Because Mercy Has A Human Heart

Introduction

The question has been asked: Why would a Native American organization – The Hopi Foundation -- be interested in healing survivors of torture? And why would the Hopi sponsor an international humanitarian award named after a woman – Barbara Chester – born and reared in New York?

The answer can be expressed in the translation of a Hopi word, one that represents a significant and beautiful love between Barbara Chester, the Hopi people, and humankind.

The phrase, qatsit namiwiwta, means: “To intertwine their life ways.”

The Intertwining Life Ways

This sense of interconnected unity is not just an abstract goal. Founded in 1985, Hopi people established The Hopi Foundation to provide a community-based, non-governmental alternative to promote self-reliance in the spirit of Lomasumi’nangtuksiwmani – the process of furthering unity of aspiration blossoming into full maturity over time. Entirely Hopi run, The Hopi Foundation engages in activities and programs that foster the preservation and revitalization of cultural strengths and self-determination for the benefit of all people, and the reconciliation of conflict among societies.

In 1992, The Hopi Foundation acted to address the needs of their indigenous counterparts to the south. During the 1970s and 1980s, repressive governments of Central and South America increased their use of torture as a tactic to intimidate perceived enemies. The result was a flood of refugees north to the United States, many of them women and children, many torture survivors. In fact the U.S.-Mexican border became a gateway for people across the world to escape torture and violence. The Hopi Foundation’s Board of Trustees noted that it was particularly fitting that the Hopi – known as people of peace – be the originating force for a project dedicated to healing the destructive legacy of violence.

In 1992, working with The Hopi Foundation, Barbara founded the Center for the Prevention and Resolution of Violence (CPRV) in Tucson, Arizona. CPRV joined forces with members of the courageous Sanctuary Movement and the Southside Presbyterian Church to provide multidisciplinary and integrated care to refugees and others impacted by torture and violence. The CPRV provided and facilitated medical treatment, psychotherapy, alternative forms of healing, and client advocacy and education, and ran an anti-violence prevention program for youth. Today, The Hopi Foundation continues to support Owl & Panther, a creative writing program for youth and their families

Barbara Chester

Barbara Chester was born in 1950 and died in 1997. In between occurred a most remarkable journey. She received her Ph.D. in Behavioral Genetics and Psychology from the University of Minnesota in 1976. A graduate school mentor commented that Barbara “listened to a different drummer.” That drummer was the human heart, and for the next 21 years her work would heal that drumbeat.

Barbara was first and foremost a healer and transformer of pain. She worked with female prison inmates, then established the nationally recognized Sexual Violence Center in Minneapolis. In 1985, once the Sexual Violence Center was solidly established, Barbara’s attention turned. The Governor of Minnesota had proposed a unique cutting-edge program.

In the 1980s, the Danish established the first center for the rehabilitation of survivors of torture in Copenhagen; no such clinical facility existed in the United States. In 1986 with Barbara Chester as Executive Director, the Center for Victims of Torture opened in Minneapolis. The Center has served hundreds of torture survivors from every continent but Antartica and is viewed as a premier center.

Each year from 1986 to 1990, Barbara Chester would take leave of her residence and work in Minneapolis to pay her respects to the Hopi Indians in northeastern Arizona. For Barbara, Hopi embraced both universal and diverse elements of life. These visits instilled in her clarity of thought and a sense of well being. By 1991 Barbara was the Clinical Director of the Center for Victims of Torture and, with the future of the Center assured, she moved to Arizona. There she worked with several American Indian tribes including the Havasupai, Hopi, and Navajo.

The Hopi

The Hopi are considered to be oldest and most traditional continuous settlement in North America. The Hopi people are one of the few indigenous people who were not completely removed from their ancestral lands by conquest. As a result of their deep cultural roots, physical isolation, and resistance to dominant culture, the Hopi have continued with, and retained much of their traditional ways.

For the Hopi, work, prayer, the secular and sacred are all an integrated process of life. To be Hopi is to be a person who seeks proper relationships with all aspects of the world. Barbara Chester’s universal spirit would meld with the Hopi’s.

The Intertwining Life Ways

The Barbara Chester Award

Throughout her work and her being, Barbara became part of the Hopi family. In 1997, upon learning of Barbara’s serious illness, The Hopi Foundation Board formally recognized her with the following resolution:

- “Contributing to the building of the Hopi Foundation through her commitment, dedication, friendship, work, and love;

Devoting her life to making life better for all peoples in the world;
Upholding and supporting the teachings of local indigenous societies learning to help themselves; and
Restoring the lives and hopes of families and children torn apart by conflict and violence through the establishment of the CPRV.”

The Hopi Foundation declared Barbara Chester to be a member of the Hopi Foundation family now and forever.”

Upon her death in October 1997, The Hopi Foundation, family and friends of Barbara established the Barbara Chester Award. In issuing this award, The Foundation and other supporters wished to: (1) honor outstanding persons undertaking the arduous and often dangerous work of providing healing services in circumstances of torture; (2) call attention to such abuses directed against specific regions and communities; and (3) draw worldwide support for prevention of torture and associated trauma.

The Award includes a cash prize of U.S. $10,000, and a handcrafted silver eagle feather sculpture featuring Hopi symbolism for healing and qa tutsawinvu – “freedom from fear of intimidation from any source.” The Barbara Chester Award embodies Hopi values of caring, healing, and courage: the same values by which Barbara lived her life.