why-mah - meaning: "Grey Fox Walking at Dawn") is not only an outstanding engineer but is also one of Americas leading pottery makers. Al has made a particularly important contribution to our country and to American Indians through his leadership in establishing the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES). Al has successfully demonstrated that it is possible to create a balance between one's expertise in a given field with one's knowledge and understanding of American Indian culture and tradition. Al is both a teacher and a leader who steadfastly adheres to the tenets of his tribal background, and encourages students to maintain and enhance their tribal background through the arts. Al's accomplishments, personal phlilosophy and strong commitment to Indian young people inspired the George Bird Grinnell American Indian Children & Education Foundation to establish an award in his honor. The Al Q”yawayma Award is an effort to perpetuate the fine qualities embodied in Al's work as an engineer and his creative abilities as an artist. Al Q”yawayma is a model for all young people and it is an honor to acknowledge his outstanding contributions. Patricia Trudell Gordon BETWEEN TWO WORLDS adapted from a lecture given by Al Q”yawayma at the Heard Museum on 1-23-1991 and Santa Fe East Magazine, Summer 1991 Indian people today have a foot in two worlds, but we live one life. Our footing is often uncertain because each world is in a continuous state of change. The Indian people need to evaluate the best that is in our own culture and hang onto it: for it will always be foremost in our life. But we also need to take the best from other cultures to blend with what we already have. Cultural change can be painful. Adaptation helps moderate that pain and provides hope. Seeing Indian young people adapt and then live out their culture is very satisfying. What I see after the pain is a story of reemergence and hope. The Indian World Citizens of the United States speak 400 languages. One-half or 200 of these languages are spoken by the American Indian. Approximately one percent of the U.S. population is American Indian. Therefore, one percent of the population represents fifty percent of America's cultural diversity. In a way we are fortunate as compared to other indigenous peoples such as the Aborigines in Australia or the black peoples in South Africa. American Indians alone were able to regroup and restructure enough so that at least some of our lands and culture can be protected. More than 20 percent of America's energy resources, such as coal, oil, gas and uranium are found on reservation land. Aside from the desire to manage these and other resources we are very concerned about the impact of their development on all living things. For whatever affects our waters, wildlife, even the grains of sand and dust, also affects mankind. All things are connected. For thousands of years our ancestors were the caretakers of this land. We still have a spiritual responsibility for its well being. The inner world of the human is dependent on the outer world of nature. Any devastation that we bring upon the outer world of nature will diminish the inner world of mankind. Despite conquest, epidemics and an official government policy of assimilation, we have survived. That survival is through struggle, persistence and endurance is a vital lesson for our Indian young people today. Education is one of the keys to overcoming poverty, poor health and low expectations. Education also gives us the training necessary to manage our remaining resources. Some tribes such as the Hopi were never conquered in the classical sense and never signed a treaty. Technically, some believe, the Hopi are still a sovereign group of villages located high on the mesas of northern Arizona. To make that point, a number of years ago one of my relatives prepared his own passport to attend a meeting in Sweden. After much dialogue, the U.S. State Department honored his Hopi passport. As a Hopi I have been told of our migrations from the south in meso-America or Mexico centuries ago. Then in the late l500s our Hopi people had their first contact with the Spanish. Our history was personalized for me a few years ago when my father told of how the Spanish era was closed at Hopi, through the accidental shooting of the commander of the last Spanish military contingent at Old Oraibi in 1840. My fathers clan uncle fired a rifle through a window. He did not know much about the rifle which had been left behind by soldiers a few years before. He only meant to scare the soldiers away, but his aim was poor. No contingent of Spanish soldiers ever came back. I was told of the coming of the buffalo soldiers, the blue shirts and their gun wagons, and the ritual firing of the cannon to show force. I learned of my aunt being hidden from federal policemen because our family questioned the white man's education. You see, the Q”yawaymas were of the very conservative group from Old Oraibi. I learned about the indignity of being forced to walk naked through sheep dip and our elders who were sent to Alcatraz without a trial for a year because they objected to the white man's education. Then there was the experience of our parents and relatives that occurred in government boarding schools. Our parents were taken away from home to these schools which were located in other states at an early age. These children should have stayed at home to receive training from their parents. At school they were punished if they spoke their language or practiced their culture. They were taught to obey a puritan authority and to conform to Anglo cultural norms. Their education was inadequate. They were put to work as servants and matrons. The boys' highest expectations were to become carpenters, masons and mechanics. Government school officials and the students had no expectation that they might one day train for a profession. In my view the government boarding school experience was, in the main, very deculturizing. The effects of this psychologically and culturally regressive process has a continuing impact on the Indian person today. Now, one-half of the Indian population lives in urban areas, often shuttling back and forth to the reservation. To one degree or another, much of the present native generation might be termed horizon children. We remain caught at the horizon, neither sky nor earth, painfully suspended between two worlds. That is why we struggle with alcoholism, suicide, high school dropouts, unemployment and low wages. We now strive to find out who we are. Some poignant cases come to mind which illustrate this cultural confusion. I recall the Ph.D. electrical engineer who was adopted as an infant into a non-Indian family and brought up far away from his culture. Today, he can't face any contact: with his tribe or with other Indians; it is just too painful. There is the mother who committed suicide because she could no longer face a lie. Her mother had insisted she marry into wealth rather than into the tradition of the past. Her tragic suicide orphaned several young children. It was acknowledged that an outside value system had crept into her life and she could not deal with it. I recall a motivational talk that I gave before a tribal leadership class. Two girls burst into tears near the end of my talk. I wondered what I had said. They related later that their parents had taught them traditional ways up to the sixth grade. Then their parents insisted they forget those ways and concentrate on learning how to make a living in the outside world. They had never been told that it was okay to be Indian and at the same time pursue a profession in the "outside world". The Third Millennium As Indian people are now balancing between two worlds, so is humanity caught in a struggle of balance between the inner world and outer world, technology and nature. In January 1991 I was invited to attend a joint international meeting between the UN and the Club of Rome, attended by scientists, religious leaders, artists, poets and leaders. A theme of the meeting was The Third Millennium. As stated by Thomas Berry, "We are entering not simply the twenty-first century, not simply the Third Millennium of our Era, we are entering the Ectozoic Era in the biological story of the planet." We are experiencing massive extinctions of living forms in a scale equalled only by the extinctions at the close of the Paleozoic era 220 million years ago and the end of the Mesozoic era 65 million years ago. The only choice we now have before us is how we participate in the emerging Ectozoic era, forming an integral earth community that includes all the human and non-human elements of planet earth. As the meeting progressed. I was struck more and more with the familiarity of the ideas. Finally, I made the connection. Today's newest thinking of the world as a communion of subjects, and our role in the integral functioning of the natural world-these are ideas that were spoken by Chief Seattle 137 years ago. In 1854, the "Great White Chief' in Washington made an offer for a large area of Indian land and promised a "reservation" for the Indian people. Chief Seattle's poetic reply is one of the most profound statements ever made on the relationship between earth and man. "What is man without the beast? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected. Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves. This we know: The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life: he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. This earth is precious to Him (God), and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator." (Excerpt from "This Earth is Precious": 1854, Chief Seattle). Today there is a growing awareness that environmental and social problems will require more than scientific, economic and political solutions. Modern man has knowledge, but can he let go of his self-centered values and rise above his indifferent attitude, indifferent to one another? In my view it will take a true yieldness to and practice of God's spiritual principles to achieve the balance we are searching for. I have heard and seen those values or principles practiced by our old people. They include being thankful, loving, forbearing and being patient with one another, respecting one another, the earth and all living things. The Psalms tell us that "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof: the skies proclaim the work of His hands." If we heap contempt on the earth is it any wonder that our lives are in shambles? I have the notion that if we overcome the predisposition to subdue the earth, to extract maximum material value, that our family and personal lives will be more inclined to come into balance. We would then cease to be so egocentric, we would be thankful and praise our Creator. Chief Seattle had a clear vision of God's requirements. We have a start; many people today have a predisposition to gather together and ponder the problems. Increasingly they recognize these spiritual values. However, man, being man, wants to examine what he gets for giving up some of his domain. Indian peoples still have a vivid memory of their primal roots. They were the caretakers of the land in the Americas. They are a surrogate for Western man who once also had primal roots, roots which understood the interconnectedness with the created earth and all living things. We now clearly share a common destiny with the Western world, if not the entire world. Renewed Hope Although the reality of the acculturation process is painful, there is a hopeful side. My experience with AISES illustrates this hope. In 1977 I participated in the founding of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES). The purpose of this society was to significantly increase the number of American Indian scientists and engineers and to develop leaders within the Indian community. We started with seven participants and no assets. The founders vowed to work a lifetime to achieve parity - a goal of about 10,000 American Indian scientists and engineers. Today, after 16 years of progress, AISES serves the Indian community nationwide. With nearly 100 student chapters, several thousand student, professional and corporate members, pre-college programs, and an annual national leadership training conference, AISES has become one of the strongest groups for youth motivation in the nation. AISES is spreading hope and opportunity throughout Indian country. A new kind of warrior is being trained. AISES is not interested in producing grist for the competitively driven materialistic corporate and government mills. Emphasis is placed on the realization of a balanced life, balanced in appreciation and knowledge of their culture and their spirituality. Emphasis is placed on the family and community building. In fact AISES has called itself "The Family". Students are taught by example to pray, to be thankful and have respect for their elders. The spirit is so strong that it is spreading throughout lndian country, into other Indian organizations as well. Perhaps the spirit will spread to society as a whole. We have that hope! In my participation with AISES and other Native American organizations I find an additional basis for hope. Although we are dealing with a great diversity in the Native American community, I find common ground, a change in our attitude as indigenous peoples of North America. We are gaining a world view of ourselves as native peoples. We have reached and passed the nadir of our 500 years experience with adversity and despair. We are now in what I call "the healing generation", a turning point in the view of ourselves as native peoples, a genuine renewal process. We are actively seeking to hold unto the wisdom in our ancient ways of living, yet we are seeking to deal with the realities of today. We see ourselves as one community, while maintaining our individual tribal identity. We are listening more carefully to one another. We help one another. AISES has an expression for this: "The honor of one is the honor of all". Despite our diversity in cultural practices and religious beliefs, we accept and honor one another. This seems to be the opposite of what we see and experience in the cities and society of today. Indeed there is hope. And my role as an artist? The role of my art and life as an artist is to glorify God, our creator. As with our ancestors, Native American artists can help interpret through inner spiritual eyes the world and the environment that surrounds us. Artists will help us to see. They will provide a nonverbal record of history. As a potter I work with the precious earth, the living clay. I too have learned that all things are interconnected.