Skiing on a sacred mountain: Indigenous Americans stand against a resort’s expansion
By Annette McGivney
The Guardian
June 19, 2022
The debate over an Arizona ski resort’s future has exposed two vastly different visions of the American west: ‘Nuva’tukya’ovi is our Mount Sinai.’
Hopi farmer Bucky Preston talks to the clouds that form atop Arizona’s tallest mountain. And they talk back.
For 2,000 years, communication with the sky has been an important traditional farming method of the Hopi and their Puebloan ancestors. The clouds drift with Hopi prayers from the mountain they call Nuva’tukya’ovi – “place of snow on the very top” – to the tribe’s villages, providing life-giving rain and spiritual sustenance to the oldest continuously inhabited community in North America.