—I was told, in order to make me a daughter of her clan and because I peed on her the first time she took me in her arms, an aunt called me at first Honawpaahu, Bear-who-sprays-like-a-fountain. 
Then as on that day I laughed with my mouth wide open, another baptised me Tatatitaawa, She-who-greets-the-sun-with-a-smile……In the following weeks, I ceased peeing on people, wrapped tight in my willow cot like all new borns….which is why I remained Tatatitaawa.***
Born Happy At Oraibi: This is the story of a young American Indian girl, a Hopi, a people who live in the Arazona desert, a people who scrape out a living in this inhospitable area and we are plunged into her life and, through it, the Hopi’s complex belief system, so thoroughly linked to their surroundings and the natural world.
The Hopis live in this arid desert, so hot in the summer and so cold in the winter, dépendant on the meagre harvest for survival, we are with Tatatitaawa, of the butterfly clan, as she grows up in this happy but small community in Oraibi at the third Mesa with at the centre Itangu, the oldest woman of the clan. We are with her as she changes her name at key stages of her life.
We hear of Soyal, when her father and the other men leave their house when the days are shortest and the nights are longest in order pray with the priests and .to call back the sun and of Lakon when the women fast at the end of the cycle in November to pray for rain. We hear of her father who sometimes roared like thunder in the house, but as her mother says, who would complain at the sky for thundering before it delivers us water.
Besides the stories of Hopi celebrations and prayers, births and deaths, we discover Walpi on the first Mesa where Tatatitaawa’s father’s clan, the Grey Bear come from and of the quarrel between her grandmother and her grandmother’s sister of the Black Bear tribe who she believes to be a two-heart who has stolen and given birth to her nborn child.
This is a book with succeeds in giving the reader a glimpse of the Hopi culture and helps the reader to begin to feel its rhythm.
First published in French as ‘Née Contente à Oraibi’ by Le Tripode in 2016
*** My translation
South of Paris books 