Does anyone have any information on the Hopi prophecies quoted in the article and in the film? Are they documented elsewhere? It seems a little suspicious to me that the Hopi text so closely matches 1970s American environmentalism/anxiety about nuclear weapons. I suspect there has been some creative translation.
I actually wrote to the linguist listed in the Koyaanisqatsi credits for the original text in Hopi and he said he couldn't find it....
Thanks for the rabbit hole! If the wikipedia citations are reliable, you might check all three of:
Christopher Vecsey. The Emergence of the Hopi People, in American Indian Quarterly, vol. 7, no. 3, American Indian Religions, 70 (Summer 1983).
Harold Courlander. The Fourth World of the Hopis: The Epic Story of the Hopi Indians as Preserved in their Legends and Traditions, 201 University of New Mexico Press, 1987
Susan E. James. "Some Aspects of the Aztec Religion in the Hopi Kachina Cult", Journal of the Southwest (2000)
In particular, the wiki article [1] cites the first to claim, “Hopi mythology is not always told consistently and each Hopi mesa, or even each village, may have its own version of a particular story” which would presumably provide ample opportunities to walk in the gray area between quoting and creative translation you mention.
In addition to that angle, the Palo Verde nuclear plant broke ground in 1976 [2] so it’s not ridiculous to think that the public might have been concerned and discussing it around 1972 when some of the first film was taken. No citation there but not would be another avenue to investigate.
Tough to say without being Hopi. There are many things they cannot share unless you’re Hopi. Same with other tribes. Curious, what did the linguist say exactly?
Oppenheimer famously quoted the Bhagavad-Gita to describe witnessing/pulling off the first atomic detonation. I'd say that it was the first time that humanity actually controlled a godlike power, but gods and prophecies of apocalypse have long been a feature of religion. And it hardly seems surprising that native people would take issue with despoiling the land.
> This episode of [Hopi] existence begins with the extraordinarily cruel act of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 by the United States’ Air Force, near the end of World War II. Among the remote consequences of this attack, one or two years later, a group of Hopi of the Second Mesa at their ceremonial reunions (kivas) started “equating the atomic bomb with a prophetic story about a gourd of ashes which brought destruction when it was cast on the ground,” according to anthropologist Brian D. Haley. By 1948, with the devastation of planet Earth in mind because of human greed, elders and religious leaders of the Second and Third Mesa decided it was urgent to share this prophecy with the “White people” so that everyone could be prepared for Purification Day, the moment when deity of the current fourth world, Maasaw, would come and redeem humanity, creating a new paradise on Earth.
> The effort to spread the word on the ancient prophecies is what anthropologist Richard Clemmer designated the “Hopi Traditionalist Movement.” The Hopi agenda, though, was more than a spiritual calling; it was very political. In 1949 they sent President Truman a letter in which they detailed their prophecies and message of awareness, but also their position about land ownership, mineral extraction permits, the cultural and political rights of indigenous peoples, and pending US policies. With the help of non-Native People, the movement got the attention of conscientious objectors and draft resisters of the Second World War, pacifists, anarchists, spiritual radicals, and, in time, the different counterculture circles of the 1950s, 60s and 70s ...
> It’s the mid 1970s and Godfrey Reggio does not have a name for the film he is shooting. His co-workers are telling him they are not going to get distribution or financial aid if he does not name it. Reggio had resisted to do so until then, because for him the images were the message. Persuaded, he starts searching for a word “with no cultural baggage, a new word to describe the world.” ...
> Living in Santa Fe, Reggio was near the Hopi reservation and had friends that were “Hopi devotees,” as he calls them. They insisted on the connections between his creative project and the Traditional Hopi Movement’s prophecies. He met David Monongye, one of the Hopi spokesmen of Hotevilla, by giving him a ride from the reservation to a doctor’s appointment and they became friends. Reggio liked the idea of naming his film with an originally non-written language to evoke his argument that the literate culture he lived in was no longer a good describer for the insanity he saw all around. Thus, he contacted the linguist Ekkehart Malotki, who knew the Hopi language, and his Hopi co-worker Michael Lomatuway’ma. They introduced him to the word koyaanisqatsi, a concept that nailed his awareness. Reggio went to David Monongye for permission. “David said it’s an ancient word,” recalls Reggio today, “a word that’s not in popular use. He didn’t talk much about it, but he said the definition we had, took the meaning of the word.” ...
> Reggio not only asked for Monongye’s opinion, he also went through two more examinations by clan leaders of other villages: first by Mina Lansa, the traditional leader of Old Oraibi, and her husband John, then by a group of members of the 2nd Mesa. Reggio felt as he had gone through an ecclesiastical interrogation once again, and in a language he couldn’t understand, but with better results. All of them gave him consent.
I actually wrote to the linguist listed in the Koyaanisqatsi credits for the original text in Hopi and he said he couldn't find it....