Carving out a history: Mavasta Honyouti tells a story of resistance through his art

When Hopi artist Mavasta Honyouti was a boy, he watched his grandfather tenderly care for the corn that fed his family.

During breaks, his grandfather would take out a piece of paako (cottonwood) root and use his pocketknife to whittle away. He made beautiful carvings that Honyouti would later learn to do himself.

A Santa Fe Indian Market award-winning carver, Honyouti was puzzled when a book publisher asked him if he had a story to tell.

Carving out a history: Mavasta Honyouti tells a story of resistance through his art

“At first, I didn’t think I did,” said Honyouti, who also teaches middle school social studies.

But he thought back to his grandfather, who survived a government-enforced boarding school. Like many Native American children across the country in the late 19th and early 20th century, he was forced to leave Hopi Pueblo as a child and go to a residential boarding school far away. The government cut his hair, punished him for speaking his native language, and gave him a new name. But he never forgot who he was – or where he came from – and he tried to escape again and again.

He returned to his pueblo, his language and culture intact. Many of his fellow students never returned, the victims of abuse, malnutrition, disease and/or abandonment.

“When he arrived, they would gather the children and make them choose an English name. He chose Clyde,” Honyouti said.

The results were “Coming Home: A Hopi Resistance Story,” a bilingual (Hopi/English) children’s book Honyouti wrote and illustrated with his own carved and painted cottonwood root plaques. Santa Fe’s Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian is showcasing those 16 panels and 30 years of Honyouti’s carvings through April 12, 2025, with “Carved Stories.”

Honyouti hails from a family of Hopi katsina carvers. The work of his father Ron, his uncle Richard and his brother Kevin are also featured in the exhibition.

Once he agreed to the project, Honyouti began sketching scenes to illustrate the book.

“It was the first time I’d ever done digital sketches,” he said. “It tells about his time at the boarding school at Hopi. He was a little boy. His parents hid him from the agents. They capture him and he gets taken to a school. They threatened his father to be arrested.

“He finished his eighth year and he returned to his family and he never went back.”

Honyouti still remembers watching his grandfather (his kwa’a) tending the corn for hours.

“I imagine his field was his happy place,” he said. “I can picture him sitting in his field so he could feed his family. Those seeds were handed down for three generations.”

The book opens with Honyouti and his grandfather in the cornfield.

“I’ll always know him as being pretty quiet, always hard-working,” he added.

The carved tiles are unique to his family, Honyouti acknowledged. He wanted to show his family and how they connected.

“I thought the best way to display that was through plaques,” he said.

The book cover showing Honyouti’s grandfather walking away from the boarding school toward his waiting parents touches him the most.

“I thought of him in the middle, leaving that world of school and returning to his family and all the things he never forgot. There’s all these children standing in a line watching. When is it going to be my turn?

“Sometimes the parents never came back for them. That’s the part that really got to me.”

The “resistance” reference in the subtitle claims his grandfather as a survivor, Honyouti said.

“He never let go of his identity, his legacy and his ways. Even though they were stripped of their culture, their identity, they resisted.”