Kokopelli: The Making of an Icon

Ekkehart Malotki

U of Nebraska Press, Jan 1, 2004 - Social Science - 161 pages

Kokopelli the flute player is one of the most popular icons that American culture has adopted from the Native peoples of North America. The Kokopelli name and image are everywhere, adorning everything from jewelry, welcome mats, T-shirts, and money clips to motels, freeway underpasses, nature trails, nightclubs, and string quartets. Kokopelli evokes mystery and wonder, ancient ceremonies andøspirituality, Mother Earth and the purity of nature.

But what exactly is Kokopelli? Just how Native American is this ubiquitous flute player? In this fascinating book, the distinguished scholar of Hopi culture and history Ekkehart Malotki describes the development of the Kokopelli phenomenon in American mass culture from its beginning to Kokopelli?s present status as pan-Southwestern icon. He explores the figure?s connections with the Hopi kachina god Kookop”l” and Maahu, the cicada, and discusses how this rock-art image has been appropriated and misunderstood. Kokopelli sheds light on a little-understood aspect of Hopi culture and testifies to the continuing power of Native cultures to spark the popular imagination and interest of outsiders.

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Kokopelli: the making of an icon

User Review  - Not Available - Book Verdict

The Southwestern image of the flute player Kokopelli can be found on jewelry, T-shirts, and welcome mats and is now almost as familiar as the howling coyote. Here Malotki (languages, Northern Arizona ...

Contents

• IV: 17
• V: 48
• VI: 61
• VII: 81
• VIII: 88
• IX: 95
• X: 100
• XI: 106
• XII: 114
• XIII: 136
• XIV: 141
• XV: 146
• XVI: 157

Popular passages

Page 148 - Medicine Men and the Preservation of a Relict Gene in Maize.

Page 148 - A Reed Pierced the Sky: Hopi Indian Cosmography on Third Mesa, Arizona', in: Numen 31, 216-241.

Page 3 - Earth has come into existence in America largely during the last one hundred years and that her existence stems primarily from two creative groups: scholars and Indians

Page 153 - Slifer, Dennis, and James Duffield 1994 Kokopelli: Flute Player Images in Rock Art. Santa Fe: Ancient City Press. Smith, Watson 1952 "Kiva Mural Decorations at Awatovi and Kawaika-a.

About the author

Ekkehart Malotki is a professor of languages at Northern Arizona University. His many books include The Bedbugs? Night Dance and Other Hopi Tales of Sexual Encounter and Hopi Tales of Destruction, both available from the University of Nebraska Press.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Kokopelli: The Making of an Icon; Bison books
• Author: Ekkehart Malotki
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: U of Nebraska Press, 2004
• ISBN: 0803282958, 9780803282957
• Length: 161 pages
• Subjects: History / United States / State & Local / General; Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social; Social Science / Ethnic Studies / Native American Studies