Well good evening everyone, and welcome to the 2021 Virtual Grand Canyon Star Party!
I'm ranger Rader Lane, National Park Service coordinator for the event.
And for 31 years running, Grand Canyon has been celebrating its pristine night skies
through this annual Grand Canyon Star Party. Now ordinarily we invite hundreds of astronomers and
thousands upon thousands of visitors to the park to enjoy eight nights of some of the darkest night
skies in the United States. Each evening is kicked off with a special guest speaker in our theater,
followed by telescope viewing sessions, constellation programs,
night sky photography workshops, and much much more. Now next year's Grand Canyon Star Party
is June 18th through the 25th 2022, so mark your calendars and hopefully next year we'll
be able to celebrate on site once again. This year we're bringing the Grand Canyon Star Party to you
through this virtual realm and before we introduce our special guest this evening
I just have a couple entities I gotta thank from, you know, from from the National Park Service
uh for for their support in this event. Number one is the Grand Canyon Conservancy. Now they're the
park's official non-profit partner and do a lot of help with the park promoting dark skies.
The International Dark Sky Association's another entity we want to thank. They are the the
group that certified Grand Canyon National Park as an International Dark Sky Park back in
2019. The Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association, now they're the group that will be conducting the
virtual telescope viewing session after this presentation and they're the group that has
been coming up to Grand Canyon for 30 years, conducting the on-site volunteer astronomy.
Finally, I want to thank the Society for Cultural Astronomy in the American Southwest.
They're a fantastic a group that has helped to organize some of our special guest speakers
this year. Finally, stay tuned for our virtual telescope viewing session to premiere right after
this talk. And with that I want to introduce tonight's special guest speaker. Tonight we
are honored to have Ed Kaboti with us. Ed is a third generation artist from the Hopi village of
Shungopavi and the Tewa village of ******. He considers himself to be an "edu-tainer" - blending
visual art, music, and the spoken word to advocate for the plight of the people in the lands of the
Colorado Plateau. He also fronts a rock reggae band called Tha 'Yoties (short for coyotes) and
spends a lot of his time howling at the moon and the stars. Ed, thanks so much for coming. Yeah
it's great for you to be here man. (Ed performs a coyote howl.) Thank you so much man. It's a blessing to be here. So hello. (Ed offers a greeting in Hopi language.)
My name is Ed Kaboti and I'm from the Hopi village of Shungopavi and the Tewa village of Ohkay Owingeh. I'd like to begin this session
uh with just uh, sharing a flute song for you and then we'll get into the content.
Ed plays the flute.
All right, thank you so much for tuning in, and yeah let's uh get into some story.
Thanks so much Ed, that was amazing.
All right. So what I would like to speak about tonight is
perhaps a little bit of a cultural perspective
of the stars. But I want to begin here uh looking at a European deck of cards. And I want to just
uh you know demonstrate something. In this deck of cards here we have four suits
just like we have four seasons uh here in the world. And then you notice that there's 13 cards
in each suit, just the same way that there's 13 weeks in each season. If you count the Ace as
one and you count the Jack as 11, the Queen is 12 the King is 13. And add up the sum of each suit,
adding 1 all the way up to 13. Then you're gonna come up with the number 91. There's 91 days
in each season. If you multiply the 91 days times the four suits, then you're going to get 364.
I sometimes ask you know how many cards are there in a deck of cards. In a deck of cards and
often the answer comes back 52. There's 52 weeks in a year, but there's actually not
52 cards in a deck. There's actually 54. There's a joker and the first joker is that 365th day,
and the second joker is the leap year that comes around every four years.
These things observations about the stars, observations about the cycles of the moon
and the sun. These are native to every human being. These are native to all of us.
In our culture as Puebloan people, we also share a great connection with the stars.
This is a painting done by a woman from my village, Ohkay Owingeh.
This is a lady by the name of Pablita Velarde, and what she is sharing here is a scene,
a cultural scene of our people. Actually really the best time to approach an indigenous person
about stars is actually the opposite of what we're doing right now. It really should be done
in the winter you know. These are the times that our responsibilities in the field slow down,
and we're able to gather you know during the long nights, and gather for warmth and then (Native language)
our grandfather then tells us stories and as he tells stories he begins with constellations.
And you can see here that he's pointing to the North Star to begin the journey with
these children and these education of these children about the migrations of their people.
Above him is the path of people walking and that's the Milky Way, which represents our migrations
to come to the places that we are. Of course, you can see way off uh to the right
hand of the screen the right upper corner. You'll also recognize the constellation of Orion,
which is another very important constellation in the story of our people as well as others.
The North Star is a unique star. It's unchanging. It's unmoving. All of the other stars
rotate around that particular star and that's you know, that foundational point in our concept
as Puebloan people. We believe that we emerged from the womb of the earth in
a kind of not so um, how can I express this in more of a children's type of version
of our story of emergence? There's a Tewa story about how when we came into this world,
we had come from the lower world so we were kind of blind you know. We couldn't see. Our
eyes weren't adjusted to the light, and we heard this little voice. (Native Language) The Spider Woman,
our Godmother. We heard her speaking to us. Put your hands over your eyes and open them, and do it
four times. And each time that we did it, we could see a little bit better until the fourth time that we
could see clearly. But that North Star represents that point of emergence, that place that all
peoples in our paradigm came into this world. When we came into this world in another story,
in a Hopi version of the story of our emergence, you know they say that coyote
you know was the one that put the stars in their place. Because there were the warrior brothers
that were putting up the constellations in a very beautiful way, but coyote just kind of decided to
help them, when everybody went to sleep and threw everything up in a haphazard way you know. So
coyote also has a very close relationship with the stars. But as I mentioned you know in our
own theory of how we came into this world, we believe that all people emerged into this world.
I recognize that there's a scientific theory about how human beings came to inhabit this world.
There's also many religious theories and probably one that we're familiar with would be the first
man, first woman in the Garden of Eden in the Judeo-Christian story. In our story, our life as
people begins on this earth through our emergence, and among Puebloan people
they point to different places. Very commonly Hopi recognizes a place in the Grand Canyon
as the first place of emergence where we came together in this world. And as we came together
in this world. we recognized that our migrations would be according to the direction of the stars.
Here in this slide, and this by the way is a portion of a mural from my grandfather, or I'm sorry, from my father's mural. Uh that is actually up at the Museum of Northern Arizona
right now. And it was co-created with my father and my brother/slash grandfather in the Hopi way,
Delbridge Honanie. But you can see here that it has an aerial view of Chaco Canyon, Pueblo Bonito.
And Chaco Canyon is an example of again in our theory how we migrated through this world
after our emergence, and left our footprints all throughout the Colorado Plateau as Puebloan people.
We were collecting knowledge, collecting medicine, and when stars would align in a certain way then
we would come to the places that were designated for us from the creator. But as we
made these footsteps we, many of the people, gained certain knowledge and at Pueblo Bonito,
again this is the aerial view, you see the upper right hand corner, you see the d-shaped
view of the structure of Pueblo Bonito. And that line that goes across there is perfectly
aligned. That is the base of the d-shape of that fortress or of that structure is actually
perfectly aligned with the rising and the setting of the sun on the equinoxes. Our people are very
closely aligned in culture with the movement of the sun, with the movement of the stars,
and again, another example of that is at Chaco Canyon, what is known as Fajada Butte. There
is the marker, the petroglyph, that at solstice on noonday, Summer Solstice, you see this bright
marker splitting straight down the middle of it. You can also see an orange marker to the left of
that spiral, and that's actually a demonstration of the path of the moon in its full moon extremes
that are also marked by this particular petroglyph. I've heard that this is the
only ancient site where both the lunar cycle and the solar cycle are brought together in one.
Our people had many watchtowers you know, observances, and only now
only recently have the archaeologists begin to recognize how many solstice, equinox,
and lunar markings are all throughout the structures of Puebloan architecture. Back in 1932,
the Watchtower at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon at Desert View was opened. And this
tower was replicated by many of the observational towers from the Hovenweep area
and Mesa Verde area of the Four Corners region. And my grandfather here,
pictured on the right, was commissioned back then by the Harvey Company to create murals in this
in the tower. There were four artists involved, and the upper floors have
ancient galleries of prehistoric sites from all over the Four Corner states. This building was
really erected as a tribute to the ancient peoples of the Plateau, but on the bottom floor of the
tower or actually there is one floor below it but that's that's uh that's a staff area, so
but the bottom guest floor of the tower is the largest room. And there my grandfather was
given artistic freedom to share what he thought appropriate. And to me he's a good guy to pick for
this, because my grandfather is the son of the Sun Clan People, he's Bluebird Clan which also
means that he has a strong collective knowledge of the histories of many of the people of Hopi.
But as a son of the Sun Clan he's also very influenced by the people of the
of his father who are sun watchers.
So in the tower, my grandfather painted as the main emblem, the main feature in that room, the
story of the first young man to go down the Colorado River and disappointing Major
Powell. He did took his journey about 1500 years before Major Power and that story is told in those
four panels in the circle. But you also notice that there is also a lot of astronomy and if
you look above the next time that you visit the Watchtower, you'll recognize the Pleiades. You'll
recognize the belt of Orion. You'll recognize the Big Dipper and the North Star, which are also very
important constellations. You see here in this slide of the Rattlesnake Clan's story, above
is the sun and below is the moon, and surrounding it are the rain clouds with lightning. At the
extreme right corner and the extreme left corner, you also see the morning and the evening stars.
And my grandfather, again having a strong influence from the Sun People, you know, really
painted this mural with a lot of thoughtfulness.
At the Grand Canyon, you find out that in 1540 a member of the Coronado expedition Cardenas,
a conquistador, came to view the Grand Canyon and this was in 1540. Which I like to point
out to people is 67 years before Jamestown. The people of the southwest are first contact people
in the United States, what we call the United States. You know, the story of European
invasion did not begin on the east coast. In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, and 115 years
took place before England established its first continuous colony in Jamestown in 1607.
The conquest of America went from the Caribbean Islands into Mexico then into South America, and
then into the two southern corners of the United States: Florida and New Mexico and Arizona.
Our people were under the inquisitional rule of Spain between 1598 and 1680,
but in 1680 after a public hanging in Santa Fe of our people, of our medicine men, our holy men,
there was an uprising. And it's a remarkable story about how runners, because it was illegal
for a Native American to own a horse. Runners carried knotted cords and they carried these
message of the revolt to all of the villages in northern New Mexico and northern Arizona. Each
knot in this cord represented a day and simultaneously the same number of knots
was being untied all throughout the villages of northern New Mexico, northern Arizona.
On August 10th of 1680, our people rose up against Spain and we became
the only group of Native American people in all of this written history
to actually oust an established European colony from our homeland back in 1680.
I consider that war the first war for religious freedom on what we call the United States.
This is my father's depiction of that time period and also my grandfather's.
But we gotta
consider you know how and why
was this particular revolt timed? What was the timing? There were actually two of the runners
and I'm trying to go back to the runner slide and let me see if I can do that.
There were two runners in Tesuque that were actually apprehended and hung in Santa Fe.
The leaders of the revolt could have cancelled the revolt.
The leaders of the revolt could have postponed the revolt, but they did neither,
and this has always puzzled me a little bit. Why is it that the leaders
have, you know, didn't cancel the revolt when they knew that they were found out?
A whole nother group of runners was dispatched to move the revolt forward so the revolt was
actually planned to start some days later than August the 10th. But the new date was chosen to
move it up to August the 10th, which is um a feast day for the Spanish, the feast of Saint Lawrence.
Among the Tewa people,
my mother's people, my people, we've been known among Pueblo people as
a people that initiate war when it's necessary. I come from the Badger Clan and I guess I kind of
look at the people kind of like that we're kind of like badgers you know. Badgers are known to be
kind of shy, you know. We avoid conflict but when it's necessary, you know then it's necessary.
Among the culture of war of our people is a very close connection with astronomy.
Let me get back to another slide.
And I pointed out that in the two extremes of this particular mural,
you see the morning and the evening star
representing you know, not only the observation of stars but also Puebloan observation of planets.
It's my theory that it was the position of the planets that made it necessary for the people
to not cancel the revolt but to move forward with it. In my theory, it's because the songs had been
sung, the alignments of the stars and the planets were acknowledged to be favorable to the revolt,
and the people had already made a commitment. They couldn't stop because of the constellations
and the alignment of the constellations. They move forward. Now this is my theory,
but I believe that because of the way our people go to war that this is probably
the reason why. Anyway, the point to all of this is that our people have a very close association,
as all people do, with the heavenly bodies above us. As people of the Plateau you know,
we've had a very intimate relationship with the stars all throughout our journey. And even today
in our present way of life. In my work as an edutainer, it's
my mission to share the plight of the people and lands of the Colorado Plateau and to share
issues that we're facing today. So in conclusion, I would like to just
look at the analogy of that Pueblo revolt, of how we looked for the signs that were favorable to us,
how we recognized you know, when it was the right time by the position of the stars.
I feel like by analogy today our country is facing some signs in the heavens you know,
by analogy an awakening of conscience you know, has come upon us, a call to action.
And I think it's not only recognizing the disparities that exist among
African American communities, Hispanic American communities, Asian American communities,
Native American communities, by looking at all these things recognizing that we all are
also today in a war. We're also in a fight and it's maybe the probably the most important fight
that any of our fathers have ever faced, and that is to restore conscious thought to our world.
When I sit under the stars and as I was accused of
howl at the moon and the stars, I recognize that there are some things that never change.
And I don't believe that politics has the answers to our greatest problems.
I believe that when we look to the things that never change - the cycles of the sun, the cycles
of the moon, the cycles of the stars, then we can recognize and have that peace within ourselves,
and seek for those conscious and spiritual answers. Thank you guys so much for your time and (Native language).
Well Ed, thanks so much for that wonderful talk. I mean, just so many things you said blew my mind
there in just that short amount of time. I have so many questions but just a couple I guess that
are at the forefront. Or I guess some some things that a comment I'd love to hear your comment on.
You know, it's such a testament to the indigenous people's intimacy with this land
over so much time when you mentioned even things as simple as using the knots in the rope
to be able to reckon time. You know to be able to spread that message about the revolt across
vast distances, you know just that idea of untying the knot every single day as as a way to
mark that day so that everybody can come together and revolt to the colonizers out, is
is a testament to not only the intimacy with the night sky but just the intimacy with
the sun and the moon and reckoning time that way. Do you have any comment on
the prevalence of sun watching in for example Hopi culture, like how important is
sun watching as a means to reckon time for maybe ceremonial or agricultural purposes?
Yeah uh so maybe um I prefer to answer in this way because I think that
this is a phenomena among Puebloan people, and I don't really,
you know, as a Tewa you know, I come, my father is Hopi and my grandfather is Hopi
in indoctrination and in discipline and in life view; you know my clanship comes
from a different place you know so I think that's important to recognize but I also recognize with
that perspective that you know the watching of the sun and the moon cycles is something very
predominant among all Pueblo cultures. And of course, you know we're an agricultural people so
there are certain people in the traditional way of life, in the old structure of
of our communities, that have that responsibility, and many still that carry out that
responsibility of announcing times to plant or announcing times for certain activities of
the community or ceremony. That's a very important role. Personally when I was a
kid and Imentioned my that my grandfather, see we're named by our father's people but we
become what our mothers are. So I'm a Badger Clan for instance, that comes from my mother.
But my Hopi name is (Native language) - it's already snowing or (Native language) flute song, those come from my father's
people. In the case of my grandfather, his father is Sun Clan and so Kaboti is actually
taken from the name (Native language), which sounds nothing like Kaboti. But that is referring to the path of the
sun and the name literally means "day after day." And so very strong name, but his uncle's always
teased him that's too good, name's too good for you. You're not "day after day," you're just "manana."
So my grandfather's nickname became (Native language) "tomorrow" and then got Anglicized when he went to
boarding school. They put a name out of the hat and said okay you're "Fred" now and then they took his
Indian name and turned it into his last name which was Anglicized and it was already a nickname so
my last name Kaboti is actually yeah, a kind of funky pronunciation of a Hopi nickname. But it
comes from the Sun People, my grandfather being influenced by his father's people.
Every, uh he was one of the most intimate watchers of the sun I've ever known. He drew the horizon
on his calendar every every month and then he put little hash marks as to where the sun
was coming up. He put the time of day or the time you know that the sun rose, and he did that
he did that every month you know, just diligently watching the sun. One of the
most, part of my language, but hard ass Hopi farmers that I've ever known.
That's awesome. I love that. That's something that I think the indigenous peoples of this land
have much to teach everybody worldwide is that continuation of observational astronomy you know,
we all do everything by calculation nowadays. But there's this beauty in this tradition of
getting out every day and just something as simple as marking it physically on a calendar,
it's just what a wonderful observational astronomy method that deserves to be preserved.
And finally on that front, in terms of preservation I'd be curious about your
thoughts on the idea of constellation knowledge and and such sacred knowledge
within some Puebloan cultures. You know it's very important and there's,
what's your view on sacred knowledge and the apparent sort of
problem of, from a western perspective, or you know or a European perspective, of
wanting to preserve knowledge by writing it down. And, but also there's this idea that
sacred knowledge in a way kind of you know, it's not to be written down, if it
goes, it goes and it's supposed to leave and be ephemeral maybe or or just pass down orally.
I guess I'm muddling the question a little bit but I'm just curious about what your thoughts are on
the importance of preserving for example, constellation knowledge and that traditional
knowledge, but also respecting the methods by which that is passed on.
Do you encourage people to write this stuff down and publish it for example?
No. Simple answer. I think there's many reasons for that but I don't, I don't
think I even need to discuss it about reasons for that. You had mentioned
in your comment before about interacting, how we do everything by calculations today and
then now you know, and how different it is when we're actually interacting with our landscapes,
and how different it is when we're actually interacting with our observations.
It's been said that this is also in the practice of culture that when we write
things down and we shelve things we kind of have a tendency to forget about them.
We don't interact with it anymore. I mean it's documented you know. We don't need to
think about it anymore and I thought that was kind of a profound thought because recognizing that in
traditional cultures, knowledge is an interaction. You're interacting with the knowledge, you're
interacting with your teachings. It's in a very different way than what happens when
you know things are being written down in the document. Those are just some thoughts.
Oh man well thanks so much, great thoughts. I think that's a great way to end it.
Everybody make sure you tune in to the virtual telescope viewing session that's premiering
right after this. Hopefully you know next year or in the coming years,
you all can come to the Grand Canyon on site and meet Ed in person and and talk stories with him.
Thanks again so much Ed. It was a great pleasure and honor to
have you as one of our our participants. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Love and respect.