Philbert Honanie is a member of the Coyote Clan at Hotvela. He told me to drop by his mother's house to chat. When I arrived, Philbert, his family, and some of his friends were in the living room. His wife was in the other room with friends weaving a basket for an upcoming ceremony. The kitchen table was stacked with boxes of fried chicken, biscuits, and mashed potatoes from the Kentucky Fried Chicken over sixty miles away in Tuba City.
Philbert was born on the reservation, but also spent some time in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He was placed in foster care when he was nine and remained there for almost three years. "I thought I was going to a place where I was going to be educated and straightened out, to where I wasn't going to become what I was intended to be. It was hard at first. I didn't have any place to go hunt or go running around. So it was a different atmosphere than what I was used to. It was like going through a time warp."
Racism also had an impact on this difficult period in Philbert's life. "I had friends, but they couldn't really cope with me because I was an Indian. They were all white and they wanted to hang out with whites." He was thirteen when he moved back to Hopi. His mother was living in Phoenix, so he moved in with his grandmother.
He met his wife when he was eighteen and they had their first child soon after. They now have three children and have been together since the mid-80s, which is about how long Philbert's been carving.
He started by selling sculptures on his own at the Hopi Cultural Center and then moved on to retail stores. Sculptures were all the rage in the 1980s, and Philbert still makes them occasionally for special orders. In the late 1980s he started experimenting with traditional-style dolls. He used to hang out at Tsakurshovi on Second Mesa, and with the encouragement of the owner, gave it a shot. He loved the colors, and says that to this day it's the colors that keep him going. "It's all-natural, it’s not too bright, and it's not too glamorous. It's just perfect." While his skills continued to improve, more opportunities became available. Philbert's work started appearing in more galleries and he was being invited to all the big shows. He’s even gone as far as Hawaii for a one-man show in a private gallery, but he still credits traders like Phyllis Hogan, Barry Walsh and Joseph Day for their help.
"The traditional style is the reality of what a katsina is really about and what I'm really about. That's what I like about it."
Philbert told me about respect as he busily fixed up a pair of white moccasins for a friend. He had already coated them with tuuma, and was now scratching and slapping them to remove any excess. Philbert takes carving very seriously. He believes that each doll embodies the spirit of that katsina and treats them accordingly, going as far as to insist that they be carved to completion at Hopi and not off the reservation. "I talk to my dolls while I carve. I love them all. If I'm carving something that is rarely carved I say, I'm not trying to hurt you or anything; I know you’re going to have a good home. Just give me this opportunity to live off you so I can care for my family." This respect has been learned over many years.
This kind and respectful attitude is what makes Philbert so popular. He is genuinely a nice guy, happy to share his fried chicken and make you feel at home. He believes life has a lot of lessons in store for us and learning them initiates change, which makes you a better person. He tells this story about an occasion when he was carving a doll and wasn't being very careful:
I was in a rush and I dropped that doll about three times. It was almost finished and I broke him in different places. I was frustrated and threw that katsina doll away. After that I spend half of the rest of the day just carving, but something kept telling me: 'Get that doll out of there, get that doll out of there.' Finally I said, 'Okay, there is something I have to get clear here.' So I went back and pulled that doll out and I looked at it, and you could tell the doll didn't feel good. You could tell in the doll's face and eyes. So I glued it back together and hung it up on the wall. The next day I fixed it up, and sold it right away, and the person really loved it. I knew that it wanted to go. I learned to respect my work and take my time. If I don't take things right, in time, and I try to make things move too fast, things aren't going to work out.
"It's not just an art form. It's a tradition. It's spiritual. They say one of these days when you pass away you're going to become a katsina."
Hopis notice how Philbert's dolls show his deep commitment to tradition and spirituality. Seeing the way Philbert carves makes the elders happy because not many people carve in this style. They tell Philbert, "This is the way a doll used to look when I was a child, and it brings back my childhood memories."
"I think it's great," Philbert said.