Cyclone Dreaming 11 - Lolamai

Lolamai
Before the sun rises over the Pacific it has already scorched the desert land of northern Arizona. On the mesas, rocky flagships of the desert afloat on waters of sand, the Hopi trim their crops of blue corn, maintaining the bearing of their voyage through their cosmos, virtually unaffected by the catastrophic storm that for five centuries has devastated other Native Americans and their landscapes. The rainmaker scatters corn meal on the earth, gently, and gives the signal. The bowman shoots his arrow directly at the sun. It doesn't return. But the cloud people gather and the rain falls. The rainmaker exchanges the greeting with the bowman: LOLAMAI – all is wonderful.

The Hopi have made their home on the mesas for 1000 years – a landscape stripped by wind and rain of anything that people seeking wealth might covet. Yet there they learned to prosper, and when the Pawana (pale skins) come with inducements to change their way of life, they maintain it as a sacred trust knowing that in time even the Pawana will want to restore the balance that their way of life has destroyed.