WHAT IS IN A NAME? WHY USING INDIGENOUS PLACE NAMES AT GRAND CANYON IS THE FIRST STEP

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, language shift, to adapting to a society of commercialism already well into the industrial age. To us, the centennial year is not a celebration, but a chance to commemorate our indigenous presence, share our true history, and work with the park for the benefit of all the lands and peoples of the Grand Canyon region. These histories have a lot of heart ache and it is important for the indigenous community to share and educate about their histories in order for everyone to make more informed decisions concerning the park. Without understanding the true history, decisions concerning new construction or changes within the Grand Canyon National Park hurt indigenous communities.

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. This talk is from one member of the Havasupai Tribe, and her story and perspectives. It ends with a small step-- renaming Indian Garden to Havasupai Garden at Grand Canyon to better acknowledge and educate the public about the peoples who have lived there longest. It is the Havasupai who owned this land before it was turned into a park. How is it that millions of tourists visit the Grand Canyon every year and have no idea who we are? It is time to speak up about institutionalized discrimination, no matter how small it may seem to the public, it means the world to a tribe who lost half of their life for a National Park.