Oral history interview with Vernon Masayesva [with transcript], March 17, 2009.

              VERNON MASAYESVA INTERVIEW
Ecological Oral Histories Course MLS 599
Collection number: NAU.OH.2005.111.33
Ecological Oral History
[BEGIN SOUND FILE VernonMasayesvaA.mp3, 56:45 minutes]
Koyiyumptewa: Today’s date is March 17, 2009, St. Patrick’s Day. It’s approximately 2:00 in the afternoon. My name is Stewart Bruce Koyiyumptewa. I’m working as a part of the Ecological Oral Histories Project for Northern Arizona University. With me today is Mr. Vernon Masayesva, director of the Black Mesa Trust. And also today with me is Karen Underhill. She’s operating the camera today. Vernon, thank you for sitting down and taking time out of your busy schedule to talk with me. In a nutshell, the primary purpose of the ecological oral histories project is to track ecological changes in the Colorado Plateau, by way of talking and recording participants such as you, if they have observed changes in the environment over the course of their life. I’m just going to go ahead and go with the first question. Could you tell me what tribe you’re a member of, and where you’re originally from?
Masayesva: Well, I’m with the Hopi Tribe and from Hotevilla. We are a Coyote Clan people.
Koyiyumptewa: And how old are you today?
Masayesva: Well, I’m going to be sixty-nine years old in June.
Koyiyumptewa: And what were your parents’ names, and how many, if any, siblings do you have?
Masayesva: Well, my parents are Victor and Zeta Masayesva. There’s about nine of us children in the family.
Koyiyumptewa: What did your parents do to sustain themselves and their family?
Masayesva: Their Famers. They were farmers from way, way back. All Hopi families are farmers. My dad is very dedicated to farming, it’s his whole life. And he lives out on the farm; he rarely goes to the village. My mom, when she was alive, was more of a social person, so she always wanted to go Hotevilla, to visit her friends, to gossip and get all the news, you know. So we would take her over there, but my father does not particularly care about going to the village. So his whole life is the farm. He’s still out there today, his about ninety-five years old. Yesterday I saw him out in the field already. It was kind of cold. He can’t wait to get started, getting the field ready. So that’s where I was raised as a boy, up on the farm north of Oraibi. And that has been my introduction to life and the values I learned from being a son of a farmer. It’s valuable, very valuable, and it continues to be a part of my life today.
Koyiyumptewa: What types of lessons have you learned out of farming?
Masayesva: Well, many. First of all, I finally began to understand what my father said as recently as a month ago when I talked to him. “What do you really hope and wish that we, your offspring, should continue?” The first thing he said, “Do not abandon the field. Don’t neglect the field.” That was the first thing he said. Never, ever leave the field alone. Don’t abandon it. That was the most valuable thing I’ve ever heard. I’m finally beginning—I’ve heard that many times from many other Hopis, but I guess it’s beginning to dawn on me that Hopi is a very safe place to be. I mean, you look all around, with all the turmoil, the economic meltdown, and you look to my dad’s field, it’s a safe place. If all the financial institutions, the banks, go down, the food stops coming to the cities,
we’re going to be safe, because we have the corn, we have the field. I guess that’s what my dad was talking about when he said, “Never abandon the field.”
Koyiyumptewa: In relation to the environment, have you experienced any changes in Hopi farming practices?
Masayesva: Yeah, it’s pretty obvious. Probably close to 80% of the fields are already abandoned. I guess most people out home don’t really understand, or never heard what my father told me. He said, “Never do that.” But no one’s out there anymore, going to the fields. And the fields is like our church, it’s our shrine. That’s where we go to be part of nature. And we commit ourselves to taking care of the fields, the corn. That’s what Hopi’s all about. And I see too many people just abandoning the fields, because they don’t feel it’s necessary any more, cause they just go to the grocery store and get whatever food they want. And I see that tremendous change in our society, in our culture: people no longer going to the fields, no longer learning the many lessons you get from being out in the field, in the hot sun. We forgot that. We got seduced by the materialistic world. Everything is convenience these days, you don’t have to work for it, you just go and buy stuff. And that’s what I’m seeing today. And, so we are no longer honoring the wisdom of the elders. We’ll suffer for it, because the world is changing too fast. Like I said, there’s financial meltdowns, and all these has impacts on what we need to survive, which is food. Ultimately, we need food and fresh water. But the way things are going, it might not be there, because in American cities, everything is so interconnected. Food’s gotta come from somewhere. It’s gotta come from trucks, railroads, boats, whatever. When it quits coming, what happens? When the infrastructures get disconnected, and food and water no longer come, what’s gonna
happen? Imagine the millions of people that depend on the infrastructure to bring food, like New York City. What’s going to happen to them? And that’s becoming a reality as we talk. That’s why my dad said, “Do not abandon the field.” That’s our insurance. That’s our security. And so irregardless of what happens on the outside world, thanks to my father, I’m gonna be okay. My family is in a safe place. And so, I don’t think that the majority of the people on Hopi, they, I don’t think they understand this, because we’re already so seduced by the materialistic world. Farmers still go out there and take their tractors. Now they’re doing planters. The idea is you do it quickly. And that’s not the way it is with farming. Farming used to be a family event. It brings families together. It’s the glue that brings families together. That’s what I was taught. And so every springtime, planting time, all of my family come—the grandkids, everybody—and we spend two days planting. It’s kind of a family reunion, it’s a family glue. It brings us together. And so that is very important.
We’re so disunited now—Hopi families are. There’s no longer the unity among clans that used to be there. There’s a lot of fighting, families splitting up. I guess what keeps our family together is that we do still come to the farm, to be together at least. The children are scattered throughout the country. My granddad’s got I don’t know how many grandkids, but he’s got all kinds of…. He’s very, I mean, they’re doctors and lawyers now in our family. But we all come to put seeds into the ground. That’s the future. And we still do that. And we don’t use tractors, we do the old way. There’s a lot of lessons when you plant like that. When you go in and start, then my dad would say, “Okay, you start here, and you go there.” And he will put up a flag or something at the other end. “You go there, you go there”. And he said, “about every fourth planting, look
back from where you started, line yourself with where you’re going, and you’ll plant a straight path. If you never look back, you’re gonna go all over the place.” So the lesson is, the past is your guide to where you want to go. That’s the lesson of doing that. And he taught us that. So planting is almost like a philosophy to Hopi—to me it is. I learn so much from it. “Plant deep,” they say. “Plant deep.” Make a little puddle around where you plant so when it rains you’ll catch the rain. And don’t drink any liquid until noon! That is what makes water an important part of your life, because without water, that little seed is not gonna germinate. So corn, water, is very essential, very important. And then we use the planting stick. And that’s technology. So you use the planting stick, technology to plant a seed, but you need water to make it grow. So these are the three important foundations or elements of life, of being a farmer. And you can apply that to today. Today.
Koyiyumptewa: Do you irrigate your field?
Masayesva: We pray. The rain. The rain will bless you if you do things the right way. So that means there’s a connection between us and the rain people. There’s no separation. If we do things right, the rain people will hear that, harmony, that nice feeling, and they’ll reciprocate and come to you as friends. Now, my dad, like I said, is a very special farmer. When there were periods of drought out there, we’ve seen that within the last maybe twenty years now, where no rain comes for a year or two years. One day it was three years, and nobody was farming, everybody quit, except my dad. There’s a picture of him where he’s in his field, and the corn—they weren’t growing too tall, but they were there. And we harvested. A photographer from a magazine came and took pictures and couldn’t believe after three years of no rain, he still has crops. Why? A
good heart. And even when there is like no rain, there’s still moisture. And that’s what keeps the crops going. He calls them his children. He’s always out there suffering with them every day. And that’s what this photographer say, “You must be irrigating.” I mean, you know, bringing water. He said, “No. However this plant grows, it comes from the heart, and the ancestors responding—not necessarily with a lot of rain, but some, there’s still moisture in the air. And if your heart is good, that’s enough to keep the crops going.” He never said that to me, but I’m starting to understand that, because I now read a lot of scientific stuff, particulate theories of physics. And I think there’s a scientific explanation for why his crops grow when there seems to be no rain. So that’s irrigation, yeah, but it comes from the heart (chuckles) and from whatever.
Koyiyumptewa: Over the course of your boyhood, or as far as you can remember, have you experienced any ecological changes?
Masayesva: Yes, there’s plenty. It no longer rains like it used to, because we’re not being Hopi. And like I said, in the Hopi way, it’s the Hopi-ness, the positive part of being a Hopi, that creates the energy and if it’s strong enough, then the rain people, our ancestors and they are our ancestors will respond. They’ll come to you. If you’re not doing that, they’re not gonna come. So in Hopi explanation, if you waste water, then the rain people will say, “They must not need us.” And that’s why, with this mining issue with Peabody, using so much water to make coal slurry, billions of gallons, and we allow it as Hopi people. So the Hopi and the elders say that was a huge mistake because we essentially say, “Go ahead and take it, because we don’t need it.” And the ancestors say, “Okay, we’ll quit coming. We’ll not come as regularly as we used to, because you don’t need us.” Same thing with corn; planting. If you don’t plant and neglect the field, “They
must not need us. They must not need the corn, so we???ll just quit bringing water to them.” See? And that’s the explanation for the drought that’s now out there. Every time we dance, rain don’t come—the wind comes. And my grandpa, who was a rainmaker, said, “It’s easy to make wind. It’s hard to bring rain.” And even if rain comes, there’s good and bad rain—depending, again, on what’s in your heart. So that’s what I’m saying. About a year, two years ago, when the drought finally broke, it rained. It was my father who told me one day, he said, “The frogs didn’t come. The frogs didn’t come”. That’s all he said. Usually even after a little bit of rain, you see the frogs. They’re all over the place. There was none. That’s all he told me.
And then I remember what we were also told by our grandpa. He said, “The first snow that comes down, don’t eat it. Don’t eat that. The second snow, okay. Not the first.” And I guess that meant that way before all these coal-fired plants were around, there was always something in the air that’s not good for us, before all the industrial revolution. So the Hopis say when the first snow comes, don’t eat it. And to me, when my dad brought this to my attention, you know, we’ve got all these power plants all around, putting all kinds of poisonous stuff in the air: mercury and everything, which is not regulated, by the way. So when the rain brings that down, or the snow brings all that stuff, it’s poisonous, don’t eat that. But it’s still had an impact on the plants. So my dad said not only did the frogs not come, but the grass was turning yellowish. So that’s one thing that has changed out there. No more wind birds, they’re all gone. No wind birds. There used to be hundreds of 'em in at our field, and we used to scare 'em away because they liked to eat the seeds or beans or something. You’re not gonna find the birds, they’re all gone.
Koyiyumptewa: You’re saying the ancestors are not returning because you think people have lost or forgotten how to pray?
Masayesva: Exactly right. We are on the wrong track, kind of. We no longer are honoring the path that we agreed to follow when we settled here, and that was Màasaw’s path. And he predicted that another path was going to…. I guess at one time the paths were the same, they were intertwined. I don’t know how to explain this, but the material world and the spiritual world were at one time together, and then they separated. One went this, another one…. It’s up there in Prophecy Rock, in fact its near Oraibi. I don’t think any Hopi ever listens to that, or to study. I do! And that is a perfect model for explaining what’s happening to the Hopi. We left Màasaw’s path, and we’re not supposed to. We agreed to honor his way of life, to help steward the land. We’re not doing it. Where instead going, following the path, a material path, dictated primarily by science technology. It’s a very seductive path. You don’t have to plant corn to eat fresh corn—you just buy it. And so we’re leaving our spiritual foundation, and we’re no longer honoring the covenant, the agreement that we made with Màasaw. Hopis are the only ones that talk about it, a covenant. The only other group of people that I’ve read about that has a covenant is the Jewish people. They have the stone tablet. We have the stone tablet too. So I think the fact that so many of us are now leaving the spiritual path, the path of Màasaw, the path that we agreed to honor. I think that’s what causing all kinds of problems today with Hopi. We’re going too far, we’ve left it, many of us have left it. There are some that are still kind of there. And I think the future for the Hopis is to recognize the fact that this way of life that we now have almost all join is gonna end, and it’s on Prophecy Rock, it ends quickly. Whereas the spiritual path it just keeps
going. But I think this lesson is not just for the Hopis—for people all over the world. And that’s, I think why Hopi is so universal, in what we do. We don’t just pray for ourselves. When the priest offers his final prayer to the Niman katsina, the Home Dance, he ends it with one prayer, “Let there be life. Let it be forever.” He’s praying for life all over the world—not just Hopis. So in that way, the Hopi people are like fathers to the world. That’s why so many people look to Hopi, and especially now with this instability throughout the world. Many people are looking to the Hopi people for safety. That’s why Hopis say, “One day you’ll wake up, and people will be crawling.” This is a safe place. And it’s not literally people physically crawling. People are looking at us, whether they know about us or not, they still say, “Something up there somewhere is what I’m lookin’ for.” And so as Hopis, we have a huge burden. We are not like other tribes that are free. They can do whatever they want. They can build gaming casinos and whatever they want to do. We could have done the same thing, but something in our consciousness say, “No, don’t go that way,” because in Hopi way, a Hopi sacrifices for his children. That’s why a farmer, my dad, when he’s out there in the field, is suffering with the plants, suffering. He’s almost sacrificing himself. And so Hopi have this awful burden of being fathers to the rest of humanity, to humanity. And we we’re not free. We’re not a free people to do whatever we want. We have no choice but to stick to the covenant that we made with Màasaw. I know it’s, “Well, how do we do this?!” I don’t know. All I know, that if you’re a Hopi, you have a responsibility that you cannot ignore. This is what our Hopi people are saying: To be a Hopi, you have to be, not only do you practice brotherhood, you have to also be responsible, and you have to be accountable??
three—brotherhood, accountability, Hopis say, very simply, when you see a child cry, stop and wipe away the tears, comfort the child. That’s what Hopi’s all about.
All right? That’s it! It’s a wrap! I know you have a million more questions, but what more do you want.
Koyiyumptewa: Do you think the Hopi people or mankind in general have hope that things will turn around and become better, or how it used to be?
Masayesva: Yeah. That’s in the Prophesy Rock again. There’s a connection between the upper path and the lower path. If we just continue the materialistic path, it’s gonna end. It’s right there, it has a quick ending to it. If you do the following one, that has no ending. At the beginning is Màasaw. At the ending is Màasaw. “I am the first, I am the last.” If you want the world to continue into the fifth world—we’re now at the end of the fourth world in Hopi—it’s up to you, it???s up to me, it’s up to the people to make that happen. And how it would happen, how the fifth world will turn out, it’s up to us. And we’re gifted with that ability to imagine. So we can imagine the fifth world. In Hopi there are three main characters: the weaver, the echoer, and the spider lady, old lady. And that represents us humankind. We can create things, make things, and we can communicate. It’s very unique to humankind, and we have that intelligence, the ability to solve problems, to imagine. And those are very powerful gifts that you can use to envision the fifth world. And then you can use science and technology and the spirituality to bring that about. But that’s up to us. That’s really up to us people, the people all over the world—to recognize that maybe science and technology has gone too far out there, it’s gotten its own world. It needs to have a heart, and we provide that heart. And I think if we can combine all that, we are incredibly powerful people. We
have lots of energy in our bodies, because we’re up to 80% water, and water is hydrogen. Hydrogen is the gas that runs the sun. That’s in us! So how do you use that? How do you use that? That’s the question. The Hopis already have, in a way, an answer. The way you do that is that you bring your hearts, minds, together. That’s what we are told every time they smoke and meditate, “Let’s get together, and let’s create that good energy. Let’s send it out. And the rain people will feel that goodness that happens, the good intent, the power of the intent, and they’ll start resonating, and they’ll come as rain.” That’s the answer. It’s the other side of Einstein’s equation, E = mc2. That is a purely materialistic world, but the scientists used that to create an atomic bomb. So how do you use that same concept on the other side of the coin, the spiritual side? That, to me, is up to all of us.
Koyiyumptewa: What brought about the need to establish the Black Mesa Trust?
Masayesva: Bring water to Phoenix and Tucson. That was the purpose. And the way you do that was to generate electricity to run the pumps uphill. And so that was the reason. That was the intent behind the mining, to do that.
Koyiyumptewa: I’m talking about your program, the Black Mesa Trust.
Masayesva: What about it?
Koyiyumptewa: What brought about the need to establish Black Mesa Trust?
Masayesva: Well, it started when I was a high school kid. I used to go to all these village meetings, elders meetings at Hotevilla. It was a very strong group, very traditional people at Hotevilla. I used to go to those meetings, not really to…. I wasn’t interested in what they were talking about, but the way they talked, the metaphors they used, the protocols. It was like watching a theater, beautiful language. That’s why, I
guess. I don’t know, but I was attracted to that—not so much what they were talking about. In one of those meetings they were talking about a rumor that there was going to be a mining company coming in. Of course I wasn’t interested in that, but I guess that stuck in my mind. And that rumor became a reality. I was in high school when I first heard about this, and then the elders tried their best to stop it, but they just had no money, they knew nothing about laws. So they were basically just rolled over. In the meantime, the tribal council had the money and the lawyers…. They [i.e., the elders] all died. They all passed away. These people that tried to hard to stop the mining, they’re all gone, there’s no one left. And so I guess that was what—you know, it came back from my conscious. And so one day I said, “I’m gonna take on Peabody.” Even if it’s by myself. Because in Hopi, again, the Hopi way. If it’s just one, there’s energy, there’s hope. If two join, the energy level, just like E = mc2. Three, suddenly the energy goes up exponentially. That’s what the Hopis say. That’s why the Hopi, whoever sponsors a dance, they say if one joins me, that’s good; if two, even better. So it just takes one. And I guess I was that one, you know. (chuckles) So that’s how I ended up creating Black Mesa Trust, with the help of a few Hopis, in 1989.
Miraculously, December 31, 2005, we accomplished our mission to save our water. That was our main purpose—not the mining, just the use of our own water. The slurry operation shut down, mission accomplished, we saved the water. And that’s how. In a very simple way, that’s what happened. And then we won because we started to respect the wisdom of the ancestors. That was the power. We were trying to stop Peabody pumping, arguing against them using their science, their science, western science. We were trying to challenge the modeling that they were using, and we weren’t
getting anywhere. And then one day we said, “Use your wisdom, the wisdom of your elders. Use that. Don’t rely on a tool that you didn’t create.” And I think that was the turning point. That really was the turning point. We honored the wisdom. And that’s, to me, what made the difference, because when we started doing that, the Peabody people, the government people, they didn’t want to challenge us. They didn’t want to challenge the Hopi wisdom. To do so would be disastrous, public relations-wise. They would be putting our religion down. They knew that, so they didn’t dare touch us when we started to talk about what water means to Hopi. It was that, that attracted international attention, where we got international support. And it was that pressure that created all kinds of complications, to the point that the people that were using the coal that was delivered to them through a slurry operation, just gave up their hands and said, “We’re just gonna shut this plant down.” And that’s how slurry ended.
Koyiyumptewa: What signs were out there, as far as landscape and plants, that the drawing of water from underneath the ground was doing harm? What signs in the landscape did you see that it was causing harm?
Masayesva: Well, first of all, it no longer is green anymore. That area used to be very rich in vegetation, very healthy, green. It’s all dry. Only after a rain do you see a little bit of the green come back up, that’s one of the big changes you see—the land is drying up. The springs are drying up. These are the ??breathing hole” they call it. In Hopi, the underground water sucks in the rain, like you suck in, when you’re going to say something you suck in the air. And you’ve got to breathe it out. And so the breathing is through the springs. So when things are healthy, your body is healthy, you breathe in, you breathe out; you breath in, you breathe out, and everything is beautiful. Now the
breathing is weakening. It’s dying out. That’s because of the excessive water harvesting by Peabody. It no longer has that breathing power or that breathing-out power, so the springs are drying up. And also, those springs, Hopi say, are passageways to the water serpent, which is the ocean. Which means the oceans, the aquifers, and the clouds, are connected. Not in Western science—there’s a total separation, no connection. In Hopi, there is. It’s like a human body. The human, scientists don’t see it like that. And so you see the landscape changing in terms of springs drying up, land drying up and now you see a lot of sink holes up around Forest Lakes. That’s because the aquifers are collapsing. Cause aquifers are highly pressurized. That’s why, when you punch a hole into the ground to develop a well, you see that water shooting way up, and then it settles. So the aquifer systems are behaving the same way. So as you overdraft, it’s like you taking air out of your tire. It’s gonna start to deflate. See? That’s what’s happening out there. The tire is going down, and there’s no longer that pressure there to breathe out to the springs. And as that pressure goes down, as that tire goes down, it’s kind of like the ceiling startin’ to crack. And that’s what the Navajos are mapping all around Forest Lakes—lot of sink holes. That’s because the aquifer’s collapsing. The government doesn’t want to do anything about that. So that’s another sign.
Koyiyumptewa: What is unique about an N-aquifer, in terms of its content?
Masayesva: Pure. The water in the N-aquifer is the most pristine you’ll find anywhere in the world. It was put there during the Ice Age. The water, depending where you get the water sample, the hydrologists have dated that water—I don’t know how they do it—but they said the age of that water in the N-aquifer is between 15,000-35,000 years. It was put there during the last Ice Age. It did come from the rains, and then the N-aquifer,
there’s two N-aquifers: one is unconfined—in other words, it’s kinda open. And that’s what you see around Tuba City, Munqapi, you see all this water. It used to come out of the walls, not it’s not often that you’ll see that anymore. That’s because it’s all gone. That’s the unconfined; it doesn’t have a lid on it. Where Peabody is pumping, that’s confined. It’s sealed off, so you don’t get recharge from the top to the bottom. The recharge comes way from the north and kind of goes under like this, up around Shonto, they say. So it’s very finite water stored in this N-aquifer. But it is so pure. Hydrologists have a way of measuring the quality, and it’s measured by how much, like elements, like chemicals, are in there. And the water in N-aquifer is very almost … it’s pure, that’s all I can say. And it’s very soft, which is why when you take a bath, it’s like you can’t get that soap off your skin. That’s how soft that water is. And there’s a standard, that also the companies use, and I’m sorry I forgot the terminology. It’s kind of like, if you imagine a battery, for example, in a pat battery, you put water into it. But it’s so much chemicals in there, that it’ll eat through your clothes or whatever. So the water in N-aquifer, they say is way below that safety value, way below. So it’s very pristine, it’s very pure. You drink it right out of the—it’s the best water for your body. Let’s see, what do they call it? There’s a mark beyond which it has too much something in it, that you have to clean up to drink. I think it’s total dissolved solids. I think that’s the terminology. Anything over 700-something, you can’t drink that, because it has too much acids in it. It’s like as you go up it becomes like water in your battery. But everything below 700 they say is safe water, total dissolved solids. And N-aquifer has anywhere between 300 and 500 milligrams per something. Again, I’m confused here. But the total dissolved solids is way below the safety mark of 700. That’s how pure that
water is. And that was what Peabody was paying us when they started mining, $1.67 an acre-foot. An acre-foot is 325,000 gallons. For 325,000 gallons of that fossil water, we were gettin’ $1.67.
[END SOUND FILE VernonMasayesvaA.mp3, BEGIN VernonMasayesvaB.mp3, 10 minutes]
Koyiyumptewa: I recall a few years back you were fortunate to bring Dr. Imoto Masaru [phonetic] up here to the Colorado Plateau—mainly Hopi. What type of work does Dr. Masaru do, and what was the significance of you bringing him out to Hopi?
Masayesva: Well, Dr. Masaru Imoto is not a real scientist, and that’s why his work is not really being considered seriously by the scientific community. But nevertheless, I think he’s on the right track. Basically, he began to study water because he had read about books where science has proven that plants respond to human emotions. That’s now a very well-established fact. But Hopis have been doing that for thousands of years. We know that, so we sing to the plants, dance to them during Bean Dance. So he said, “I wonder if water behaves the same way.” So he then began to go on a journey and did various kinds of experiments to see water, in fact, responds to human feelings, emotions. And so he did all kinds of experiments, will take tap water and do different things to it: sing to it, scold it, play symphony, rap music. And then he’ll crystallize the water, and each time it shapes up different. So water does respond to us. That’s what Hopi has always said. And that’s what attracted me to Mr. Imoto. And now we work pretty closely together.
Koyiyumptewa: Is there such a thing as clean coal technology?
Masayesva: No. No, there is no such thing as clean coal techno…. In Hopi, we have what we call twins. They represent many, many things—many of them. But one of the things it represents is like faces of everything. Everything has two faces, they’re twins, but they’re different. Corn has two faces. You can use it, eat. You can use it to make whiskey. (chuckles) Water has two faces. That’s positive energy, and negative face, which is why Hopis say, “Don’t keep all the anger inside your body, because your body is like a water vessel, and in it is water. When you’re angry all the time, the water molecules will turn negative and you’ll get sick. Think happy thoughts, it’ll give you positive energy.” So coal is the same way, it has two faces. It’s a good face, and a bad face; a negative face, a positive face. It has a good face when it keeps carbon, sulfur, mercury, trapped in the ground. It becomes negative when you mine it, you burn it, you add air to it. Then it becomes carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide. Then it pollutes the air, creates climatic changes, and global warming we talked about. And so there is clean coal when it is undisturbed. That’s when it’s playing a useful role. But what you’re talking about, is there a technology to burn coal clean, so we can have electricity? Uh-uh. There is technology to burn coal cleaner, but there’s no such thing as clean coal—although that technology is going to come one of these days, and that’s what the Hopis say. They knew there was wealth, and we did a documentary about that, about the wealth underneath us, and we knew it’s there, it was put there for a purpose. That’s why this is a safe place. And so they said, “But we’re not supposed to develop it until the right time, for the right purpose, the right way.” What’s the right way? That technology has yet to come. It’s not here yet, but there is technology that’s now there that can burn coal a little bit more cleaner.
Koyiyumptewa: What does the future hold for Black Mesa Trust?
Masayesva: Well, we, again, started out on a simple mission, to save our water, which we’ve accomplished. And through that process, we were privileged to learn so much about water. And now, we want to spread that message about water, so we can have become water messengers at this point. We want to say that water is common to all humankind. It is energy within our bodies, and we can raise consciousness about the spirituality sacredness of water, and we can use that water to help make this a better world. That’s kind of where we’re…. That’s the future of Black Mesa Trust, is to become a water messenger.
Koyiyumptewa: One final question: What message would you give to someone reading or listening to this interview that we’re doing right now, say, five, ten, twenty years from now?
Masayesva: Well, simply to say you are responsible, whoever you are. Like I said, Hopi is a word, its high moral standard. It’s open to everybody. Anybody can become a Hopi, if they make an effort to do so, to be a steward of the land. And so you either make a choice or you don’t. You either make a choice, “I’m gonna be a Hopi”. “Forget about being a Hopi. I’ll just do what I wanna do.” That’s a choice. You have made a conscious decision. If you have made a conscious decision to become a Hopi, your whole lifestyle has to change. When you see a child, you have to wipe away their tears. And so that’s open to everybody. And we are, like I said, gifted people, we’re gifted with the intelligence, the ability to weave, create and to talk. That makes us almost gods, and we have power, because of hydrogen. And so what we want to do is, we have the power to bring holiness back to earth, that we have desecrated. Do you want to be part of that
journey, or not? It’s up to you. There is no free choice: you either do it, or you don’t do it. Either way, it’s a choice. And what we are saying, we all need to try to become Hopi. That’s the future. If we don’t, it’s the end. That’s Prophecy Rock again. All right? It’s a wrap!
Koyiyumptewa: Do you have any questions?
Underhill: Actually, that’s the one I would have, about the future of Black Mesa Trust. So thank you.
Koyiyumptewa: Thank you, Vernon.
Masayesva: All right!
[END OF INTERVIEW]