Hopi Traditional Ranch Restoration Project.

2009-08-10T22:01:00.000-07:00

A request for help to restore what was once a flourishing fruit and vegetable subsistence ranch for my friends, Morgan and Joyce Saufkie, Hopi Elders of the village of Shungopavi on Second Mesa, Arizona.

In the village of Shungopavi on Second Mesa, Arizona...

...sixty miles North of Winslow...

...live my friends Morgan and Joyce Saufkie. They are Hopi Elders.
Morgan is Bear Clan, Joyce is Water Clan.
Pictured also is my friend Alfonso Elia, who has a soft spot in his heart for indigenous people and takes beautiful photographs:
RawEye/South of Heaven

I have known them since 1993 when I first became associated with Arcosanti. I took my children to Second Mesa first in 1993 when they were seven and nine. Morgan came to Arcosanti to plant traditional Hopi Blue Corn and travels as a Hopi cultural expert, Joyce traveled to promote her basket art forms.

Village life is difficult for Morgan and Joyce.
They wish to move back to the Water Clans traditional planting site to live out their days.

This turn off is 5 miles south of the village.
The Ranch is 12 miles down this road.
You're looking West.

But the Ranch needs a lot of help...
Notice the retaining wall damage from
unauthorized cattle grazing.

Joyce is internationally know for her basket weaving.

She is a breast cancer survivor of three years and is still struggling to recover her strenght to create her art.

Collecting Joyce amazing work is one way to help.
Click here to see Joyce and Hopi Art.

Joyce and Morgan have been without transportation for three years.

They need help getting an old truck going...

...and to build an adequate shelter at the ranch site.

Their 8 foot by 12 foot stone room is falling apart and the roof is coming in. No plumbing, no power> Spring water near by.
Plenty of sun.

The Ranch is where they want to live out their days.
When the Ranch was a working ranch, it was a much
more abundant and healthier experience than village
life is now.

The Ranch once thrived, fed by a natural spring…
but the cattle wallowed it full of silt.

The very land Joyce and Morgan are walking on
once thrived with corn, squash, pumpkin,
fruit trees, melons, and berries. Goats and
chickens were also part of what made Ranch
life one of abundance. They are walking toward
the silted up spring, 300 feet up hill from the
existing stone “house”.

Please help any way you can. If you can,
I will take you out there to see for your self.
These two people have been in service for
peace and reconciliation for the past fifty
years and deserve some help and dignity.

The Following are proposed projects to restore the
Ranch to a livable habitat for Morgan and Joyce to
experience abundance and dignity in their later years:

Spring improvement and stabilization.
Fencing.
Solar irrigation.
Solar power.
Structure: Kitchen-dinning room-food preparation and storage.
Structure: M & J bed-bath-basket studio.
Structure: Laundry House
Structure: Helper house-bath-studio-composting toilet .
Structure: Potting shed-greenhouse.
Structure: Agricultural shed.
Structures: Huts w/shower/composting toilet for seasonal clan ranch workers.

Perhaps a Cal Earth type coiled earth structures
would be most appropriate, perhaps something
else in the spirit of Buckminster Fuller, but this
is an opportunity to help in some way.

Choose to sponsor any or all of these projects.

I will keep going back to Second Mesa,
a three hour drive, as much as I can
to lend a hand but I have limited
resources and am only one person.

Please help.

For shareholders of Brent’s A*MAY*ZING Soup Company,
this is the most likely location for the canning operation
as an operation such as this requires canning too.

Brent Scott

Saufkie Ranch Fund
C/O Brent Scott
P. O. Box 921
Mayer, AZ 86333
909-664-5376