Hopi Foundation

Join Leadership for a Changing World on Friday, December 16 for a live, online interview with Barbara Poley and Loris Ann Taylor of the Hopi Foundation, and 2005 Leadership for a Changing World award recipients. In addition to answering your questions, Barbara and Loris Ann will discuss their experience of merging Hopi ways with community activism to meet the challenges facing the Hopi nation.

Read the transcript from December 16, 2005 Leadership Talks Archive

The harsh beauty of northeastern Arizona is home to the Hopi nation, 12 villages on 2.8 million acres. About 7,000 Hopi live on the reservation. For many generations, the Hopi have lived as farmers in a land of little rain. The isolation of the tribe — the reservation is 98 miles from Flagstaff, and a four-hour drive from Phoenix — contributes to a 55 percent unemployment rate, poverty, and a host of other problems, including poor housing and a lack of running water and electricity.

Barbara Poley and Loris Ann Taylor are great-great-granddaughters of Chief Loololma of Oraibi Village. Taylor and Poley both graduated from Northern Arizona University with undergraduate and graduate degrees. They returned to the reservation where both worked as administrators for the Hopi Tribe. When they were urged by tribal members to spearhead the founding of the Hopi Foundation in 1987, Taylor and Poley helped found an organization based on the principle that native people's cultural values should shape their lives. The foundation is based in Hotevilla, Arizona, one of the reservation's 12 villages, and has 15 staff members. The Hopi Foundation is one of the first independent foundations in Indian country.

Poley and Taylor skillfully adapt community foundation practices to reflect Hopi cultural values. Two of the Hopi Foundation's first projects were economic initiatives to bring jobs to the reservation. Native Sun produces and markets solar-energy systems on both the Hopi and Navajo reservations. In another project, called Gentle Rain, Hopi women use their talent as seamstresses to incorporate traditional Hopi designs into fleece clothing sewn from material made of recycled plastic.

In December 2000, after five years of planning, Poley and Taylor worked with other volunteers to launch the first Hopi radio station, KUYI. Another initiative focuses on preserving traditional homes and ritual gathering places that are in danger of crumbling. The Hopi Foundation has brought together tribal leaders, Hopi religious leaders, the Arizona State Historic Preservation Office, and architectural experts to rebuild structures.

The foundation's work extends beyond Hopi borders. “The historical experiences of Hopi and other Native Peoples create a heightened concern for human rights issues around the world,” Taylor and Poley write.

For more information

Hopi Foundation Leadership for a Changing World profile

Hopi Foundation website