Between Spirit and Species: Rethinking the Hopi Eagle Ritual
A sacred Hopi ceremony raises profound questions about tradition, animal welfare, and the future of an ancient rite.
Each spring, atop the mesas of northeastern Arizona, Hopi youth ascend to rooftops carrying live eaglets. With solemn reverence, they gently place the young birds into coops to await a sacred role. In a few months, each will be fed wild rabbits, given a name, honored with gifts, and then—on a specific day—ritually sacrificed so that their spirits may carry human prayers to the Creator.
Known as the nami’ya, this eagle sacrifice tradition has been performed for centuries. Some Hopi elders say it honors the powerful birds who once helped their ancestors survive in times of drought. Others assert the rite renews cosmic balance and connects the tribe to its ancestral roots.
Yet in recent decades, this sacred ritual has come under increasing scrutiny—from both outside the tribe and within.
A Ritual in Conflict
Federal law protects eagles under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, making it illegal to possess, harm, or kill eagles without a permit. Yet the U.S. government has made narrow exceptions for certain Native American tribes whose religious ceremonies involve eagle parts or live birds.
For decades, the Hopi have been granted one of the few federal permits allowing the capture and sacrifice of golden eaglets. Each spring, tribal members climb to rocky nests in the high desert to take a limited number of chicks before they can fly. The birds are then raised in captivity, often on rooftops near their handlers, until the ceremonial day.
Animal welfare advocates argue this practice constitutes cruelty. “Eagles are majestic, sentient animals entitled to respect and protection, not rooftop captivity and ritual slaughter,” says Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy. “Religious freedom is a bedrock value, but animal sacrifice is not a matter of speech but conduct at odds with our core, culturally cross-cutting opposition to animal cruelty.”
Some Hopis are beginning to agree. As early as 1996, Hopi anthropologist Lyle Balenquah called for a reevaluation of the practice, asserting that “Hopi society is dynamic” and must adapt to evolving ethical considerations, including conservation and animal welfare. “Our traditions should not be beyond scrutiny,” he wrote in an editorial for the Hopi Tutuveni. His forward-thinking call for reform in the face of modern concerns about wildlife conservation now resonates more than ever among those questioning the ritual.
Conservationists Caught in the Middle
Golden eagles are not endangered nationwide, but they face serious threats, especially in the Southwest. Habitat loss, lead poisoning from bullet fragments in prey, electrocution on power poles, and wind turbine collisions have all taken a toll. Conservationists worry that eagle take—legal or not—may be unsustainable in some areas.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has attempted to walk a tightrope: respecting tribal sovereignty while safeguarding eagle populations. In recent years, the agency has reduced the number of birds the Hopi may collect, tightened monitoring requirements, and encouraged alternatives—such as using naturally deceased eagles from the National Eagle Repository.
But the tribe has resisted these changes. In 2003, the Hopi Nation sued the federal government to restore their eagle permit after it was suspended. The court sided with the tribe, citing religious freedom protections under the First Amendment and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act.
Since then, tribal leaders have continued to defend the ritual. “The eagle ceremony is not a performance or a curiosity,” said Leigh Kuwanwisiwma, then Director of the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office, in an interview with The Arizona Republic. “It’s a spiritual obligation. The birds are honored, not exploited.”
A Culture at a Crossroads
The eagle ceremony exemplifies a larger dilemma facing many Indigenous cultures: how to maintain sacred traditions in a world increasingly governed by animal protection laws, ecological limits, and shifting ethical norms.
Anthropologist Dr. Michael Kotutwa Johnson, a Hopi farmer and researcher at the University of Arizona, has called for dialogue rather than condemnation. “We need to find common ground between tradition and contemporary values. It doesn’t have to be one or the other”.
Indeed, other tribes have found alternatives. The Zuni, once eagle takers themselves, now rely on eagle feathers collected from natural mortalities or obtained legally through the federal repository. A Zuni Cultural Affairs spokesperson explained: “Our ancestors spoke through ritual. Today, we speak through adaptation”.
Back on the Hopi mesas, a quiet conversation is beginning. Some say the sacred intent behind the eagle ceremony could be preserved through symbolic or alternative practices. Others remain firmly rooted in the original rite.
But as golden eagles become increasingly vulnerable and animal ethics evolve, a choice is coming into sharper focus.
“Maybe we no longer need to take the life of an eagle to send our prayers,” Balenquah once wrote. “Maybe it’s time to let the eagle fly”.
Take Action
The debate over eagle sacrifices challenges us to find common ground between cultural heritage and compassion for animals. Animal Wellness Action is addressing this issue with both conviction and cultural sensitivity—working toward solutions that respect Indigenous traditions while upholding our shared commitment to preventing cruelty.
👉 Join the effort and support a path forward where human dignity and animal protection coexist.
References
Balenquah, L. (1996). Our traditions should not be beyond scrutiny. Hopi Tutuveni.
Johnson, M. K. (personal communication, April 2025).
Kuwanwisiwma, L. (2008). The eagle ceremony is not a performance or a curiosity. The Arizona Republic, Sept. 7.
Pacelle, W. (personal communication, April 2025).
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. (2023). Eagle Permits Guidance. Retrieved from https://www.fws.gov/eagle-permits
Zuni Pueblo Cultural Affairs Office. (2022). Our ancestors spoke through ritual. Today, we speak through adaptation. Press release.
Ed Boks is a former Executive Director of the New York City, City of Los Angeles, and Maricopa County Animal Care & Control Departments, and a former Board Director of the National Animal Control Association. His work has been published in the LA Times, New York Times, Newsweek, Real Clear Policy, Sentient Media, and now on Animal Politics with Ed Boks.
Stay Informed
For more analysis and updates on the evolving landscape of animal welfare policy, visit Animal Politics with Ed Boks.
I agree with Balenquah: ..let the eagles fly.
Thanks for an excellent report, Ed. Yet to be explained to most observers, however, is why the Hopi eagle & redtail ritual has persisted, even when the weight & ferocity of the Spanish Inquisition was applied to try to stop it nearly 500 years ago, soon after the arrival of Spanish conquistadores from Mexico. In gist, eagles are the sacred totems of the Navajo; redtails are the totems of the Apache. For approximately 1,000 years the ancestors of the modern-day Navajo and Apache, invading the American Southwest from the north, treated the Pueblo civilization built by the Hopi and related tribes like a larder. During droughts between roughly 1080 and 1580, archaeologists have learned, Navajo and Apache raiders often stole Pueblo corn, massacred Pueblo adults, and cannibalized the children. Cannibalism faded out as the drought cycle eased, but that more-or-less coincided with the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores, followed by ranchers and priests. The Spanish subjugated what remained of the Pueblo civilization and converted the survivors—nominally––to Catholicism. The Navajo and Apache meanwhile captured runaway Spanish horses, sometimes traded for stolen horses with the Hopi; stole horses themselves, both from the Spanish and each other; and relatively rapidly developed formidable cavalry cultures. The Hopi mostly did not become a mounted people, tending to accept Spanish conquest and conversion to Catholicism in hopes of gaining military protection from the Navajo and Apache. Sometimes that strategy succeeded. However, often unable to distinguish one tribe from another, Spanish garrisons at times retaliated for Apache mayhem inflicted on remote missions by killing any Hopi or Navajo people they found nearby, often at least as gruesomely as the Apache had killed Spanish victims. The Spanish enslaved many Hopi and set them to work herding sheep; the Navajo mostly fled into rugged habitat where the Spanish had difficulty maintaining pursuit. Hopi revolts between 1680 and 1700 drove the Spanish out, never to return. This appears to have been the one Hopi manifestation of military might ever, & succeeded mainly because the Hopi knew the terrain; the Spanish didn’t. The Navajo and Apache, meanwhile, had acquired sheep and goats much as they had acquired horses, through the combination of trading and theft, stealing most often from the Hopi. Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821, including nominal title to all of what is now the U.S. Southwest, but showed little interest in governing either Hopi, Navajo, or Apache-occupied territory. When the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican War of 1846-1848, bringing the Southwest into the United States, the Hopi almost immediately appealed to the U.S. government for defense against the Navajo and the Apache. Eventually, in 1861-1864, the U.S. Cavalry, under Lieutenant Colonel Kit Carson, destroyed the Navajo and Apache raiding culture, heightening the ancient enmities among the Hopi, Navajo, and Apache. Carson ended the last Navajo resistance by poisoning and shooting all of the Navajo sheep his troops could find, also cutting and burning thousands of wild peach trees to starve the remnant Navajo into submission. Forced marches of Navajo survivors to concentration camps followed. After the U.S. Civil War ended, several years later, the Navajo were given new sheep, and were moved to the fringes of Hopi land in the dry and desolate Four Corners area, where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah meet. There––with Navajos surrounding the much less numerous Hopi––the tribes have uneasily coexisted ever since. Unable for most of a millennium to mount effective armed responses to Navajo and Apache raiders, retreating instead into their almost inaccessible cliff dwelling strongholds to avoid attack, the Hopi had evolved & continued a religious ritual which defied the Navajo and Apache by mocking their totems. Over time, the eaglet-and-hawk-killing ritual has been explained in various other ways, for instance as a substitute for child sacrifice. A more popular explanation in recent years is that the eaglets and young redtails are “spoiled” as if they were privileged children, then dispatched to tell the gods of Hopi kindness and generosity. Yet the simplest, most obvious explanation is simply that the ferocity of the Navajo and Apache totems is overcome by the corn meal, symbolic of Hopi agricultural productivity, which enabled the Hopi to survive the centuries of drought even as the Apache and Navajo resorted to cannibalism. The Hopi eagle & redtail ritual has continued, even when Spanish invaders burned some who practiced it at the stake for alleged devil worship, because many Hopi have long equated it with the survival of their people, & to an extent still do.