Darcy Markham Analysis #2

“Culture is like a map. A map just isn’t territory but an abstract description of trends towards uniformity in words, deeds and artifacts of a human group.” (Kluckhom, 1968 as cited in Pai & Adler, 2001. p.24)

The Re-drawing of a Cultural Map

For Polingaysi Qoyawayma, this cultural map takes her on a journey back down the highway to her home-the home of her ancestors, the home of the Hopi. As Polingaysi reaches the mesa and turns off the highway down the road to the ancient village, she realizes that the map that she has embedded in her is not accurate, as she states, “ Much has happened since I was a child. But I am still a child, a lost child. I cannot find my way. Where is the pathway of peace? Where can I find the harmony of a true Hopi?” (Qoyawayma, 1964, p.3). For Polingaysi, she had been able to “cross the bridge from Indian world to the world of the white man” (Qoyawayma, 1992, p. 133) but found herself struggling to find her way back.

No Turning Back is the story of that search for the cultural patterns that make up the map of the Hopi people. These patterns like the ruins of the village have all but been lost to a new generation of Hopi. Standing at the heart of her village, Polingaysi acknowledges her own responsibilities for the inaccuracies of this map. “I am Hopi. Because I am Hopi I have responsibilities. By breaking the cultural patterns in my own life I have, at least indirectly, helped to destroy it for the Hopi people as a whole” (Qoyawayma, 1964, p.10).

She, like many of her people were led away from their cultural patterns by the “white man’s” education. This “education was used as a method of indoctrinating Native American children and undermining their own language, religion, and culture; thus, silencing the Native American culture” (Tierney, 1993, p.309). Children were taken from their homes, given new names, forced to speak another language and learn the white man’s ways. In doing this, the white man slowly began to rob the Hopi people of the cultural patterns that made up their identity. These cultural patterns were the foundation upon which the Hopi people had built their lives The chain, which connected the Hopi people together from one generation to the next, had been broken. As she stood on the mesa, Polingaysi realizes that in her “struggle to merge with the world of the white man, she had missed the sense of direction that had governed her youth” (Qoyawayma, 1964, p.33). The map that she had followed had taken a turn that left her standing alone on the mesa wondering ”Is this my ancestral village, where I truly belong” (Qoyawayma, 1964, p.33).

As Polingaysi stands alone in the ancient village she begins to redraw the cultural patterns that made up the map of her past and attempts to understand the meaning of the symbolism that characterizes the Hopi culture. For the Hopi people life was harsh and they depended upon nature for their survival. Their lives, celebrations, and traditions were tied to the land from which they scraped their meager existence. It is with this understanding that the Hopi people “clung to the past” (Qoyawayma, 1964, p.7). The stories of Polingaysi’s past were the “mythopoetic narratives that encoded the [Hopis] earliest understanding of the human to nature relationship” (Bowers, 2000, p.25). Thus much of the Hopi rituals were tied to their relationship with nature. The grinding of the corn, the Kachina dances, the making of the plaques, and the praying sticks were a “symbol system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic form by which [the Hopi] communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about attributes towards life” (Goodenough, 1981 as cited in Bowers, 2001, p 23).

The Hopi culture that Polingaysi remembers was “rich in life, color and emotion, the Hopi way had been a strong but invisible web, that held the people together” (Qoyawayma, 1964, p.27). The Hopi’s “spiritual understandings gave a sense of depth and dignity to their frugal and often difficult everyday existence” (Qoyawayma, 1964, p.27). The ceremonies of her people were rooted in antiquity. Thus their meaning often remained hidden. For Polingaysi this is a source of frustration that is expressed when she questions her mother about the use of the left hand in many Hopi rituals, to which her mother answers, “Perhaps you are foolish because you do not understand Hopi ways, though you are Hopi” (Qoyawayma, 1964, p.87). As Bowers states, “ The most widely shared core of symbolic knowledge is rooted in mythopoetic narratives so ancient that the current generation may not recognize their origins” (Bowers, 2000. p 25). Yet these ceremonies were so deeply embedded into their culture they became “a part of their flesh and blood, as natural as heartbeats” (Qoyawayma, 1964, p.38).

Many of these practices in their daily life were so automatic that they often went unrecognized. For many generations the Hopi people did not cut their hair, believing that anything that contained moisture was sacred. The rain dances that were carried out were learned before a child could walk. Rainfall was scarce in the Hopi villages perched on the summits of three high mesas in northeast Arizona and was therefore considered to be the most precious commodity in their lives. Over the centuries, the Hopi people had developed ways of dealing with and even overcoming this arid, harsh environment. Through specialized agricultural methods they were successful at harvesting certain crops the foremost being corn. Grinding corn was the most important homemaking skill for women. Girls begin grinding at an early age, taking pride in their full bowls overflowing with ground corn. As they ground together they would gossip and share stories, making grinding an important part of socializing among Hopi women. Thus grinding corn, a fundamental part of women’s lives among the Hopi, became an issue between Polingaysi and her mother. Polingaysi refused to grind corn, asking her mother why she didn't use a machine. Seventka was shocked and angry. For her, grinding corn was a sign that she was strong. It enabled her to praise and thank Mother Corn for the harvest. When a baby was born, corn again played a role. "I took you, newly born. I held your warm body against my bared legs. I presented you with your first Mother Corn. I pierced your little ears. For 20 days I cared for you, observing the traditional manner of caring for a newborn child. It was I who named you" (Qoyawayma, 1964, p28).

Even in food preparation the Hopi women practiced certain rituals, which they believed ensured their continued existence. The sand, which was added to the meal as a reminder of the plentifulness of Mother Earth, the purity of thoughts as the kneaded the bread to ensure no stain of evil on the food, all these practices and symbols were believed to guarantee their survival. Thus like all cultures, the Hopi people developed these practices as a way of dealing with the problems and difficulties that arose out of their environment and allowed them to successfully deal with the difficulties that they faced.

These “behavioral patterns should be understood and appreciated within a specific cultural context rather than in terms of there supposed intrinsic properties” (Pai & Adler, 2001, p 22). Through their ritual dances, through their songs that had been handed down from generation to generation, they were able to express themselves (Qoyawayma, 1964, p.27), and in so doing weaved the web that held them together. The white educators who came “underestimated the importance of culture in the learning process. Rather than validate non-traditional ways of knowing, thinking, and behaving, the students were labeled as deficient. Because white educators have experienced homogenous cultural condition, they [were] unable to see culture and the impact on the individual”(Eshelman, 1997).

In redrawing the map of her past, Polingaysi was able to discover a way to merge the roads that joined white man to Hopi. Through her teaching she was able to find a way to legitimize the Hopi culture and ensure that her students retained the identity, which was fundamental to their being. The Hopi children she realized could no more change who they were than the white man could change who he was. She realized, “ to reject or demean a person’s cultural heritage is to do psychological and moral violence to the dignity and worth of that individual” (Pai & Adler, 2001, p.24). Therefore she found a way to take what the children knew, their own cultural understandings and building a bridge across the divide. She had come to an understanding of the infinite good in the Hopi cultural patterns that had been a part of her childhood. She realized that it was necessary to create an understanding between the two cultures and blend those things that were good from both of them. She did this with her method of teaching the Hopi children to live among the white man. As she stated, “lead them, guide them, but don’t try to whip them into education, and don’t make the mistake of thinking education can be superimposed upon them, like plaster on a wall” (Qoyawayma, 1964, p.175).

For Polingaysi, the journey to find her self had been a long and arduous one. True to her mother’s words there was “not turning back.” Yet the journey had not been without success. True, Polingaysi could not go back to the old ways of her youth, but she was able to construct a new path, a path that would take the best of the Hopi and blend it with the best of the white man, forming a new map. “The highway, which the Hopis at one time feared, will serve a double purpose. It will bring the white world closer, and gradually the Hopis and their white neighbors will learn to understand each other. With understanding will come further simplification of the problem of teaching Hopi children” (Qoyawayma. 1964. p.180).

References:

Bowers, C. A. (2000). Let them eat data: How computers affect education, cultural diversity, and the prospects of ecological sustainability. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press.

Eshelman, M. (1997) Issues in native-american education. Arizona State University

Retrieved on October 25, 2003 from 1997http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu/~mcisaac/emc598geold97/Spring97/5/eshel5.htm

Pai, Y., & Adler, S. A. (2001). Cultural foundations of education (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Qoyawayma, P. (1964). No turning back. Albuquerque: The University of New Mexico Press.

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Tierney, W. G. (1993). The college experience of Native Americans: A critical analysis. In Weis, L. & Fine, M. (Eds.), Beyond Silenced Voices, (pp. 309-324). Albany: State University Press.

Paper Reflection Questions

1. The strongest part of my paper is the connections that I was able to draw between Pai & Adler and the idea of a cultural map and the words of Polingaysi, which supported the thesis.

2. The part I would spend more time on if I had it is exploring the thesis in more detail. Perhaps going into more detail on the symbolism of the culture and how it ties into the idea of the map

3. An aspect of Pai/Adler, Spring or Bowers that was clarified for me as I wrote this paper is the connection between the narratives of a culture and how these form the backbone of the cultural practices.

4. In working on my next paper I hope to be able to explore in more detail my thesis. I was somewhat distracted, as my husband was getting ready to leave for Thailand. He left today and won’t be back until Christmas.

5. After completing this paper, a question I still have is how can we assist children in understanding their own cultural maps and use this understanding to assist them in the process of acculturation?