On October 3, 1999, my wife and I went to the US for a two-week holiday trip. We arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, after a 17 hour journey and were quite exhausted, of course. Our hotel was the Mountain Shadow Resort in Scottsdale, which is a suburb of Phoenix. After our arrival at the hotel and checking - in, we relaxed the rest of the day. The next morning after breakfast I phoned Ms. Denelle Prieto,a native American of Hopi and Pima descent, for an appointment in the afternoon. We decided to meet in the lobby of the hotel by 2 p.m.          After Ms. Prieto had arrived at the hotel we introduced each other and gave her some presents of our teacher of English, Mr. Seidensticker, and our school principal, Mr. Joachim Klenner. We also got some beautiful presents for Ms. Thiemann and Mr. Schroeter (two students of our school) and Mr. Seidensticker in return. Right after that we entered her car and went to the reservation of the Pima native Americans, which is located directly East of the brandnew Highway I - 10. As a matter of fact, this Highway was built through the holy burial grounds of the Pima Indian Tribe. Some medicine man had to do a ceremony to get the buried Indian ancestors out of the ground. The Indians got a compensation for the usage of their reservation grounds.          We drove to the Hoo-hoogam Ki Museum, where ancient basketry and harvesting tools are exhibited. It's quite impressive how the Pima ancestors made their living in the old times. We saw some very old baskets, which are three or four hundred years old and still being used for daily work. We took a lot of photographs and after the museum tour we went to the community center. The staff told us that there are more than 6500 members on the reservation and that it was founded in 1879. They have a high school as well as a shopping mall right on the reservation. The police force on reservation grounds is purely Pima. There is no supervising from Arizona State Troopers. Nearly all the people on the reservation are employed by the Pima community, which is running two casinos on reservation grounds. So we were told that the reservation has a good financial situation. After this little journey into modern native American life, which we appreciated a lot, Ms. Prieto showed us some additional nice spots in Phoenix which were also quite impressive. After that we said good - bye for this time and went back to our hotel in Scottsdale. All the best to Ms. Denelle Prieto and the Pima native American nation from Bielefeld!! 51ab 485