Utah Law Review Volume 2021 Number 1 Article 3 2-2021 Indigenizing Grand Canyon Jason Anthony Robison University of Wyoming College of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.law.utah.edu/ulr Part of the Indigenous, Indian, and Aboriginal Law Commons, and the Natural Resources Law Commons Recommended Citation Jason Anthony Robison, Indigenizing Grand Canyon, 2021 Utah Law Rev. 101 (2021). https://doi.org/ 10.26054/0D-S31P-8CH1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Utah Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Utah Law Review by an authorized editor of Utah Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INDIGENIZING GRAND CANYON Jason Anthony Robison* The magical place commonly called the “Grand Canyon” is Native space. Eleven tribes hold traditional connections to the canyon according to the National Park Service. This Article is about relationships between these tribes and the agency—past, present, and future. Grand Canyon National Park’s 2019 centennial afforded a valuable opportunity to reflect on these relationships and to envision what they might become. A reconception of the relationships has begun in recent decades that evidences a shift across the National Park System as a whole. This reconception should continue. Drawing on the tribal vision for Bears Ears National Monument, this Article advocates for Grand Canyon tribes and the Park Service to consider forming a Grand Canyon Commission for cooperative management of Grand Canyon National Park. Establishing this Commission would mark the vanguard of the relational reconception, and, in this precise sense, the Commission would lay a foundation for “indigenizing” Grand Canyon. * © 2021 Jason Anthony Robison. Professor, University of Wyoming College of Law. S.J.D., Harvard Law School (2013); LL.M., Harvard Law School (2009); J.D., University of Oregon School of Law (2006); B.S., Environmental Studies, University of Utah (2003). This Article is dedicated to my Hopi friend Howard Dennis on Second Mesa, both for his friendship and for being a spiritual guide at Ӧngtupqa. The Article grows out of a gracious invitation from the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law to be the 2019–2020 Stegner Young Scholar. I cannot thank the Stegner Center faculty and staff enough for selecting and hosting me. They provided a much-appreciated excuse for field work at a place of awe since my childhood, Grand Canyon National Park, where I incurred research debts to Janet Balsom and Kim Besom coupled with further debts to Roger Clark and Sarana Riggs at the Grand Canyon Trust’s office in Flagstaff. My heartfelt gratitude extends to all of you. Thanks, too, to my colleagues Robert Adler, Robin Craig, Sam Kalen, and Robert Keiter for their formative input on drafts of this piece. All errors or omissions are mine alone. 101 102 UTAH LAW REVIEW [NO. 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION ..............................................................................................102 II. GRAND CANYON AS NATIVE SPACE .............................................................105 A. Neighbors ............................................................................................ 109 1. Havasuw’ Baaja (Havasupai) ....................................................... 109 2. Hwal’bay (Hualapai).................................................................... 111 3. Diné (Navajo)............................................................................... 112 B. Nearby ................................................................................................ 114 1. Hopituh Shi-nu-mu (Hopi) ............................................................ 114 2. A:Shiwi (Zuni) .............................................................................. 116 3. Wipuhk’a’bah-Dil’zhe’e (Yavapai-Apache) .................................. 119 4. Nüwü (Southern Paiute) ............................................................... 119 III. COLONIAL RELATIONS AT GRAND CANYON ................................................120 A. Construction ........................................................................................ 122 1. Constitutionalization .................................................................... 123 2. Native Segregation ....................................................................... 124 3. Federal Occupation ...................................................................... 127 B. Perpetuation ........................................................................................ 130 1. Federal Expansion ....................................................................... 132 2. Native Persistence ........................................................................ 134 C. Reconception ....................................................................................... 141 1. Nascent Systemic Change ............................................................. 142 2. Grand Canyon Reconception ........................................................ 148 IV. WALKING TOWARD COOPERATION .............................................................158 A. Bears Ears........................................................................................... 161 1. Advisory Committee ..................................................................... 162 2. Commission .................................................................................. 164 B. From Bears Ears to Grand Canyon ..................................................... 167 1. Statutory Foundation .................................................................... 168 2. Mandate Alignment ...................................................................... 170 3. Forms & Phasing ......................................................................... 173 V. CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................181 I. INTRODUCTION “The United States, acting through Congress . recognizes the special legal and political relationship Indian tribes have with the United States and the solemn covenant with the land we share. .”1 That’s how the apology began, though you may have never heard of it. “The United States, acting through Congress . commends and honors Native Peoples for the thousands of years that they have 1 Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010, Pub. L. No. 111-118, § 8113(a)(1), 123 Stat. 3409, 3453 (2009). 2021] INDIGENIZING GRAND CANYON 103 stewarded and protected this land . .”2 Tucked into a defense appropriations bill, President Obama did not endorse the apology, despite being urged to do so.3 It was a “silent apology” or “(non)apology” for some Native Americans.4 “The United States, acting through Congress . expresses its regret for the ramifications of former wrongs and its commitment to build on the positive relationships of the past and present to move toward a brighter future where all the people of this land live reconciled as brothers and sisters, and harmoniously steward and protect this land together.”5 Words on a page. Lofty rhetoric—a “solemn covenant with the land we share,”6 a commitment to “harmoniously steward and protect this land together,”7 etc. Let’s make these words real at the National Park System’s diadem: Grand Canyon.8 That is this Article’s aim. It is about relationships—past, present, and future— between the Park Service and eleven Native American tribes with ancestral connections to the Grand Canyon.9 These relationships do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, they are globally relevant to any circumstance where a settler state10 2 Id. § 8113(a)(2), 123 Stat. at 3453. 3 “The United States, acting through Congress . urges the President to acknowledge the wrongs of the United States against Indian tribes in the history of the United States in order to bring healing to this land.” Id. § 8113(a)(6), 123 Stat. at 3453. 4 Mark Charles, Mark Charles: U.S. ‘Apology’ to Indian People Goes Unnoticed, INDIANZ (Mar. 12, 2012), https://www.indianz.com/News/2012/03/12/mark-charles-us- apology-to-ind.asp [https://perma.cc/PYD4-C6C3]. As expressed by Navajo tribal member Mark Charles: “I was shocked, confused, embarrassed and ashamed when I learned, two years after the fact, that the US government had issued an apology to its Native American citizens, but did very little to publicize it, and even seemed intent on burying it in a 67-page Defense Department appropriations bill.” Id. 5 § 8113(a)(5), 123 Stat. at 3453. 6 Id. § 8113(a)(1), 123 Stat. at 3453. 7 Id. § 8113(a)(5), 123 Stat. at 3453. 8 This Article builds on an earlier essay written by the author for Grand Canyon National Park’s 2019 centennial. See Jason Anthony Robison, Grand Canyon as Legal Creation, 60 J. ARIZ. HIST. 557 (2019). The metaphor of Grand Canyon as a diadem is from ROBERT H. KELLER & MICHAEL F. TUREK, AMERICAN INDIANS & NATIONAL PARKS 131 (1998). 9 The specific tribes and their respective connections to the Grand Canyon region are surveyed in Part II. These unfathomably rich connections should inform the legal rules at the Grand Canyon governing both (1) how human beings interact with one another, and (2) how human beings interact with other parts of nature (relations) within the ecosystem. For shorthand, these two strands of interactions can be referred to as “socioecological relations.” Future relationships between the Park Service and Grand Canyon tribes—for example, cooperative management—will shape what socioecological