11/17/2025
How do you balance vision with reality? The only thing real we have is right now, this moment. We know we are here in the present. We don't know where we will be tomorrow. We can anticipate, we can plan, but we won't truly know until tomorrow morning, what life has in store for us.
Our Mission, is "to clean First Mesa from top to bottom." leading with the VISION, "Through discipline and responsibility we will preserve the sacredness of our Tewa and Hopi Villages." We started back in 2016, concentrating our efforts to collect as much trash as we could. Justice Outside was our first Funder, and they have been providing us with $20,000 annually over the past 6 years; this coming year will be the last allocation, and we will be given an opportunity to apply again in the spring of 2026.
When we applied to Justice Outside, we said in our proposal, that it would take an additional ten years of cleaning to completely clean all the way around First Mesa. 2026 is the ten-year mark and the REALITY is that we have not moved on from the back side of Village of Sichomovi, although this year we did collect over 65 tons of trash with help from all villages here, the most we have ever collected in a year, we also give credit to the Hopi Solid Waste Program Manager, Dale Talayumptewa for allowing us to rent the grappler truck which compacted the metals and bigger items and hauled it to the landfill for us. This amount does not include all the trash each village removed during ceremonies and events, which Tutskwat picked up the bill for. This year close to $4,000 was spent to pay for landfill fees. The amount of trash collected this year puts us well over 200 tons of trash removed around First Mesa to date. WOW!!! And YAY!!! ❤️
While the VISION we created back in 2016 made us accountable to doing the work, we know the REALITY is that people will continue and have been continuing to dump trash over the sides. It feels like we are a hamster on wheel, cleaning over and over again, places we have already cleaned.
So how do we balance VISION, with REALITY?
One way is to begin thinking about your own personal purpose in life. How many years do we really have left in this world and what do you want to put forth for yourself, your children, your village, your world? Does your personal purpose include teaching and instilling our Hopi and Tewa values, humanity values, in the next generation?
We do not yet fully understand the long-term effects of living in the midst of trash, human waste, hazardous materials, can have on our people, but we do have examples from Third World countries of how bad it could be. The water that blesses our lands flow from the Mesa, through the trash, then seeps into our lands. Lands we plant, lands that support life. There has to be consequences, and will those consequences cost us more lives, NOT living to old age, passing away peacefully in our sleep, but instead dealing with health issues that take lives all too early.
Ultimately, we do not have the ability to make anyone embrace our VISION. The REALITY is that we are all faced with a lot right now, in this moment, that takes our attention away from even caring about trash. We understand this. With all that is going on around us we must NOT lose sight of our own homelands. We must not lose the VISION of preserving the sacredness of our villages. For they are sacred when we are participating in our yearlong ceremonies that support the BALANCE of life, all over this universe.
Let's stand together with committed renewal to continue to clean our Mesa home. We can and should be proud to call ourselves stewards of the lands and hold ourselves accountable through discipline and responsibility. Kuna'a, Eskwali!
