Author Topic: Hopi Elders "Prophecy"?  (Read 14520 times)

Offline Liminal

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Hopi Elders "Prophecy"?
« on: July 28, 2008, 12:06:31 am »
I've encountered this floating around the web.  It is attributed to "The Elders" of the Hopi Nation.  I'm wondering if it has any authenticity, but there aren't any specific names attached to it so I'm not sure how to follow up on it.  Does anyone know anything about it or how I might look for myself?

Thanks!

Quote
You have been telling people that this is the Eleventh Hour.
Now you must go back and tell the people that this is The Hour.

Here are the things that must be considered:

   Where are you living?
   What are you doing?
   What are your relationships?
   Are you in right relation?
   Where is your water?
   Know your garden.
   It is time to speak your Truth.
   Create your community.
   Be good to each other.
   And do not look outside yourself for the leader.

This could be a good time!

There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold on to the shore.
They will feel like they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly.

Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off toward the middle of the river,
keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water.

See who is there with you and celebrate.

At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves!
For the moment we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.

The time of the lonely wolf is over.
Gather yourselves!

Banish the word struggle from your attitude and vocabulary.

All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.

We are the ones we have been waiting for.


The Elders
Oraibi, Arizona
Hopi Nation

frederica

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Re: Hopi Elders "Prophecy"?
« Reply #1 on: July 28, 2008, 01:45:42 am »
"Hop[ Prophecy" is one of the most exploited subjects, aside from White Buffalo Calf Woman, on the Internet. The Hopi made a statement a few years ago, that all this only pertained to the Hopi and had absolutely nothing to do with anyone else.  This one attributed to "The Elders",  is some say a Hopi Prayer. But it is in English.  It started showing up around 1999 on the internet, a favorite of nuagers. The last line "We are the ones we been waiting for" as been attributed to so many people, it's hard to say.  Some have attributed it to Twylan Nitsch, then picked up by nuagers. Some say the first was late poet June Jordon's "Poem for South African Women".  That was about 1980. But since the Hopi have a very long oral history it is probably theirs.  Now everyone is using it.  It's a good example of exploitation. You look at sites like the ProphecyKeepers run by Blue Otter aka Scott Anderson and Manatanka, they were even selling Hopi Prophecy coffee mugs at one point.

Offline educatedindian

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Re: Hopi Elders "Prophecy"?
« Reply #2 on: July 28, 2008, 02:08:48 am »
As a general rule, I can tell you few people in academia take seriously any comment attributed to Indians which are unnamed. They generally tend to be comments that struck someone (usually nonNative) as something an Indian might have said, and over time get more attention if the reposter says "an Indian said it."

A couple things jumped out at me that made me doubt a Hopi elder or elders would say this. Using metaphors about a river being so big that the shore becomes distant is something that's foreign to most Hopi elders living in the deep desert.

And the final line, of course, has become very big since the Obama campaign began using it.

I checked out this the same way I check out to make sure my students aren't plagiarizing their papers off the net. I put the title and then some fragments of the passages into search engines.

Every last source I saw came from either Nuage sites, or environmentalist or peace activist sites that uncritically repeated it. The most famous case was Maria Shriver, who quoted it in Schwarzenegger's inauguration ceremony as governor.

And that final line has been attributed to Maya Angelou and a variety of others, mostly Black civil rights activists like June Jordan.
http://books.google.com/books?um=1&lr=&q=%22we+are+the+ones+we%27ve+been+waiting+for&sa=N&start=10

The Quotable Rebel: Political Quotations for Dangerous Times - Page 100
by Teishan Latner - Reference - 2005 - 378 pages

Speech, "God's Judgment of White America," 12/4/1963 We are the ones we've been
waiting for. June Jordan, poet, educator.

Also, Alice Walker wrote a book by that title. She attributes it to Jordan also.
http://www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/genwom/wearetheones.html

Some other sources mentioned there was a song from the civil rights movement of that name.