Dear Mr. President:
We, the True and Traditional religious leaders, recognized as such by the Hopi People, maintain full authority over all land and life contained within the Western Hemisphere. We are granted our stewardship by virtue of our instruction as to the meaning of Nature, Peace and Harmony, as spoken to our People by Him, known to us as Maasau’u, the Great Spirit, who long ago provided for us the sacred stone tablets which we preserve to this day. For many generations before the coming of the white man, for many generations before the coming of the Navajo, the Hopi People have lived in that sacred place known to you as the Southwest, and known to us to be the spiritual center of our continent. Those of us the Hopi Nation who have followed the path of the Great Spirit without compromise, have a message which we are committed, through our prophecy, to convey to you.
The white man, through his insensitivity to the way of Nature, has desecrated the face of Mother Earth. The white man’s advance technological capacity has occurred as a result of his lack of regard for the spiritual path and for the way of all living things. The white man’s desire for material possession and power has blinded him to the pain he has caused Mother Earth by his quest for what he calls natural resources. All over the country, the waters have been tainted, the soil broken and defiled, and the air polluted. Living creatures die from poisons left because of industry. And the path of the Great Spirit has become difficult to see by almost all men, even by many Indians, who have chosen instead to follow the path of the white men.
We have accepted the responsibility designated by our prophecy to tell you that almost all life will stop unless men come to know that everyone must live in Peace and in Harmony with Nature. Only those people who know the secrets of Nature, the Mother of us all, can overcome the possible destruction of all land and life.
Today, the sacred lands where the Hopi live are being desecrated by men who seek coal and water from our soil that they may create more power for the white man’s cities. This must not be allowed to continue, for if it does, Mother Nature will react in such a way that almost all men will suffer the end of life as they now know it. The Great Spirit said not to allow this to happen even as it was prophecied to our ancestors. The Great Spirit said not to take from the Earth – not to destroy living things. The Great Spirit, Maasu’u, said that man was to live in Harmony and maintain a good clean land for all children to come. All Hopi People and other Indian brothers are standing on this religious principle, and the Traditional Spiritual Unity Movement today is endeavoring to reawaken the spiritual nature in the Indian people throughout this land. Your government has almost destroyed our basic religion which actually is a way of life for all our people in this land of the Great Spirit. We feel that to survive the coming Purification Day, we must return to the basic religious principles and to meet together on this basis as leaders of our people.
Today, almost all the prophecies have come to pass. Great roads like rivers pass along the landscape; man talks to man through the cobwebs of his telephone lines; man travels along the roads in the sky in his airplane; two great wars have been waged by those bearing the swastika or the rising sun, man is tampering with the Moon and the Stars. Most men have strayed from the path shown us by the Great Spirit. For Maasau’u alone is great enough to portray the correct way back to Him.
It is said by the Great Spirit that if a gourd of ashes is dropped upon the Earth, that many men will die and that the end of this way of life is near at hand. We interpret this as the dropping of the atomic boom on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We do not want to see this happen to any place or any nation again, but instead we should turn all this energy for peaceful purpose and not for war.
We, the religious leaders and rightful spokesmen for the Hopi Independent Nation, have been instructed by the Great Spirit to express the invitation to the President of the United States and all spiritual leaders everywhere to meet with us and discuss the welfare of mankind so that Peace, Unity and Brotherhood will become part of men everywhere.
Sincerely,
Hopi Traditional Village Leaders
Mrs. Mina Lansa, Oraibi
Claude Kawangyawma, Sungopavy
Starlie Lomayaktewa, Mushongnovi
Dan Katchongva, Hotevilla
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