Well good evening everyone, and welcome to the 2021 virtual Grand Canyon Star Party.
I'm Ranger Rader Lane, the National Park Service Coordinator for the event,
and for 31 years running, Grand Canyon has been celebrating our
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. Now each evening
is typically kicked off with a special guest speaker in our theater, that's followed by
telescope viewing constellation tours, night sky photography workshops, and much much more.
Next year's Grand Canyon Star Party is June 18th through the 25th 2022, so mark your calendars and
cross your fingers that we'll be able to celebrate that on site next year. This year we're bringing
the star party into the virtual realm once again, and we have a whole host of incredible speakers
for you tonight and over the next several nights. Before we introduce our special guest
speaker this evening I just have a few entities I'd like to thank from the National Park Service
for helping to put on this event. Number one, I'd like to thank Grand canyon Conservancy.
Now they're the Park's official non-profit partner,
and they do incredible work preserving the dark
skies here over Grand Canyon and beyond. I'd like to thank the International Dark Sky Association.
They're the entity that certified Grand Canyon National Park as an International
Dark Sky Park back in June of 2019. I'd like to thank the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association.
They're the group that has been coming up here for decades, volunteering their time,
sharing their equipment and their expertise with the visiting public at every Grand Canyon Star
Party since it started back in 1990. I'd like to thank the Society for Cultural Astronomy of the
American Southwest, finally, and they helped organize many of the speakers that we have
for the 2021 virtual Grand Canyon Star Party, so thank you to them. With that I want to introduce
tonight's special guest speaker. Tonight we are speaking with Bertram Tsavadawa.
Bertram is Hualapai and Havasupai from his father, and Hopi from his mother.
He is a self-taught artist with a focus on two-dimensional art and katsina doll carving.
His interest in astronomy has been with him since he was young, and he's since gone on to
speak at events such as the Society for Cultural Astronomy in the American Southwest conference,
and at renown locations such as Lowell Observatory. Currently he is a tour guide
for his one-man operation, Ancient Pathways Tours, operating out of Hopi. Bertram,
thank you so much for joining us tonight, we're really honored and excited to have you with us!
Yeah, you're welcome and yeah, thank you again for allowing me to be here to help present and share
a tidbit of Hopi teachings of astronomy, and understandings of our people. Just to elaborate
more from that introduction, I am a member of the Corn Clan and from the Third Mesa village of
Orayvi, commonly known as Old Oraibi. With the teachings and understandings that I do have
and been instilled with, would all come from elders,
such as my late grandfather, Valjean Joshevama Sr,
who was sort of one of the backbones of the understandings of the common teachings of our
Hopi astronomy and constellations, other elders that he knew that were
strong into that teaching and understanding.
Even like how the image that is behind you of the Desert View Watchtower in the east
side of the Grand Canyon, the late artist Fred Kabotie, you know, has depictions
of some of the constellations that is, say, esoteric to one of the men's societies.
Well, I just generally state, we don't just blindly show or state everything.
It's still just giving you tidbits of pieces of puzzles, and you can continue your own study.
I just generally tell people "The template's up there in the sky!"
You have the templates, just try to see and match up what will be that's depicted on the
ceilings of the Desert View Tower here.
So Bertram, I'd like to ask a few questions, just maybe have a conversation here.
Could you describe to our online visitors what the Hopi mesas are like?
You mentioned there're three mesas, what are those Hopi mesas like?
What's the landscape like? What are the villages up on the top of the mesas like?
What was it like sort of, what's it like living there,
and just kind of describe that whole scene for us.
Okay, well, the first eight years of my life I was raised in Riverside, California,
so in a city setting. English was my first language.
My parents separated and I moved out to the
Hopi with my mother. Total immersion into the living conditions, the culture, and the language.
But our land of the Hopi makes us. We do have valley floors where a lot of the agriculture
is done in the fields of dry farming techniques, as it's described by the archaeologists.
No watering system, no irrigation.
We do have these cretaceous Dakota Sandstones that are the
formations of our mesas and buttes,
but south of our Hopi villages we do have volcanic dormant cores.
So not, say, the rolling hills you see at the base of the mountain there by Flagstaff, or the San
Francisco Peaks. We do have these volcanic cores, points, and views that are south of our village.
You have different types of clays underneath the underlying top soils of our valleys.
So that helps with some of the moisture retention of snowmelt and rainfall.
As our Hopi people perform and conduct the ceremonies and prayers, part of that is
invoking the moisture of the clouds, depending on the season as well. Winter times, winter
ceremonies, praying for snow. Summer time, spring and summer, then it's for the rain.
Very organic traditional heirloom seeds that we have, so that's with that technique of dry
farming, to not be soaking or watering. Definitely change the genetics of it
but, eventually there's even evidence of, say, like impressions of seashells,
or, tube worm fossils that I found in the mesa edges.
Even you could see evidence on the,
what I call the patina, or the desert varnish, of the
manganese oxide surfaces on the outer surfaces of cretaceous Dakota Sandstones.
There's even evidence of water ripples, so talking about that description
of the flood, we have that evidence of 60 to 80 million
years ago there was once an ocean, was water around.
These mesas that the villages are currently situated on would have been, maybe, the
islands or peninsulas of that cretaceous ocean back at that time. So you have mesas and
they're orange, or kind of like similar tan with the orange color of sunrise, or sunset glow.
But we do have Toreva Formation, which is an exclusive name of one of the springs that's
located on Second Mesa. There's a lot of evidence of that whitish coarse sandstone
that's found through those layers there. Then the valley floors of the clays that I was describing,
the soils are commonly known as Mancos shale, even though my understanding the town of Mancos
is right below Mesa Verde, in the southwestern corner of Colorado. That type of clay shales soil
geology is evidently all down this way as well, but that'll be the common understanding about the
Painted Desert descriptions, because those clays and soils come in variational colors as well.
That's what you're looking at.
So you have, that's amazing geology out there. You have these three mesas sort of high atop,
widespread views of the desert southwest, and you mentioned ceremonies in agriculture.
My understanding is that the spiritualism and agriculture in Hopi are intimately linked, and
I'm just curious how important is the watching of the sun, for example, in Hopi culture, and how is
the sun perhaps celebrated in ceremonies conducted throughout the year?
Well, say, for instance our traditional new year, the beginning of the new
ceremonial cycles will be in the wintertime at winter solstice. That's of an important
time of year for the renewing and beginning of the year, and ceremonial cycles. Yes, there used
to be a lot of teachings of sun watchers, Sun Clan members, even housing units that we would have,
maybe horizontal slim windows that actually would allow sunlight
to create those shafts in the wall, or alignment with maybe a pictorial, or even just a scratch
or niche on the wall, would pertain to maybe even a Sun Dagger. Maybe windows that
were upright will have the creation, that in my village of Orayvi, Old Oraibi, the Sun Clan House,
that is utilized as that importance of sun watching with the sun crew members.
For that time in particular, in the morning, a sun dagger will appear through the window and create
that dagger on the west wall, and that's knowing that it's summer solstice time.
So there is also
the prayer offerings, given to the sun at that particular time, since it just reached
its summer home. Now going to winter solstice, that's the translation of my Hopi name - "Tsava",
literally means "short",
and "Dawa" is "Father Sun", so the shortest path, the shortest day out of the year,
that translates to winter solstice. But ironically,
I also did sell my crafts and carvings to
a shop in downtown that is known as Winter Sun Trading Company. It was Hopi, she's a
ethnobotanist as well.
That's incredible, so your last name translates basically the winter solstice, shortest - yeah.
That's incredible! So, obviously, the winter solstice, the summer solstice,
these times are really important for the Hopi people, and out there on the mesas.
when you're high atop this landscape, you mentioned
that you could see the San Francisco Peaks
way off in the distance, and to your knowledge, have the San Francisco Peaks been used as markers
along the horizon? For example, to get a better understanding of when winter solstice or summer
solstice is, and is that practice of sun watching still going on to this day on the Hopi Mesas?
Yes, definitely. The mountain peaks will have a lot of that understandings, viewings of the time
of winter solstice some more sources it's further away from the mountains and I will say that lost
art of sun watching is not practiced as much but I think you know people just realize and understand,
they know there's that movement out there with the the sun and moon, seasons where they come out from
which direction or what by what view, what point, so not just the mountain prominently but all points,
all the buttes and mesas that we see from our Hopi villages. They all have
some of that understanding of the seasons when the sun sets looking to the west. Not every village
has the same views as well. For First Mesa, they definitely can't see more of what's beyond north
of the San Francisco peaks because the Second Mesa outcropping just does block that view.
You're saying there's along the horizon, there's many buttes and not just the peaks,
but many buttes and little mountains and little tiny notches along the horizon that
traditionally the Hopi people would use to mark various ceremonial or agricultural times
throughout the entire year, not just summer and winter solstice. Did I hear that right?
Yeah that's correct because I was just going to mention as well in between the equinoxes
are also just as important. So springtime, everybody's cleaning their fields, preparing it
so the beginning of the planting cycle. Then in September, the fall time, the harvest,
so they also are important with the agriculture as we just now described. Yes, it is of importance
with the agriculture that the equinoxes affiliate and associate with agricultural practices.
In the sprintime, the beginning of May, the cliff rose bushes will bloom their white yellow flowers and so it just signifies to
finalize planting all your vine plants so all your melons, pumpkins, squashes, gourds, beans,
all the seeds to be put in by maybe the mid or end of May. It'll give that growth time by the time of
harvest to fully dry. Then the corn and other items, there's again certain views of the horizon
or even from the different fauna that starts showing up in the springtime that marks off
our agriculture. Then we'll see the certain constellations coming of the seasons as well.
That's also fascinating Bertram and we talked about the sun and the importance to
watching the movements of the sun along the horizon to mark different ceremonial and
agricultural times. What role, if any, does the moon play in Hopi culture or the Hopi calendar?
In our teachings of the moon names, each month has their particular name
affiliated with the moon description. January a lot of maybe snow, moisture moon.
February will be the purification or cleansing moon. Around that time of season, the parallel
that I align that with is maybe perhaps Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday. You let your hair hang loose,
and hoop and holler, and then the next morning you go in for cleansing and purification as Lent. These moon
cycles were in our modern calendar as months. They do have moon name descriptions for them, so like
April the month to build your windbreaks. The brush and vegetation are put up like fences,
so that way it captures all of the top soil drifting away from the winds.
???? Just because maybe some of the windows don't have completely good sealing linked around it
that, you kind of hear the wind blowing through and makes that kind of ssssss
sound in the through the panes of the windows, so ???? so it's the description of the sound
that the wind blowing through the brush and vegetation or even in the trees that you will hear.
So not all villages have the same names for each month or moon.
Some again will be variation. In linguistics,
our Hopi language is one common language, but we have four dialects that people are speaking.
That's really interesting. The month in western culture as you know, is derived from moons,
the month. But it seems like the Hopi culture took it a step farther and named each month
after a different moon, as opposed to the western culture. January, February, March, April, May
have sort of different meanings, and aren't really necessarily pertaining to the moon itself.
That just seems like it's a much more intimate connection with the cycles of the moon
in Hopi culture, to name each month after a different type of moon.
All the different descriptions for the moon cycle is also known like
crescent laying down, or sitting down, but then some of what I've heard from elders
it's a depiction of a bowl saying maybe, filled with water. So maybe once when it's
going out of cycle then you start seeing it going upside down.
Then perhaps we're anticipating that the rains will be coming as the water is pouring out of
the bowl. It'll be the creation of the rains or say the late summer rains, monsoon seasons,
so again there's even descriptions for them, even for the sun you know the sun comes out
???
So you know we have the same descriptions for them.
Definitely night cycles with the moon and the seasons again we understand the moon always has its different variations.
It's not always a one standard for every night so not just sun watching, but there were
individuals or certain, say leaders, that were allowed to watch and study the moon
or no religions or their society understanding.
That's great. You mentioned learning some of this from your elders. What is that process like,
or how how did you experience learning about the knowledge you're sharing with us tonight from
your elders? How would have star knowledge or constellation
stories have been shared with you as you as you were growing up, through your elders?
Well it would not be just so open and easily exposed, what was described.
They just get to understand you or know how you are, saying if you are willing to maybe
listen and learn, but you know I was a youngster still playing around. These elders were always
talking, maybe sometimes we catch certain information or you know what they're sharing.
We just keep playing. Eventually it does stick with you and stay with you,
but a lot of it is very more, I would say, aspects of esoteric society understandings. Yet you know
I'm a curious cat, so even though maybe elders or my grandfather just shared little tidbits
here and there. Growing up in the 70s and you know I read books so I even got my hands on some of the
published researched items from like the Peabody or Smithsonian. Those publications
that were published about our Hopi poeple. My grandfather said you
know that was kind of a no no because there was even exposures of esoteric imageries, culture items, being seen by uninitiated eyes.
Right right and so my next question was, could you share with uh our online
visitors kind of what a society is in Hopi culture, I mean there's these societies that
sort of are keepers of some of this more esoteric knowledge. What are these
societies within the context of Hopi culture? Are there many societies, how does that work?
Yeah, it actually say might be part of
origins through say a clan, like I identified myself that I'm a member of the Corn Clan.
We have our history migrations that ties us into South America, but the actual
understandings all ancestors emerged from the Grand Canyon from that emergence place of Sipapu.
Ears of corn were laid out and each culture, each race of people,
they picked corns that would be their future foretelling of who they would be, or how they would be.
Eventually for Hopi the short stubby blue corn was left but it was a hardiness,
longevity to thrive. Eventually, we are known as the people of the short blue corn of
the Hopi people. That's our very major staple that was produced in agriculture.
Let's say for a society, what I would give descriptions are maybe born into the clan.
Say like for the Snake Clan, obviously they would be the members that perform and conduct the
ceremony of the snake dance, which I would kind of give a jokingly description that
they are the snake charmers. They're the ones that know how to be talking and soothing, handling,
knowing to connect with those serpents. I'm a total different clan, that's
not my thing. That's what they were instilled with so they're the ones that would
perform that as a society. Maybe those individuals that chose a godfather, or
what Iwould term traditionally as kiva father. If that individual was part of that snake society, or
another description to give would say fraternity, like in college and university.
You are instilled in those esoteric ways, teachings. How to be, then you'll earn your badge or
you'll earn your Greek letter, or you'll earn your your place in the society that
you belong to. Maybe that fraternity description might give a little more fitting
understandings for ones like the Masons.
You need that instrumental compass to do measurements, so not just moving on paper or
whatever, you're even measuring distance of planets and stars or constellations as well.
That would be what I term as that born into society, coming from a clan.
You have variations of men's, women's societies, the flute, and then
the women's societies, basket societies to learn technique and how to create those baskets.
There's just so many various ones.
For example constellation knowledge, knowledge of the stars, meanings behind the stars, that type of knowledge seems to be
held very closely within societies and and clans in the Hopi culture. Is that just the type of
knowledge that isn't freely shared? It really is kept close because it serves a sacred purpose
or it's sacred knowledge of some kind and is that why perhaps it's not as freely shared to the world
as some other constellation knowledge is shared, like for example the Greek constellations?
It's still very esoteric and private, but what I would just say commonly understand
it would, these planets, constellations, would coincide in the seasons when these
ceremonies or the societies are performing their duties. So it still coincides.
I would say seasonally what's still in view and seeing in the sky.
Again you know, winter solstice. Orion is that very important one.
Then there's particularly other ones that are important to societies maybe.
obviously morning star or even how the evening stars will be placed around
the moon or the crescent. That will be like Venus and Mars and others
that are always revolving by or around the moon. Everything has its circular
cycles. It's never broken, it's always going circular in motion. Sometimes maybe there's
views of movement going in this direction, rather than completely circular that there might
be those movements. That's when probing and looking at planets that have multiple moons,
you can understand and see that they have their movement or placements each night or maybe
three nights on one side, three nights on this other side Then everything
is kind of evenly divided. We've gone through a lot of these
earth history or epochs: floods, drought, fires, volcanic eruptions.
Hopefully we have all the answers completely for humanity
We can see newer stars. There's the new hoopla some years back about
the blue star but mine that really kind of may have made me have the goosebumps,
was more of the recent finding of NASA again, the one pulsating and illuminating in blue.
People took it in probably earlier from other planets in that like Nibiru, or even just the
the space station illuminating in blue. Just this recent finding by NASA,
gave me the goosebumps. I feel maybe this is that true accurate,
the blue star that's to be one of the signs.
You mentioned in your bio you are a katsina doll carver. Are there any katsinas in Hopi culture that are symbolic of,
or representative of, the stars or the sun or the moon or the night? Any in your experience
that you've carved and maybe sold or given to people? Any katsinas that symbolize some of the
phenomena in the night sky?
Oh yeah. There is definitely what we call that shooting star,
or the meteorite or the comet streaking in the sky. It has a fan of tail feathers to represent
that tail. It does have a lot of those star symbologies on the facial. There's even one that's
kind of looking like a menacing disciplinarian, but it portrays on the head top three
four-pointed stars, which the common understanding would go back to
the belt of Orion. There's is definitely a sun katsina. Some say maybe
there was a moon at one time but it's not been seen or openly
seen in ceremonies. Maybe even my late grandfather mentioned maybe there was even a Moon
Clan because since he's a member of the Sun Clan. Then again there's always the parallels, opposites,
complementaries. Maybe there was even a Moon Clan at one scene when we were not too sure.
That's what his hunch was.
I guess we should clarify for people, we're assuming because we both know, but
what is a katsina in Hopi culture? I mean, how would you explain what the katsina is to the
Hopi people?
What I would give as that description, it is definitely a supernatural being. Kind of reminds me of those figures that you see on the Egyptian hieroglyphic, the big panels of
the figures, deities and gods in humanistic bodies with abstract facials and heads. They are
intermediaries to our Hopi people. We are praying through them, we are not praying actually to them.
As the actual gods or deity figures, they'll carry the prayers and messages for our people
and offer those offerings to the shrines or specific place that is designated for
them to leave their offerings. That's my description I give: supernatural beings that are
humanistic in body, abstract facials, that are the intermediaries to our Hopi people.
Some descriptions are given as like angels or angelic figures but no,
I would say maybe close description, that church description, would be more like,
I guess maybe like saints in a way. That's the closest I could get to that.
Only the Katsina Clan knows these actual origins, who these
beings truly are, and eventually histories tell there were
real katinas that came and visited the people but they gave descriptions that they flew.
So again, just with those star figured ones, that's my common connection -
oh those ones came from the sky. They have the star, space and the sky.
The last question would be
is there any astronomical knowledge or symbology that you know, of written into
pictographs and petroglyphs for example, around Hopi or the greater region of the southwest?
Do you have anything you can share about pictograph and petroglyph astronomical symbology?
Common understandings, a lot of these pictograph and petroglyph panels or again, maybe
the spirals, sun symbols, maybe stars, because I'm still trying to figure if they even
study or utilize full moon illumination with markers as well.
South of Flagstaff you do have that V-Bar-V Ranch. I do have timelines and degrees of
even when full moon time the pillars of they say call it a ???? shadow will show up on
one of the panels there on the V-Bar-V Ranch. That pillar has naturally collapsed now.
There are these seasonal markers found throughout the whole southwest, or basically
a lot of these ancestral sites, you'll find any type of evidence of seasonal markers either with
those petroglyph symbols, sunbeams going through certain windows or doorways, or alignments with
the straight edge of the architecture of the houses. That understanding would be
like Aztec lines and Chaco Canyon locations of the large big Pueblo Bonito.
How they did their architecture was just aligned truly with all of these sunrise/moonrise,
sunset/moonset alignments. Where constellations did emerge from. The earlier telescopes, I call them.
So it's safe to say that, I mean your ancestors, the people who have been here
for thousands of years and to this day, the Hopi people just have a very deep and intimate
connection with both the night sky and the landscape. It's just a beautiful thing to
have you on and speaking with us about this connection that is still being maintained to
this day by by you and and others. Is anything else you'd like to sum up about
the importance of the night sky and of the workings of the sun and the moon to the Hopi
people to this day? And just anything you'd like to sum up about that?
I would say maybe going back to one of the questions earlier
about maybe some depiction of a phenomena? We have one of these katsina facials that has crescents
on its facial. The name of that kastina is known pronounced ???
Misinformation they parallel it to just because there's again that
flaring fan of feathers that protrude from the back of the head down towards the lower back.
It would resemble like the plains Indians feather bustles that they have in these pow-wow
practices of those tribes. They kind of refer to it that reminds us maybe of the Comanche, but
it does not even have any type of affiliation with that. When we had that total eclipse
what was, it 2017, and the northwest most area of that total eclipse,
in our teachings you don't look directly towards wherever that eclipse is occurring
happening in the daytime. If you're under trees, the leaves and that kind of filter
but when you're looking on the ground you'll see those crescents or you'll see that shadowy
movement of that, and the the moon going in front of the sun right during the day.
So that particular katsina would accurately have those crescent facial depictions to represent
those crescents you see underneath the tree of the daytime the solar eclipse, that fan of feathers
when the moon is passing right in front of the sun. Then you have all of the corona,
the sun flares, the sun rays that's behind it to depict the crown that you see.
So those feathers on that katsina symbolically represented the corona,
and the head facial was representing that the moon passes in front of the sun.
???? pronunciation is relative close relative
and with our teachings and this may be that teachings for my Hopi people
that particular time when the moon is passing in front of the sun, it is both the sun and the moon
coming together in a conference to tell and speak how the state of mother earth and humanity is
upon the planet. Then they'll pass by each other.
??? Maybe that of that act you know
Maybe give us that type of contemplation, realization and understandings like saying
maybe not everybody has the same mentality thought like that. That is what
would be that teaching, what I would hear saying pertaining to our Hopi people to understand
that is that time when sun and moon confer of the state of humanity and how we are living on this planet.
That's so wonderful and amazing that it is depicted that communion between
the sun and the moon is depicted in a katsina is again just another testament to the Hopi people's
intimate connection with the workings of the sun the moon and the stars even to this day and I
think that's a great way to end it. Bertram, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us
and your wisdom. It was a very great honor and pleasure to speak with you about some of the
cultural understandings of the night sky and the sun and the moon
from the Hopi perspective. Everybody please thank Bertram in the chat and again, please
stay tuned for the virtual telescope viewing session premiering right after this talk. The 2022
Grand Canyon Star Party is June 18th through the 25th, so hopefully it will be on site next year and
hopefully some of you all might be able to even come and visit Bertram in real life. We would
love to get him on site here for the Grand Canyon Star Party in future years, and you may be able to
discuss with him some of the understandings of the cultural astronomy of the Hopi people.
Again Bertram, thank you so much and we hope to see you here at Grand Canyon
sometime in the future.
Yes definitely. I need to get back to the canyon again and it'll be it'll probably be a different experience you know. It will be at night time for sure.
Well we'll get you here, thank you so much.
Sure thing. Thank you for allowing me to be part of this.