Colleen Lucero is the managing director of the Hopivewat Learning center and the founder of the Hopi Harvey Project, which preserves the stories of Hopi elders who worked for the Fred Harvey Company and helped to shape tourism at the Grand Canyon. On this episode, listen as Colleen shares stories about what inspired her robust career and speaks about her efforts to document, share, and preserve familial histories of Hopi elders through the Hopi Harvey Project with the help of cantaloupe a-la-mode.

---

TRANSCRIPT:

---

Elle: Welcome to the Behind The Scenery podcast. Today, we'll be chatting with Colleen Lucero, a woman who has played a major role in showcasing the historic roles of Hopi women in the Fred Harvey Company.

Colleen: (Introduction in Hopi) My name is Colleen Lucero and I'm from the village of Hotevilla, and I'm Katsina clan. Yeah, and currently I'm the managing director for the Hopivewat Learning Center. It's a historical project that we revived in trying to create a Hopi cultural Education Center for the Hopi people. The Hopis have been trying to build their own museum / Learning Center for about 40 years. I actually changed careers, I went back to school, and I came back and kind of dusted off the old plans with a group of other individuals, and we asked tribal council if we could revive the project, but with emphasis [that] we would become a nonprofit. So that happened in 2007 - so I'm just happy, and I've always loved history and I've always loved sharing about our culture and so it's just nice - to be - to have what I enjoy fit into a career, so to speak, yeah.

Elle: Absolutely.

Colleen: The Hopi Harvey Project is a traveling exhibition that showcases the contributions made by the Hopi people, and in that is their stories, their oral histories, talking about when they work for Fred Harvey, and then also historical photos that have been shared with permission to share and to show other people that this is who they were at that time. And then also, donated items to The Harvey Project, such as vintage brochures, we have glass plates used to make postcards with a Hopi image on it, and even some restricted items that are not appropriate to share. But a lot of people have been donating items toward the project because they know that family members might not appreciate them later. So, in a nutshell, that's all that's included in the travelling exhibition, and it continues to grow. And then we're hoping to house all this material, the interviews, the photos, the collections material, at the Learning Center someday and let it be a part of that era of our modern histories.

Elle: Yeah, that always makes it very helpful. So, the Hopi Harvey girls Project is something that you did within The Learning Center. Can you tell me more about it?

Colleen: Yeah, well, actually, I did it when I was going to school.

Elle: Oh.

Colleen: I was attending the Institute of American Indian Arts, pursuing my degree in Museum Studies and so we had to pick a senior thesis, senior project. So, I was gearing up toward it. My grandmother, I'm really close with my grandmother, and when we used to go to our town days, like from the reservation to the next border town, she would always tell me these stories about when she worked at the La Posada. And as I got older, I tried to do the research myself, read books that were written about Fred Harvey. But our histories were never in those books. They were always about the other perspective and so, I thought about it, and I said, wouldn't it be great to have - do a mini exhibit about this because Harvey girls are only supposed to be known as white Anglo women, nobody of color? And so, it was kind of hard to believe when you would ask somebody else about it. And then, sadly, my grandmother died my junior year. And in Hopi we respect the dead, and we’re not supposed to talk about them, we're not supposed to bring them up if it's going to cause us discomfort, or, there's just certain cultural protocols about that. So, I thought maybe, I shouldn't do it. And um - but in going through her things, I found all the stuff she would talk about. All her friends, pictures and it kind of just, I felt like it was tugging at me like, you know, you really should just - this is for you now to share with others. And so, I decided for it to be a memoir to my grandmother. And as I started to do more research as to who those people were in there, she wasn't the only one that worked for Fred Harvey from the Hopi community, there was actually a lot of people, men and women.

Elle: Yeah.

Colleen: And so, the more and more I explored, that's when I decided to call it the Hopi Harvey Project and just showcasing all the elders and their contributions to at Harvey Company. And like I said, you know, a lot of stories were told at the other side of the tracks, but never ours. And so yeah, that's how it all began.

Elle: That’s a really beautiful story. Really touching.

Colleen: Yeah, it was hard for me at first, but I know I found strength in the other people who were still alive that, that should be shared also and so they comfort me a lot. And my mom used to say, “All you ever do is hang out with old ladies.”

*laughing*

Colleen: But yeah, it was a lot. There was a time there that I would go see this person, that person, and you know, you kind of get attached to them, and they were happy too that somebody was taking an interest in that time period because, it was way before my time, yeah, I’d only known of it because of my grandmother. Yeah.

Elle: Did you ever find that anyone would push back against wanting to share their story or most or were most people really excited to share?

Colleen: I think at first, that's always the case with native elders because they have a lot of trauma with like people being invasive, people not accepting them for who they are. And so, I think it was important for me to show them who I was, what village I was coming from, who my family was, and most importantly, the story of my grandmother, that kind of helped break down those barriers, you know. I wasn't just somebody who was basically demanding information from them and making them uncomfortable, and I wanted to be an advocate for that. Like, so at first it was just reassuring them that this is what I would do, that what I was trying to do, and I wasn't going to exploit any of the information and if there was something that they didn’t want to be shared, then I would respect them.

Elle: So,do you think that doing this project was kind of a path of healing for you and for you personally with your grandmother, with the loss there and with your community as a whole?

Colleen: Yeah, most definitely. And it helped ensure all our values that we talk about in Hopi and that's that they live on within us. They live on with what we were taught. And so, it just reiterated what I'm sure she probably would have wanted it for me, and a lot of times when we miss people that are gone, we have to kind of look for the different signs and the different ways in the air, or just that feeling of comfort. So, I saw that a lot of the other people that were becoming a part of the project too.

Elle: Yeah, absolutely. So, circling back around to the project itself and thinking about the stories of these women, how did they manage the intersection of working for Fred Harvey with their cultural traditions?

Colleen: The good part was that these women, the locations weren't so far, you know, they were working at Winslow, they were working at Grand Canyon very seldomly, they would get shipped out to like Death Valley or Seligman. And so, these areas were relatively close to home. So, they could go back and participate like when ceremonies would come up. But I also want to mention that you know they were the first, I guess, to really step out and be able to show us that we could balance both worlds by having a working profession and skill. Being a part of our culture and carrying that on, I think it was really important to acknowledge them as them taking that step instead of not trying to make a means for themselves. And whatever they made, they always brought it home and put it towards something toward the community or to help their families. It helped them be more self-sufficient.

Elle: Yeah. When you said like shipped off per se to further away locations, did they have autonomy to choose where they got to work or did they just sign up to work for Fred Harvey? And then they got put where they were needed?

Colleen: Yeah, I believe it was that way. And I think when they got signed up, everybody saw a potential in them and then said there were these other job opportunities and so they would go. Because I never heard anyone of them say, “well, we were forced, and we had no choice but to go.” You know, it was an option for them to advance, they thought of it. So, I don't think there was, I don't think they were forced to go, it was just what opportunities were available to them.

Elle: Absolutely. What started you down this path of research and storytelling? You talked a little bit about your grandmother and your senior thesis.

Colleen: I at a very early age, I went to a museum in New York. And it was a new Native American museum, you know, and we went there, and I came across my tribe, and it was just one little thing. And I told my friend who wasn't Hopi, I told her at the time she was my sponsor, I said “God, you know, there's so much more to us than this.” And so, at a very young age, I wanted to change that narrative. I wanted to be able to tell people about us in a more respectful way because, it's always just like bits and pieces and it's, like I said earlier, it's always demanded what people want of us to learn about our tribe, the Hopi tribe. But it's never what we want people to learn about us, and so, I