Hopi Tribe and U of A celebrate 'warm relationship' with Hopi Recognition Football Game

Most attendees to Saturday night's football game between Arizona and Weber State had grown restless by 7:30 p.m., when nearby lightning strikes had delayed the game by half an hour. 

It would be another hour and a half before kickoff, and fans safely waited out the lightning inside the concourse of Arizona Stadium.

But in a green room on the stadium's field level, where the members of a delegation from the Hopi Tribe had gathered with their families, the energy was joyous. Hopi singers and dancers had just performed the tribe's corn dance before hundreds of tailgaters at the festivities before the game. The Hopi, whose culture emphasizes farming the arid mesas in northeastern Arizona, never lament a chance for rain, said Hopi Tribe Chairman Timothy Nuvangyaoma.

"Everything that Hopi does with our ceremonies and these types of dances, it really is all about prayer and bringing in the moisture," Nuvangyaoma said from the green room amid the delay. "Our hearts are filled right now. We're content, we're blessed, and it's a good feeling."

The delegation from Hopi was on campus as part of the University of Arizona's Hopi Recognition Football Game, a chance to honor the culture and sovereignty of one of Arizona's 22 federally recognized tribes during pregame festivities and halftime programming. The visit – which welcomed several generations of Hopi to campus, from young children to elders – also allowed tribal leaders to connect with Hopi U of A students and U of A leaders.

The game marked the university's third year honoring Arizona tribes with a home football game near the start of the season; the university has previously recognized the four O'odham tribes and the Pascua Yaqui Tribe. The university has more than 2,000 Native students in its student body, representing about 200 tribes.

"Our relationship with the University of Arizona is a warm relationship, and there's never a time that we didn't feel welcome on campus, and that's extended through not only the faculty and staff, but even the students," Nuvangyaoma said. The year of planning for the game, he added, "was a lot of work, just like any kind of planning is, but to see the actual reality of it come to play is extremely powerful for us."

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The day before the game, the Hopi delegation gathered on campus at the Women's Plaza of Honor to celebrate the career of Diane Humetewa, a U.S. District Court judge in Arizona. Humetewa, who is Hopi, is the first Native American woman and first enrolled tribal member to serve as a federal judge.

Humetewa's name is now the latest engraved into a pillar at the Women's Plaza of Honor, where it sits next to several other prominent female legal figures from Arizona.

Humetewa and Nuvangyaoma later gave talks at the James E. Rogers College of Law and the Campus Store on Friday before meeting with students over lunch. Attendees included Brianna Medrano, a senior studying business management in the Eller College of Management.

To read the full story, or listen to the article, visit UA News.