For Native Americans, Drought Nurtures a Deep Crisis of Faith

When the rains first stopped, Michael Dalton was not worried. Like Hopi farmers a thousand years before, he would figure a way to rouse life in the thirsty desert soil.

Nine months later, Dalton sits in his kitchen and cries. The window frames a parched range that seems yellow forever, interrupted only by patches of brittle scrub and the occasional cattle carcass.

The Southwestern drought has hit all farmers hard, leaving many unable to feed their livestock and their families. But for Indians, it has triggered a spiritual crisis more than a financial one, an estrangement from what many see as their religion: the land.

“As Native Americans, we cherish the Earth, we want it to nourish us, to supplement and take care of us. This is why we pray,” says Dalton, his big, brown hands tracing an imaginary planet. “We don’t view the farm as a moneymaking tool, like the white farmer does.”

For 10 years, the prayers of Indians across the Southwest have gone unanswered. Instead of being blessed with rain, they have been cursed with the worst drought in 90 years. Farmers have endured winters with scarcely a snowfall and springs with meager rain. But none so bad as this last year.

Fields normally fertile with staple crops such as corn, squash and melon look like coastal sand dunes, dotted with a few frail sprouts. Cattle wander vast distances in search of vegetation and water, finding only dry watering holes and bare shrubs. Weak from malnutrition, many are left sick, barren or dead.

Only an inch of rain has fallen here since last August. Hot weather arrived earlier than usual this spring and within a month, eight Arizona counties and the Navajo Nation declared drought emergencies, allowing them to ask for additional aid.

Among the tribes struggling to feed their livestock are the Tohono O’Odham of southern Arizona. U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs officials estimate the tribe could lose half its herd.

“[The cattle] are so skinny now that when they die, you don’t smell anything,” says Earnest Hearn, a BIA natural resources officer. “They’re nothing but skin and bones.”

There is no end in sight.

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Native Americans have farmed the Southwestern desert for centuries. They have known drought.

Among the nearly two dozen tribes in Arizona alone are the Navajo, the nation’s largest tribe, who historians say have farmed here since the 1500s. The 17-million-acre reservation straddles Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, encompassing an area the size of West Virginia.

The much smaller Hopi reservation sits in the middle of Navajo lands. Hopis are said to have farmed here for more than a thousand years.

Although the vast majority of Navajo and Hopi still farm and own livestock, few depend on the land to feed their families. Some are beginning to invest in larger herds and modern farming equipment, but most still farm for reasons of the heart.

Hopi agricultural officials say the average rancher owns only about 20 head of cattle. Navajo officials couldn’t name a single Navajo who survived only on ranch or farm profits.

Nonetheless, farming is an essential part of being an Indian, says Hopi Tribal Chairman Ferrell Secakuku. Regardless of what he does for a living, “there is never a time a Native American can say he’s not a farmer.”

“It is our religion,” he says simply. “Our religion teaches us that we have a covenant with the land. That is our basic life.”

Traditional ceremonies and songs speak almost exclusively of Mother Earth, asking her for hearty rains and a fertile harvest. Hopi and Navajo land is not owned, but shared among tribal members, with particular plots remaining in one extended family, or “klan.”

Corn--the primary Indian crop--is everywhere on the reservations. Stalks hang from door posts and are a common theme of both old and new Indian art, as well as of tattoos. Corn pollen is a key part of prayer, sprinkled generously during ceremonies.

But today’s Navajos and Hopis mostly buy their food at local grocery stores or trading posts. It is doubtful the drought will leave anyone hungry--at least physically.

But spiritually, they are suffering. It is commonly said on the reservations that the drought is a symptom of a spiritual virus; by straying from a traditional, Earth-centered religion, many Native Americans say, they have brought the crisis on themselves.

“The rain gods aren’t listening because we aren’t doing ceremonies right--people’s hearts are no longer pure,” says Max Taylor, a Hopi farmer and tribal range technician from Shungopovi. “It’s because we are having conflicts between ourselves.”

Legislators, scientists and farmers speak openly about the bond between human beings and Mother Earth and the importance of spirituality and prayer as ingredients in a bountiful harvest.

Navajo Nation President Albert Hale recently completed a two-month “drought tour” of the reservation, praying with Navajos for rain and joining in ceremonies.

People speak of the droughts of 1942, 1904 and even one believed to have lasted 23 years in the 1200s. Many believe there will be no end as long as Indian traditions are forsaken for modern ways.

“These things are a reminder. Wait. Stop. Think. Wake up early in the morning and do your offerings,” says Thomas Bitsoi, a natural resources technician for the Navajo Nation. “What the elders and medicine men say is that Mother Earth is going to take care of herself, and drought is one way she can do that.”

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Leroy Ami is 73; from his scruffy trailer home on the highway, he sells corn from last season to Navajo and Zuni Indians. The drought, he says, offers the Indians the chance to move forward.

“Now’s the time to encourage an irrigation program for the Hopi. Not some small farms here and there, but a big project,” he says.

But voices are raised at Chapter Houses and government-run drought seminars, as many older farmers resist “unnatural” techniques such as irrigation. The Hopi Tribal Council recently voted down funding an irrigation project modeled after an Israeli one, calling the method “untraditional.”

Others oppose range management, which consists of building fences and establishing borders between plots of land; cattle are then rotated through the plots to give the land a rest from grazing.

Tribal agricultural officials strongly endorse the modern ideas. Overgrazing, they say, is to blame for the poor condition of the land as much as the drought.

“It’s more or less that the land has been abused, which is ironic for Indians,” says Frank Begay Jr., a ranch manager with the Navajo Nation. “It’ll be five to 10 years before anything starts to grow.”

Among the farmers, though, there is still hope--even for this year. Many are counting on the monsoon season, which comes in July and August and is the region’s best chance for heavy rains.

In the meantime, thousands of cattle have died due to the lack of forage. At the weekly cattle sale in nearby Holbrook, Hopi and Navajo ranchers have seen the price of a cow and calf--$500 to $700 a year ago--drop to $200.

Hopi and Navajo tribal governments are putting up fences to divide land allotments. They are urging ranchers to sell or slaughter livestock they can’t feed--and they are willing to order them to do it, if necessary.

And if the worst happens--if the drought does not end soon, if the crops do not revive--would the Indians follow the example of the Dust Bowl farmers of the 1930s, and leave their homes for more fertile ground?

“We are not the type of people who would leave our land,” says Secakuku, the Hopi chairman, bristling. “We’re going to stay here forever, until the end of time.”

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To those who do rely on the land for their livelihood--artists and healers among them--the drought is a dual calamity.

Makers of the classic Hopi kachina doll spend hours in the desert searching for soft cottonwood used to make the dolls and ceremonial rattles. Tohono O’Odham basket-weavers say they cannot find the bear grass and yucca plants necessary for their craft.

Eva Price, a Navajo medicine woman from Sheep Springs, N.M., on the Arizona-New Mexico border, says she has been unable to gather the grasses and leaves she needs to make healing salves and teas.

She dreams of the drought, she says, opening her arms and looking skyward, as if to offer a brief prayer. “I go outside and I ask, ‘What happened?’ ”

The dryness, she warned, is affecting the Navajos’ spiritual health.

“During times like this we have to be concerned about ourselves,” she says in Navajo, her hands moving busily as she talks. “How can you feel happy when there is no rain?”

Michael Dalton echoes her words. Until his recent retirement, he worked as a heavy equipment operator, but he never saw himself as anything but a farmer. With the drought, he isn’t waking early to farm, isn’t tilling the soil, isn’t nurturing buds of corn and pumpkin plants that should be sprouting.

“We still pray for rain, for anything that moves--snakes, bugs, whatever moves on the ground or under the water or in the air. And then, if it rains, everybody’s happy,” Dalton says. “That is the Hopi way.”

Then he cries.

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