Havasupai elders taught us that a young woman created all the Grand Canyon’s springs, springs that flow into Havasu Creek to fill our blue-green waterfalls, attracting thousands of visitors each year.
Now, as uranium mining threatens to poison our waters, harm our economy, and risk our way of life, it is the Havasupai, people of the blue-green water, who must come to the Grand Canyon’s defense.
Long before there were hydrologists, we were taught how rain and melting snow flow underground from the high plateaus and peaks around the Grand Canyon into the veins of our Mother, to Red Butte, where our people emerged, and out through springs to our village, at the bottom of the canyon...