A truly wonderful gift from Old Flagstaff days (a beautiful Kachina or Katsina with many good and positive powers)

A truly wonderful gift from Old Flagstaff days (a beautiful Hopi Kachina or Katsina with many good and positive powers.    (See attachment for the best photo or you can move around at the bottom.)

A Kachina (or to use the Hopi term, Katsina) is an intricately carved figure done by Native artisans, from cottonwood, and appropriately covered with specific symbolic designs. A Kachina is a depiction of a specific powerful and good spirit force.  There are several hundred different Kachinas.  Hopi Kachinas are the best known.  Other western Pueblo people -- Zuni, Laguna, Isleta -- also have Kachinas and the Navajo have some as well.  (We have a Laguna Kachina that's been in our family for many decades indeed.  A little battered, it may be about 170 years old.)

This Kachina. about one foot high, is a gift to us from Mr. Charles ("Chuck") Saunders.  For some years, Chuck and I have been corresponding. He is an old family friend.  At this point, he is 98.  I was about fifteen years of age when he launched, from Flagstaff, his wide ranging KCLS radio station.  At that point, Flagstaff was very much a cross between a Southern border town and a Western frontier community.  Racially, it was a very difficult setting -- with Natives, especially Navajo people, at much risk.

The KCLS station technologically up and running, one of the first things Chuck did was to institute a daily "Navajo Hour".  A true groundbreaker in the Southwest, this embraced a vast area including the Navajo res -- bigger than the state of West Virginia.  Lots of Navajo news, most of it in the Navajo language.  Occasionally, Indians from other tribes were on the Hour.  The first announcer for Navajo Hour was Raymond Nakai, a good friend of our family, who was with the Hour for some years. Later, Mr Nakai became Chairman of the Navajo Nation.  He was followed by other capable announcers -- including Johnny Rustywire.

"Navajo Hour" was a big step forward in our racially tough setting and in the general region.  And later, in the latter '50s into 1960, Chuck served as Flagstaff mayor.

My letter of appreciation -- which Chuck acknowledged with a gracious note:

August 27 2013

Dear Charles ("Chuck") Saunders -

Your extraordinarily fine gift arrived very safely early yesterday (Monday) evening via UPS.

Mere words can't begin to fully catch the magnificence of this Kachina (Katsina).  I have never seen one as great as this.  Every dimension of the Kachina is intricately done and the holy figure in its totality constitutes fine art in the fullest and highest sense.

We have placed the Kachina very safely on the top of that bookshelf of ours which holds many Native American books.  Next to the Kachina is the sculpted head of a Native man, mounted on a wooden block.  On the other side of the Kachina is a very old basket, likely mid or latter 1800s, well designed -- and from the Colorado River tribes.  All of these are in very fine company with each other.

As your kind note suggests, the Kachina and its outstretched arms, one with gourd rattle and the other with feathered medicine stick, reach out into our living room and are bringing joy and happiness to our family here in Idaho.

And, I might add, never have I seen such careful and fully secure packing.  My good wife, Eldri, and my daughter, Maria, spent a very careful and intricate hour bringing the Kachina into our Light.

My family and I -- and that includes our members far and away -- join me in expressing our greatest appreciation to you.

I very much enjoyed our fine phone visit a couple of weeks ago. Brought back all the early Flagstaff memories.  We will certainly stay in contact.  And if you should make it up Pocatello way, we will be delighted to see you.  And if we should get down to Scottsdale, you will see us.

Our very best wishes to you, Chuck.

Hunter Bear


HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq / 
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO

Check out our massive social justice website
www.hunterbear.org  The site is dedicated to our
one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray, and to Sky Gray:
http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm
.
See my  new expanded/updated "Organizer's Book," 
JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new substantial 
introduction by me. And this book is also an activist's
how-to manual:  http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm   

And see the related http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm 
and also "Fifty Years: Remembering Medgar Evers" :          
 http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/3876

See the Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Many photos.)

Our very substantial page on effective community organizing
techniques: http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm