Update: In November 2022, Indian Garden was officially renamed Havasupai Gardens in Grand Canyon National Park. Read the press release ›
In 2019, Grand Canyon National Park is celebrating its 100-year anniversary, but, as Indigenous people in the area, we see this anniversary from a different point of view. It has been 100 years of drastic changes, from relocation to language shift to adapting to a society of commercialism already well into the industrial age.
A little over a year ago, in anticipation of the park’s centennial, a group of tribal members who connect to the Grand Canyon as home began meeting to discuss what this anniversary means to us and how to get involved. But in order for that process to happen, we first had to take a deep breath and review the past, acknowledging the generations before us, what they have gone through, and how that impacts us as tribal members into this present day. Many of the shared stories are of sadness, but also of hope for future generations. One member of our group is Ophelia Watahomigie-Corliss, of the Havasupai Tribe, and this is her story.
–Sarana Riggs, Intertribal Centennial Conversations
BY OPHELIA WATAHOMIGIE-CORLISS
Ophelia Watahomigie-Corliss. AMY S. MARTIN
And as the great condor spread open its wings to fly out from the bottom of the canyon, the peoples upon its back prepared for flight. The peoples who remained at the bottom of the canyon would eventually become known as the Havasu ‘Baaja, the people of the blue-green water, the Havasupai. Spiraling out, feathered wings glided across the canyon walls, and with every completed spiral upward a new layer of the Grand Canyon was created. Soaring into the sky, Condor began to slow, and the people understood the final time had come. No longer able to live as one tribe, the people began to gather in groups, conversing amongst themselves about which direction they would move into the future.
Condor landed in the north, Condor landed in the east, Condor landed in the south, and Condor landed in the west. These are the four sacred directions where our sister tribes left the safety of Condor’s wings and climbed down to the Earth. Condor landed in the four sacred directions, allowing the people to climb down, then Condor landed in between these directions, letting the remaining groups of people off, until no one was left. Our relations left the canyon in search of something that was calling them. They knew, one day soon, they would find the land that called for them to protect it, the land each tribe has now been protecting since time immemorial, up to this very day.
These directions created an ancient symbol for my people, representing how we all used to be one tribe and to live as one people, and, when we couldn’t, we traveled into the sacred directions, to lands we now steward. This symbol resembles the swastika shape the Nazi regime stole, but ours has no borders. It symbolizes the unity we all have, a unity that still exists in modern times: our unity. Its instructions are flawless, swift like the wind, tattooed on our skin, adorned on our baskets, or drawn into earth; it is a strong reminder. You can observe the arms moving to the right on the outside of a basket, while inside the basket, the arms move left. This symbol forever memorializes our ability to adapt, to survive, and to always remember where we came from, where our people emerged: the embryonic lifeblood of the Grand Canyon.
I am proud to say that I have an identity and I know exactly where my culture has lived. It is a gift to be a member of the Havasupai Tribe, the only tribe left living at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, the tribe whose lands of Flagstaff, Valle, Grand Canyon, Williams, Parks, Bellemont, Ashfork, Red Lake, and Seligman many other people now call home. We are the only tribe who still has part of its membership living inside Grand Canyon National Park, and we are the people whom the National Park Service waged a personal war against to establish the park.
Last February, I was told Grand Canyon National Park was creating a schedule of events to celebrate the park’s 100-year anniversary, and the park events didn’t seem inclusive of Native American perspectives. This is indicative of the institutionalized discrimination that has become a part of the American story line and of the disregard for the Indigenous peoples’ land we all live on, as well as our Indigenous thoughts, our spirituality, our traditional government structures that existed for millennia before the arrival of the dominant class.
Indigenous peoples were forced to sit back and watch the land be used in ways we could have never imagined, in ways our people swore to prevent. The cries of our ancestors are asking us to find modern ways to protect our land from further contamination and destruction.
The activism of the Intertribal Centennial Conversations discussions currently hosted by the Grand Canyon Trust has brought together Indigenous voices from as many of the Grand Canyon tribes as were available to participate. From the very beginning, the group was passionate about creating recommendations to the national park that would help to better educate Grand Canyon visitors about the canyon’s original inhabitants: us. We decided unanimously that the tribes are celebrating thousands of years, while the park celebrates its first 100. The Intertribal Centennial Conversations has a vision and a mission we hope to accomplish through the interpretation of our stories.
Intertribal Centennial Conversations Vision Statement
We, the descendants of ancestral inhabitants of the Grand Canyon, acknowledge the spiritual pathways of our ancestors by commemorating our indigenous presence and sharing our true history while we begin to heal, build, and strengthen relationships with all people to protect Grand Canyon’s heritage.
We strive to provide you with authentic tribal crafts that represent Indigenous economic opportunity at Grand Canyon events throughout the year and to communicate to you our plan for stewardship, the kind that has been protecting the canyon throughout the ages.
The Havasupai actively occupied what is now known as the south rim of the Grand Canyon, with small scattered bands of families living both on the rim and in the canyon, in a location now known as Indian Garden.
When President Woodrow Wilson turned this area into a national park, the park service restricted the Havasupai to an area now known as Supai Camp. Park employees kept noticing a Native man walking up and down the canyon walls to Indian Garden, and they began to call him Billy Burro. After all, he could hike up and down those walls just like a mule. This man and his family were pushed out of Indian Garden, forced to leave the land they had farmed for generations so the national park could make it theirs. Billy Burro’s daily trail was turned into what is most of Bright Angel Trail today.
Nevertheless, throughout the generations, his family members survived racism and displacement. They changed their name to Tilousi, which means “storyteller.” Today the family’s cherished elder of the tribe, Rex Tilousi, is world-renowned for his efforts against the uranium mining that threatens our lands and our only water source. Locally cherished for the songs he sings and the wisdom he gives, Rex Tilousi worked for years at the park educating tourists about our true history. Maybe you know him?
Isn’t this the least the park could do to admit how much the Havasupai contributed in land, trails, and labor to the park? This simple renaming would prove the park is an ethical partner to the surrounding tribes and acknowledge our history and our presence. Rename Indian Garden “Havasupai Garden” out of respect for the undue hardship imposed by the park on the Havasupai people.
I have communicated them passionately to those willing to hear them, and I thank those who have been willing to listen, and those who will be willing to listen. The truth should be passionate, and sometimes passion wears the mask of other emotions only to get the point across. Our story has not ended yet; we still have the ability to work in collaboration, to find compromise for all parties involved in trying to protect the Grand Canyon from current and future harm.
We ask for the recognition of all our histories, to collaborate and grow our modern partnerships with you. This is the passion driving all of our participation with the Intertribal Centennial Conversations. Each tribe has a story of its own and the national park has been willing to listen to our suggestions as Native peoples. We ask for your blessings during this project to help guide and support the national park to become a national leader in the ethics of collaborative tribal partnership.
Intertribal Centennial Converations participant Ophelia Watahomigie-Corliss is a member of the Havasupai Tribal Council. She holds two bachelor’s degrees from the school of communications at Northern Arizona University.
