Last summer I took an Indian guided tour of a Hopi Reservation and Cliff Dwelling near Kykotsmovi, AZ. I was camping my way across the southwestern portion of the United States accompanied by a friend and my small dog, Ronan. A couple of weeks before leaving on this road trip, a friend told me of his amazing experience touring Walpi Cliff Dwellings in First Mesa; I also remember the European travelers at the International Youth Hostel outside of the Grand Canyon praising their Indian Reservation experiences as being among the most magical of their lives. I was prepared for an enchanting experience among the ancestors of the first Americans, who could show me a more balanced and symbiotic relationship with the world they inhabited.
The experience was not at all what I expected. In order to gain access to the more sacred areas of the reservation, a guide of Hopi heritage must accompany tourists. Prior to my departure from Los Angeles, I had arranged such a guide for our tour with a half Irish/ half Hopi man named Earnest via Skype. He seemed nice enough through the digitized image on my computer; his long grey hair was braided and he seemed jovial and kind. Earnest gave me detailed driving directions from First Mesa to his “store” in Kytotsmovi, we embarked on a two-hour drive down a lonesome, winding road away from civilization and deep into the heart of the reservation. That morning had already started out a little rough. I was on two hours of restless sleep because our campsite on the Hopi reservation in First Mesa was overrun with wild dogs. There was an extraordinary amount of nothing of value about this land. The gold, arid cliffs were under constant assault by the hot wind. There were no shade trees to offer cover from the blazing sun in the event of car troubles, so I was anxious to reach our destination. At an empty crossroads, we arrived at a site with two rundown trailers and a lazy pack of beastly dogs that made my little Ronan seem like a baby lamb. The look of this place was not strange to me; it had all the poverty and isolation that I had seen in the southern West Virginia of my youth. According to his directions, we had arrived at our destination. Seeing this place, I felt glad for the first time that I was about to pay $150 for this Hopi Indian Reservation tour.
My traveling companion and I were timidly discussing which trailer door to knock on when the furthest abruptly flew open and out wobbles a tall, chubby Indian man who I was easily able to identify as Earnest from our Skype call. I guess he had all qualities that one would expect from a Hopi tour guide and I was pleased that this person was about to teach me about the heritage and rituals of his people. After our introductions and a moment of rest, we all (Ronan too, as Earnest didn’t trust his wild pack to not eat my little lamb) piled back into the car to head off the valley of ancient petroglyphs. As we drove, we listened to Earnest make dirty jokes and talk about his all of his girlfriends in Italy and New York State, all of whom he stayed in contact with by Skype. He boasted about how his business thrives because of his international reputation as a Hopi tour guide. He boasted about his sister’s upcoming debut on a reality television show about “pickers” in AZ. Earnest had plenty to say, but he seemed to talk of everything but the Hopi people, their history or how they used the land around us. I was feeling embarrassed about convincing my travelling companion that this experience would worth the steep price. $150 buys many meals for a college student. I started asking Earnest questions about his Hopi heritage, but his answers remained broad and generic. I probably gleaned more about Hopi Indians while I was researching tour guides on the Internet back in Los Angeles.
We arrived at the site of the petroglyphs and parked the car. We saw a large crescent shape cliff wall that opened to a vast expanse. The cliff was about 500ft high and the arc of the canyon, which was covered with symbols and marks, stretched across one fourth of a mile. We walked the length as Earnest, told us what a few of the symbols meant; a spiral represents a gateway or water source, a series of vertical marks – one to represent each day of travel, and so on. I found it necessary to draw out Earnest’s explanations; they were not in-depth but they were satisfactory. He did teach us to gather bits of Hopi pottery from the canyon floor and to identify which were the finest by their markings. Earnest instructed us not to take the collected pieces but to lay them on top of a boulder that was covered with other bits of found pottery. As we found our way to the far side of the canyon, I believe at the west side of the crescent, Earnest showed us the most unusual of petroglyphs. Unlike the other drawings, which depicted natural shapes, these drawings showed an otherworldly encounter. There was a star being with a long neck and a single eye. There were images of oblong spacecrafts and creatures with several tentacles. We were not offered an explanation for these images but it was just as well. If we had been offered one, I am sure it would have been hard to believe.
As we walked back across the canyon to car, Earnest stopped to show us a spot where we could gather up some wet white clay from a crack in cliff wall. We were invited us to mark the wall with our own handprint, where it dry and bake under the hot sun to be immortalized among the petroglyphs. This sticks out in my mind as the most generous moment of our Hopi Indian reservation tour.
We got back into the car and sallied forth again on a rocky road, this time to the cliff dwellings of the traditionalist Hopis at Hotevilla. On the ride, Earnest asked us to please be respectful to the families that continue to inhabit the cliff dwellings during our visit. I felt a little defensive at this request. I did not think my travelling companion and I had been disrespectful prior during any other part of the tour. I started wondering if I had offended him by asking so many questions. I am embarrassed to admit that this was the first moment that considered the complicated politics at play within our group dynamic. I have always felt quite innocent of the past atrocities committed against Native Americans by European settlers, especially since my family didn’t immigrate to the United States until 1904. But here and now, I was beginning to wonder if I was still considered to be very much a part of that oppression.
We pulled into grouping of stone buildings and parked the car. The cliff dwellings at Hotevilla were not at all like the images I had seen of the cliff dwellings at Walpi. This little town felt more like Porto Nuevo in the Baja peninsula. The village looked poor and narrow alleys were cluttered with debris. Barefoot children running around the village in hot sun stopped to watch us as we watched them. Earnest encouraged me to keep Ronan close, as there would be more wild dogs. Wild dogs everywhere. He led us down a very steep stairwell carved out of stone to a stunning terraced garden full of corn and squash. Running along side of the garden was a shimmering pool of clear water that was littered with a few plastic bottles and aluminum cans. We stooped for a rest as Earnest was winded from the hike. Above the pool was a second carved stone walkway with an enchanting cave. The cave was radiating echoes of trickling water. A weathered Indian elder emerged from the cave carrying two coffee tins full of clear water and began to ascend the steep stairwell. Earnest told us that this fresh water spring was the source of drinking water for the whole village. He offered us a drink but kneeled before the spring and spoke a prayer in his native tongue first. He then offered my traveling companion and I a drink from a tin can, which we welcomed as the temperature was easily above 100 degrees and we hadn’t a thing to eat all day. We had not mentioned our hunger to Earnest but as we headed back up the stairs, he suggested we stop and get some ice cream from the village store. Halfway up the stairwell and winded again, Earnest interrupted the climb to point out the Kiva where he and the other Kachina Dancers would practice their ceremonial dances.
“White men” he said “are not invited inside the Kiva”.
Dually noted, Earnest.
This was the first we had heard of Earnest’s participation in the ritual events on the reservation or his role as a Kachina Dancer. I will admit to being completely fascinated by the empty room inside the Kiva, which probably had little more than ladder inside. I imagined the rituals and ceremonies that took place within the Kiva infused that space with a sacred power that would affect any object brought inside. I could appreciate the desire to keep me on the outside. In fact, I think that if I had been invited inside the Kiva, I would have felt like a spy in the house of love.
We got back into the car and drove a few blocks through the dusty village to the store. Outside of the village store there was an Indian woman with a cooler selling Indian Tacos, which were basically slow cooked meat wrapped in fry bread. Earnest presented her to us very formally. It was clear that we were expected to buy this food whether we were hungry or not. Since we were hungry, my traveling companion and I both purchased tacos and a cold soda pop. We were pleased to discover that our lunch was delicious; the meat was tender and flavorful. We thanked the Indian woman and she, in turn, told us that our $16 was likely the only money she would make that day and set off on her way. It was as though she had been expecting us, which was fine, but I suspected there was some staging to this tour.
It was late in the afternoon and we had visited all the locations that Earnest promised. We made our way back down the lonesome, winding dirt road to Earnest’s place where we paid him his fee for his services. Earnest insisted that we come into his “store” to see all of the Hopi art objects available for purchase. My traveling companion and I wanted to resist his hospitality because we felt a pressure to purchase something. We had really only come prepared to pay for our tour and had exceeded our budget when we purchased $16 dollars worth of tacos in the village. In fear that we would offend him, we obliged Earnest and admired some beautiful weavings and pottery, which were jam packed inside the trailer. Earnest gave us each a signed CD of his own flute music. We sincerely thanked him for the gift and tried to excuse ourselves to continue our drive into Santa Fe. Out of nowhere, he offered us a peek at his Kachina Dancing costume, which he said, was not something that white men would ordinarily be allowed to see. How could we say no? We followed him into the hall and he opened the door to a dark hall closet. I looked inside and when my eyes began to adjust to the dim light, I saw a heavy elaborately embroidered robe and a carved wooden Kachina mask hanging from a hook. On a shelf above the hook, a shock of colorful feathers. Just as soon as my eyes were able to focus and make sense of what I was looking at, Earnest shut the door abruptly. There he stood with his hand still on the doorknob, slyly smiling down on my traveling companion and myself. Again, we took this opportunity to thank him for the tour and for sharing sanctified objects and finally took our leave. I drove on through the reservation with a heavy foot. I wanted badly to reach our next destination before nightfall to ensure a better overnight camping experience. My traveling companion and I talked at length about the awkwardness of the exchange in store and the difficulty we had in trying to satisfy our curiosity while somehow respecting this loosely defined code etiquette set by Hopi Indians for white men visiting the reservation.
Looking back, I feel foolish for not understanding the correct etiquette. Prior to this, I had never been on a guided tour of anything, save for an abandoned coal mine. I have always insisted on pioneering my own way through every travel experience. I now believe that Earnest’s expectation of a purchase or a tip could account for the awkwardness in his store. It might be that the CD gift and the peek at his Kachina Dancing costume were his final attempts of gently trying to solicit that tip. I regret very much that we did not understand in that moment, but in our defense, nothing I had read about touring the Hopi Indian Reservation suggested that tipping the tour guide was a common courtesy. Since we had paid him what I thought was a rather handsome sum and used our own vehicle on this tour, I didn’t understand that more would be expected. If you had asked me at the time, I would have said the tour wasn't worth the $150 fee that we paid. In retrospect, I can say with certainty that I was wrong. Even if the tour was not what I had expected, it was one of the more complicated and revealing experiences of my life. It gave me a much broader understanding of my role as “tourist” in my own world. The Hopi relationship to nature and ceremony offer me an entry into biopolitical art practice. The use and exclusivity of the Hopi ritual spaces mirrors the art world’s relationship to the gallery space. All in all, a rather generative experience.