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Thomas Banyacya Sr.: (following a Prayer in Hopi)
First, I want to thank you for inviting me
here to this very important gathering, which seems
to me is a fulfillment of my own traditional religious
leaders' ancient traditional knowledge. Some call
it prophecies, warnings, religious instructions that
they know of. Back in 1948, they met four days. They
were 80, 90, 100 years old who can't read, can't speak
English, can't read books, but what they were saying
in 1948, I found that message is not only for Hopi
original native people in our country, but for all
other nations that may be coming to our land some
day, which is known to them. And so, they told many
things that went back when human life starts. Of
course, they always refer to that as lower world.
Well, we speak one language. But we always
turn away from the law of Great Spirit, the
law of nature, and invent many dangerous things
and misuse that power, and then it has to be
purified by nature, because human beings don't
want to correct their wrong-doings, don't want to
stop. They knew there were certain things dangerous,
but they would not want to stop it. And they
used that against each other and against nature. So
they said that the first world was totally destroyed
by people of land, some sunk, separated, different
lands, and many people were destroyed.
But a handful of people came to the second one. There
they went quite a long ways and they did the same
thing, and that was totally destroyed, purified by,
they said everything was frozen, winter came all
over. Everything froze.
A handful of people came out to the third
one -- I'm just going to go quickly [through] what
the old people say. The third one. There they went
quite a long ways and they expelled out many
things that humans have invented. They said: We
haven't got that far yet in this world. We think we
got power, but we haven't restored some of the
things that they'd already known there. And
they're able to converse with animals and birds,
they're able to travel, some say, like these flying
saucers going around. They're able to talk to each
other without wire of any kind, and they do many
things. They had many inventions -- much more
powerful, but they misused it again. High spiritual
leaders, political figures become corrupt, dishonest,
greedy and selfish. They will not change, they
will not stop. Everybody knows that they're doing
something wrong, but they will not admit their
wrong-doing, they said. And then, to the last days,
the moral principles, religious life, everything
becomes so corrupt and there's no way to stop
leaders from doing anything that they knew is
wrong. And so, they said they finally decided that
they have to have just good time and make more
money or power, whatever, to give them more
freedom to just enjoy everything, and they have
already disturbed the balance of nature by taking
male and female seed of every kind and make it
over, thinking that they could make things better --
but they're destroying the natural development of
every living thing on this earth. And so that was,
they said, people started gambling, day and night,
gambling. They won't stop that. So the leader was
so concerned that they wouldn't listen to anyone
so they called on the force of nature for direction
above and below. Then, they were totally destroyed by flood.
But a handful of people came out. And
they said, we are living on this fourth world,
fourth Spirit that humans have gone through from
first, second, third. This is the last world that we
are living on, there is no other world like this
world where human life will live like this. This is
supposed to last forever. And it's up to us, the
survivors of that last total destruction by flood.
And this time we came out and we were
given languages: You take this language, go this
direction, you take this religion, you take this
ability to invent things, to record things, and you go
here and there, and they spread out all over the
four -- the Hopi say they went four directions. I
notice that in this room this morning, when I looked
up at the ceiling in the circle up there, there are
four directions, it's just like the symbol I wear
here. Four directions, the center is like the fire we
built up in the hill yesterday. The Spirit's there,
and we went four directions and some of you
people came over here. You were given the
special mission to record things, to invent things
and to make life beautiful, clean and lasting here
because you're separate from our country called
America today.
Our native people have this color, brown
or red, we are left there from Alaska, Canada,
United States, Central, South America down to
the tip of South America. We of that color were
left there, and some of our people went with the
white brother to go to other lands around here. So
there are some other people with this color who
are over here and on the West side. So we went
out around this world and we were told to take
care of it wherever we go with this power, with
the knowledge that we have, religious instructions
and the ability to make things, life, beautiful,
clean, and this land, Mother Earth, was given
food every day, everywhere, and we should share
with everybody, share with animals, with birds. That
is what our native people say that, we are
caretakers of this Mother Earth. Every living thing
depends on us human beings. Now, he has his
religious instructions, prophesies, warnings, and
he may have energy and power within him. If he
can meditate and concentrate on something, he
could do something to heal a person when they're
sick, dying, and he has that power. But a lot of us
feel that we don't have that power. But we have
that. We have these five senses. They gave us
deciding factors whatever happens, it's up to us to
do something. If we hear some bad word, we
should try to straighten it out. If we see something
wrong, we should try to correct that. These are
some things that a human is supposed to be
responsible for.
Now, in our area, there is in the United
States four different states, and in that area where
I came from, the Hopi country, they call it Four
Corners Area: Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado
and Utah, came together and formed this center,
and it's surrounded by four sacred mountains and
the old people knew that that must be left in the
natural state, it's the spiritual center of that
country. They say that that contains more mineral
resources than any other place, but we must leave
it in a natural state. We must protect it that way,
we must not allow anyone to come and dig the
mineral resources up, because in the first, second,
third worlds human political figures, even
religious people, misused that power taking the
mineral resources and they wouldn't stop misusing
it. So they might do that there.
So, two main things that came to the
Hopi at that time. In 1948, they had a meeting
like this, four days, those old people, 80, 90, 100
years old, and they really impressed me, what
they were saying, so they asked me to be one of
the interpretors because they do not speak
English. They need to bring this ancient
traditional knowledge to the world. Because two
main prophecies known to them came about.
There are many other prophecies that are
known to them. One was that when white brother
went over to this side of the world, he was
supposed to take a spiritual symbol, a spiritual
power that was given to us by Great Spirit. We,
the Hopi,
we have sacred stone tablet in our hands yet, into
which all this knowledge (...?); he just breathed
into that, we still have them. And the same thing
happened to a white brother who separated from
him. He gave him that sacred stone tablet and he
took him around this side of the world someplace. So
today, Elders, Hopi leaders are still waiting for our
two white brothers who separated from us. Some day,
he was to come back with these
sacred stone tablets, and he was supposed to have
inventions to help us, not to destroy us with, not
to destroy animals, birds, but to help us to make
this life beautiful, clean. So we welcomed our
white brothers when they came. We gave them
food and lodging. We let them stay on our
land. We're not heathens or cannibals or people who
destroy everything. If we were that kind of people,
I don't think any white people would be living on
our land today. We eat everyone of them. But
we're not that kind of people, so we welcomed
them. But it seems like they have power,
inventions. They have money for somehow,
they're supposed to use that in the proper way to
help us, but they're misusing that power again.
And to the Hopi, the Six Nations, on a
visit all around that country, met our traditional
leaders. Some of the Navajos are here, Yakimas
and Lakotas. I've found the same thing is known to
them, and so this virtuous circle was put aside
someplace and the white brother came; instead of
circle they bring the cross. And they said when
that happened we're going to find out that he's
going to misuse the power that he has. So he has a
recording, he wrote a lot of things in the paper and
he said: "If you take this invention it'll help
you." But when we put our hand to get it, then he
said: "Wait a minute. You sign your name on this
paper, your name, before I give it to you." Old
people warned us not to sign anything that we
don't understand; of course, we don't understand
English language in early days, but they're forcing
us to sign something. That writing some day is
going to be used to take our land away from us. It
happened in 1946 when the United States
government passed a law called the Indian Land
Claims Commission. To all the native people in
the United States, wherever the United States has
land, it took this land away from you a long time
ago without compensation. So now, I pass this
law, if you follow, claim against the United States
according to this law, if you win through our
federal court, we'll pay you money. Old people
couldn't think of ever selling this land -- this is our
mother. We cannot do that. And white people
came to our country just yesterday, this land
doesn't belong to them, this land belongs to the
Great Spirit. And he told us how to take care of it
for him: Through prayer, meditation, ceremony,
humbleness. We have gone through that, we kept
that land beautiful, clean. So we will not file any
claim. Then our white brother will have the
ability to take mineral resources and he will try
to misuse that again. And it's somehow without
permission from the religious leaders, who are
the real Hopi leaders, majority of them.
Today, they have five traditional villages
that I'm speaking of. Those are members that
were in 1948 the old people that were 80, 90, 100
years old, say that we have never made any
treaty with any nations, not even with the United
States government. So if you're going to travel,
you can't go to the United States for their
passports to travel with. We must have our own
Hopi passports. So they asked me to make one,
so I made one with a buckskin cover -- Hopi
passport -- and they put sacred prayer feather in it --
eagle feather -- that the spirit, the soul of our
people and the land and spiritual center, that I
must not use that because the white brothers now
require that to travel to another country. But they
came to our country, they didn't have any
passport, they just flocked in there. So they said,
if I should ever check on them, if they don't have
any passport, we may have to send them back
where they came from.
But the old people say, we must see that they do
the right thing with the mineral resources. But
somebody took that uranium out of that
Hopi-Navajo area where they're living today. They
didn't know that it was dangerous. They went in
and dig out this uranium. And they tested out in
New Mexico, and the Hopi prophecy says that
they just might do that some day, so I'm going to
make gourd full of ashes. This earth represents the
world. The man that was speaking summarized
that four-days-meeting, about 86 years old
spiritual leader, he said: This represents the world
and we're supposed to get this land and life
beautiful, clean and green.
And these symbols represent women on
one side (...?) of the world, and the women on the
other side of the world. We talk about importance
of women today. It's their gift, their ability to
produce the next generations. Without women, I
don't think anyone would be living here
today. Women have a very important part as human
beings, and the same way with plant life, trees,
animals, birds. Male and female have to work
together to keep these green valleys, and we try
to keep that that way.
But when our white brother make gourd full of
ashes, it's more like this there on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki and burned over 200,000 families
in a few seconds. Everything burned up. Many
living things died from heat in the water. The
Hopi people were talking about this, and I
was amazed they described that without even
reading books or can't even read, speak English,
but there in the Hopi language they described exactly
what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and
they said that poison and ash will be floating
there for many years. Many sickness will come
out that medicine will not be able to cure
them. Deformed babies are appearing, deformed
animals, birds. These things will continue on
because once you threw that on the earth, it was
bad everywhere. And I heard that here today.
That's what old people say. Keep on going,
spreading this message for all the people: Don't do
that anymore, don't misuse that uranium any more
or any other things. There's poison coming from
oil, there's poison coming from gas, natural
gas. And there are poisons from other mineral resources
that's come up from Mother Earth. There's
something happening here on this earth, and we
may create so much poisoned air up there, it may
be like a gas fume up there some day, we may
have a fire up in the sky, we won't be able to put it
out, they said. They described so many things and
we're coming through that point. So I decided,
because they said that we must not disturb any
other countries anywhere, however. Spiritual
messages in that land to keep it in good state by
prayer, meditation, ceremony, fasting. That's why
we have the sweat lodges and sun dances,
Kachina dances in the kivas, and we go through
three, four days of fasting, so that when you
perform a ceremony, your mind, body and spirit
are in good health; so that you call on four
directions. Like we prayed last night up there, it
rained a little, they're helping us, sprinkling us, let
us know that we are now coming together. And it's
rain again today. And I hope that some of you
realize that we are in that period that it's us human
beings, the children of those mothers, must come
together. That's what old people say. So we must
put aside all these wrong-doings, and that is so.
When I learned many things in the
Kachina society, when I listened to the Elders
also not to go disturb any other peoples' land and
life over there. So the Second World War came, I
did not register. The United States law have that
passed for the native people, and we fought that
and the government, some officials, say that
native people should not be going to army, should
not go to other countries to destroy other peoples'
land and life. And the Hopi know that, so that we
must stand on that, so I refused to register. And
you know, in the United States I thought they
only sent criminals or thieves or robbers in the
jail, but I wanted to be a Hopi. "Hopi" means
"peace", "kind", "gentle", "truthful", and I wanted
to be with the Hopi people. I wanted to have my
people to bring this message to the world, to
bring about peace in a later time. They said that
would be hard, problems are so great. So I refused
to register. And I think I spent almost six or seven
years in United States' government prison for not
registering. To be a Hopi, to bring this message
to the world.
So, after I finished that almost six years
beyond that years, I came home and wrote a letter
to the President of the United States, Eisenhower,
and requested a hearing on these Hopi prophecies,
warnings, and religious instructions. So they had
all the selective service in Arizona together; in
Holbrook, Arizona, we met a full day talking, and
they had about eight or nine spiritual leaders
came and they spoke about all these things to
them, more things. That is amazing that they
know these kind of things. But many nations
everywhere are going to be affected by this, what
you call "gourd full of ashes" or "atom bomb", and
they're going to invent more destructive things,
and somebody's going to take all that power and
say: "Now, I've got this power. If you don't do
what I tell you, I'm going to do this to you."
Somebody's going to do that some day. And we
know that there'll be two great wars taking place,
because inventions that they brought, misusing
it. First World War was so terrible, many lives and
property destroyed. It stopped for a while, but it
seems like they don't listen, or don't
understand. They invent more powerful stuffs
so that Second World War came about, this time
that gourd full of ashes, other destructive
things, poison gas, developed.
Now, to the Hopi, this Persian Gulf War
was the start of the Third World War, but it
stopped. So the Hopi say, when that world war
stopped, it gave all the men, human beings
around the earth to consider, what are we doing
with the inventions? Why are we destroying
people when we talk about peace, justice,
honesty, talking about spiritual things? Every
United States' government official place their
hand on the Bible, up to the President. There's
ten commandments in there. The same principles
that our old people tell us, the same things they
tell us not to lie and steal and plunder. Same
thing. But why? That's happened to all our native
people in our country. Someone mentioned here
today, our land is about to be taken away by
force, by violent ways, by legal tricks, and many
of our people are helpless, landless in their own
country. That's the only country that we have. Many
of our people are starving, many of them
homeless in their own country. Why is that? Why
is our white brother, who is going to straighten
that out . . .
The United Nations is supposed to use
legal things to straighten out these things, they're
not supposed to use war. And I went after them, I
told them that they should not use war. But they
should investigate people who are doing
something wrong or violent. The United Nations
human rights or other provisions, they should
investigate and stop them or even punish them
with that law and not with war. But they haven't done
that.
So now, we come into, maybe we'll have
a Fourth World War. When that happens, there's
nothing going to be left on this earth, because
they're going to throw all this power known to the
Hopi, that we might find ourself into it. And that's
why the Hopi are very concerned, not only for
native people, not only for other nations, but more
of younger generations coming after that. What
kind of thing are we going to leave for them in the
future?
And the old man says: The woman used
to -- in our knowledge -- that man used to walk in
the front going through a woods or someplace. Women
and children follow them. Someplace in
life, man and wife will walk side by side, children
follow them. Now, today, later, women will be up
at the front. The way he explained it, women
sometimes have a hard time putting a baby to
sleep at night. Finally, the baby went to sleep
about maybe two o'clock in the morning, and the
mother put her to bed, and maybe clean up the
house or the kitchen, then she go to sleep and she
had to get up early in the morning again and start
cooking and cleaning, and then, finally, put on a
nice table and invite the children to come and
eat. All the children come and eat -- nobody clean
up the mess -- and went out. So the mother had to
come back and start cleaning up this mess. The
man that mentioned that was 86 years old -- I
mention; so now it's up to the woman to start
cleaning up the mess. Menfolk messed this up,
they don't want to clean up. It's time for the
women to really get after them and help them
clean this mess up before it's too late. And Mother
Earth's already pulling up the order-bringing forces
-- Florida, hurricanes, tornados, volcanic eruptions,
earthquakes, hailstorms getting bigger. We're
getting close to the last days that we either clean
this mess up or we're going to find ourselves in a
terrible spot.
I'm just going to show you this map and
tell you that my people knew about this a long
time ago, and this is all I want to tell you now
because I don't want to run over my time here.
This white part is on the rock near my
home in Oraibi. The Great Spirit laid this path for
us to follow. There's no end to this work, none to
the circle, there's no end to that as long as we
follow instructions. The white brother came. Instead
of bringing this circle he brought this cross. And
we let him go on up the road. We refer to
that materialistic path, inventing of many things,
powerful things that are supposed to help. They
go side by side -- First, Second, Third World,
First World War, Second World War and this . . . on
the upper line, to the Hopi, is beginning a
Third World War, the Persian Gulf, but it
stopped. So it gave us people to correct, to
change, to stop this thing we were talking about.
Uranium mining is a dangerous thing -- we
know that now. Are we going to continue to
develop that? Are we going to continue to mine
them? We know it's dangerous and we test out
many things like the Nevada testing area -- some
day, we're going to burn ourselves up. So many
things known to the Hopi tell the world not to do
that any more. Stop uranium mining, testing. Stop
everything. So I hope we will correct this and
whoever comes out will meet the Great Spirit on
the other end again. "I'm the first, I'm the last and
I will welcome those that survive and we will
have beautiful, clean life again, everything will
become new again." These are some of the things
that are mentioned, that we as human beings [are]
like these flowers here -- they are beautiful
flowers, and they form a circle. And outside there
are many kinds of flowers. We, the people, are
like that. We will no longer have any
discrimination against black, white, red and
yellow. We are going to be one human being. We
are brothers and sisters, and we are going to help
to protect this Mother Earth for the next
generations, and then we will have a good life
again. So this symbol represents male, this one
represents female, and this sun symbol represents
also the power. If we do not correct this ourselves --
we're talking about peace -- if we do not correct
this thing, those with that symbol will have to
purify this with the power that the Great
Bear [Spirit?] will give them. These are some of
the things known.
Somehow it struck me, because when I saw German
people in the War, Hitler, with the swastika symbol,
there must be something to it. First, Second World
War -- terrible. Now I think that the United States
began to worry about these things and I think the
German people should get together. I think that
German people should begin to really start cleaning
up this mess. That's their mission. They're going
to use their scientific knowledge and inventions
and clean up these rivers, oceans, replant trees,
cover up all the uranium, and purify with the
scientists -- maybe we can have a clean life
again. That, I think, is German people's
mission today, to do that.
And I'm glad that I came here, and I hope
I can have more time to explain this. There's so
many things -- it would take four days to explain
these things. And I want to thank Alexander, who
has written up many books and brought me here
several times, and I want to thank all of you who
have helped me, because I have no money or job,
but somebody sometimes sent me a little money
to help me travel. So I'm very glad that I came
here today, with Hopi passport you let me come in.
Thank you very much.
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Thomas Banyacya Sr. at the World Uranium Hearing.