Climate-driven drought is stressing the Hopi tribe’s foods and traditions
Corn goes back to their very creation story. As the Hopi people emerged into this world, the Creator gave them three things: a gourd of water, a planting stick and a short ear of blue corn. … Clark grows heirloom Hopi blue, gray, red and white corn in the valley between First Mesa and Second Mesa in the middle of the 2,532 square mile Hopi Reservation in northern Arizona. The seeds that he plants have been cultivated over countless generations to grow in this dry climate of the high desert. He, like most Hopi farmers, uses traditional dryland farming methods in which, rather than irrigating crops, he relies solely on snowmelt and the rain that falls directly on his fields. … But now, more than two decades into the worst drought in the southwestern United States in a millennia, making the desert bloom is harder than ever.