On February 6, 1999, the world lost one of its leading messengers, for nonviolence and the spiritual reawakening necessary to change the course of human history off of the path towards total destruction and onto the path towards true peace and harmony among all life, with the passing of 89 year old Hopi Prophecy spokesman Thomas Banyacya.

Inspired by the great Hopi Elder Yukiuma whom he regarded as "The Hopi Gandhi", Banyacya spent seven years in prison in the 1940's because of his steadfast conscientious objection to registering for military service. After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was seen by the Hopi spiritual leaders as a fulfillment of their ancient prophecies about "the gourd of ashes falling on the Earth two times", in December of 1948, those leaders from the various Hopi villages and religious societies met for the first time in history to compare their previously secret knowledge as per their ancient instructions handed down through the generations.   Banyacya was commissioned at that meeting to bring to the outside world the Message of Peace and the warnings for humanity revealed at this meeting.  

For the rest of his life he firmly held true to this commitment, despite hardships and criticisms, and traveled widely to carry their message and in the process helped to inspire the revival of the traditional Indigenous American cultures over the past decades.  Devoting himself totally to this mission, he still lived a simple lifestyle and he and his family survived as best they could in the traditional ways with some help from the minimal donations of people who supported his work.

Banyacya felt that his life's mission was fulfilled, after decades of unsuccessful attempts, when he was able to bring the Hopi message and spokesmen to the United Nations (the "house of mica" predicted by the Hopi prophecies) to deliver their messages in 1992 and 1993 in the context of the gathering of global indigenous leaders who came on the occasion of the United Nations designation of 1993 as the International Year of the World's Indigenous Peoples and 1995-2004 as the International Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples.

His message was simple yet still inscrutable to the mind of "Western Civilization", that all of the problems of modern society are rooted in an error in human thinking clouded by attachments to the world of material comforts and that to solve all of these problems we only have to reawaken spiritually to the innate human/spiritual relationship to all life as our relations, and to all people as one human race.  He was convinced that the simple spiritually focused lifestyle is the only one which will survive in these times of increasing wars, violence and even natural disasters brought on by this error in human thinking.   His life was an inspiration, for so very many people, to respect the ancient wisdom of the traditional indigenous cultures of our beloved Mother Earth.  Decades before scientists recognized the currently evident signs of global climate change he was warning that the actions of industrial society would bring on the calamities we now see all around the world with increasingly devastating storms, earthquakes, etc.   Society would be well advised to heed this wisdom and take action before it is too late.

The greatest tragedy of his passing is that the many documents he has produced and accumulated over the years have not yet reached general pubic attention, but with the capability of the internet today perhaps his wife and children will get the help that they need to bring out these teachings into this realm of modern communications.