The Hopi Tribe: The Bond Of Family

Most people depend on family during times of hardship. The bond of family is so powerful that it almost seems as if everybody was a part of one big family, many problems would be minimized. My community, the Hopi tribe, designed an extremely unique and broad family connection that has been a sustainable means of life for thousands of years. I admire our family system that allows us to overcome the challenges we face in the community. Mission teams come to our community from the east and west coast and every time, I get similar questions from them. “How do people here live without a job or even some basic means of survival?” I give them a slight shrug and say, “we are all families here, fam.” “Um himu wungwa?” In Hopi, it means “What clan are you?” By
asking this one simple question, we are able to identify which family one belongs to or even how he/she is related to us. And because clans are very broad and tangled, almost everyone in the community is somehow related. I’ve been accepted into the Tobacco Clan family eight years ago, but I still keep meeting new relatives and every single one of them have taken care of me as a family member. As my English teacher says, “the more people you know, the richer you are.” Hopi life is always abundant. As a part of an extended Hopi clan, I believe that our precious idea of family is worth preserving, but also as an outsider, I have noticed a drawback that causes some problems.
I observed that because we are so closely bonded within the family, we don’t feel the need to pursue education and succeed. Many people in the community blame our school’s lack of rigor to prepare students for college. I partly agree. As I started the application process, I felt the disadvantage in attending a noncompetitive school that does not offer many higher level classes and a lot of resources for competitive colleges. However, I believe that more improvement has to be made in the community. We currently don’t have a community that is supportive of aspiring students or even raising students to properly succeed. As a community, we have to bolster the students in ways that the school cannot. We need to build more libraries and youth centers where room for study and research is available and various programs such as college preparation, SAT/ACT tutoring, and college campus visits are offered. With some extra support, I know that more Hopi High School graduates can achieve higher level education and become outspoken outside of the
family.