Drought ignites tensions, threatens Hopi traditions

MOENKOPI, Ariz. — On the bone-dry plateau where the Hopi people have lived for more than 1,000 years, Robinson Honani pulled his truck to the side of a dirt road and pointed to a carcass.

“This is where the cows come to die,” Honani, manager of the Hopi Office of Range Management, said one morning in September as he spotted the remains nearby of another bovine decaying under the sun. It was at least the 10th dead cow Hopi range officials had found in recent weeks.

Alarmed by the two-decade drought that has dried up springs, withered crops and killed cattle, the Hopi Tribal Council ordered ranchers in August to slash their herds in a bid to preserve water supplies and avoid an even larger death toll.

But an outcry by Hopi cattlemen, who say they are providing families with locally raised food, compelled the council to rescind its edict, a decision that has unleashed a fierce discussion across the reservation over what traditions to safeguard in a time of climate change. The tensions involve farmers who need water to grow crops and ranchers who need water for their cattle. Some Hopi leaders say the tribe should do everything it can to preserve dry farming, a tribal tradition in which crops grow despite scant rainfall through drought-resistant seeds, small fields and terraced gardens.

What both the farmers and ranchers appear to agree on is that the difficult choices feel unfair to the Hopi, who have been forced to feud over restrictions, they said, at the same time that cities in Arizona, experiencing breakneck population growth, have been depleting the state’s strained reservoirs.

“Why isn’t the governor cutting off water resources to southern Arizona?” asked Clark Tenakhongva, vice chair of the Hopi Tribe. “Cut out the pools. Cut out the water recreation areas. Cut out the golf courses, and you’ll start resolving some of the issues the state of Arizona is looking at right now.”

Researchers have estimated that human-influenced climate change has contributed considerably to the severity of the drought. On the ground level in the Hopi Reservation, such conditions are reflected in disappointing crop yields and disappearing springs.

“The sand dunes don’t stop growing,” said Curtis Naseyowma, 58, a Hopi rancher who raises cattle near the village of Moenkopi.