Environment: Indians and the Canyon

The bill being considered by the House Interior Committee would double the size of Grand Canyon National Park. The amendment added to it last week by a 24-11 vote was sponsored by Arizona’s conservation-minded Morris Udall. Thus the measure might be expected to have the support of every environmental group in the nation. Instead, it has provoked anguished protests from both the Sierra Club and the Friends of the Earth. Says Sierra Club spokesman Brock Evans: “It’s a disaster of the first rank for the national park system.”

The reason for the outcry is the innocuous-seeming amendment. It would give the 430-member Havasupai Indian tribe trust title to 185,000 acres of their homelands on the southern rim of Grand Canyon. Now confined to 500 acres on the canyon floor, more than 300 of the Indians are cut off from civilization during the winter, when the eight-mile trail that leads down to their village ices over. With their land back, the Indians say, they could again live on the mesa in winter and graze their cattle there.

But environmentalists cite two major reasons for opposing the return of the Havasupai to the rim. The granting of national-park land to the Indians, they argue, would be a signal for many other tribes to file similar claims. They also fear commercial exploitation of the area that the Havasupai want. “The proposal,” says Evans, “turns loose a large part of our most famous national park for private development in the guise of giving it to an Indian tribe.”

The environmental groups are wary of a clause in the amendment permitting land use for “residential and other community purposes.” The plateau that the Indians want is, according to Sierra Club Lobbyist Jeffrey Ingram, “a fantastic piece of real estate.” He envisions vacation condominiums on the reservation. William Byler of the Association on American Indian Affairs scoffs at this. He points out that tribal leaders have insisted they will allow no unsightly development and that the bill forbids any but “traditional use.” Says he: “To suggest that the tribe will hand it over to developers is a slanderous attack.”

Need Help. The Havasupai have even more formidable champions. Senator Edward Kennedy urged his House colleagues to pass the amendment because the Havasupai “are not going to build a dam, or put up a factory, or launch a tourist extravaganza.” Senator Barry Goldwater said the Sierra Club has become “a closed society, a self-centered, selfish group, who care for nothing but ideas which they themselves originate and which fit only their personal conceptions of the way of life everyone else should be compelled to live.” Hubert Humphrey, another Senate supporter, said the amendment would not be environmentally disruptive because “the life of the Havasupai over the past 13 centuries is an authentic part of the natural life of the Grand Canyon.”

The Havasupai clearly need help. They refuse to move to any other land because they want to be where their ancestors are buried. But their life in the canyon is nearly unbearable. During the summer some can make a modest living by guiding tourists on foot or horseback down to spectacular Havasu Falls, not far from their village. In winter, however, they are cut off, often for weeks, from the nearest medical aid and supplies. Groceries must be brought from a supermarket 110 miles away in Kingman, Ariz, and sell in the village co-op store for as much as 40% over the regular retail price—an enormous drain on the average Havasupai income of $700 a year.

Even local Sierra Club members admit that the tribe cannot survive much longer on the canyon floor. If Congress does not move soon to relieve the Havasupais’ lot, they say, the tribe will simply succumb to poverty and disease.