In the years before I was struck by the idea of using the blog form to translate my source materials and notes into narratives recounting the Grand Canyon's political history, I made several runs over 25 years at trying to start one huge volume that would collect and relate all those narratives. My last try had two products: an outline to guide the organization and size of such a book, and the sections of that book dealing with the Havasupai.
A copy of the outline appears below, not anymore as a guide; the blog format has provided me the freedom to present topics at will and without worrying about length. Whereas the book would have been more traditional in being tied into detailed footnotes, etc., the purpose of a blog entry is to convert some bits of my source stuff into near-comprehensive narrative, to present "what happened", and to comment upon it. What the outline still does, is indicate my idea of the scope of this project, although I know already that it fell short, not including, as an instance, that very important tribe, the scientists. Which of course makes quite forcefully the advantage of this loose, evolving blog form-- it never has to be complete; it can always be added to, updated, and commented on by others.
The other product was the story of the Havasupai's political engagement with the Canyon. What I did five years ago was take all my material and digest it into a pre-narrative form, complete with index and footnotes. The Havasupai sections called for by the outline were as follows:
III Archeo-history
IVC Beginnings; way of life pre-Europeans; first reservation
VB Overview at "beginning" of political history: 1880's
VIB Reservations, pre-1900
XIV Struggles into about 1970
XVIII The Park/Havasupai Congressional War, 1972-5; Repatriation
XIX Aftermath, including studies
What I ended up with was an expanded VB up to the establishment of GCNP in 1919, and folding VIB into XIV to tell the story of 1919-72 as the Havasupai and the National Park (Service).
So over the next several posts I aim to present these sections more or less as written; there may be repetition with the September 2009 posts I have already on the Havasupai; I hope there are no contradictions.
Two important points: (1) I am writing from whitefolk sources. They are archival (paper) and as biased as any other. (2) The major source for the Havasupai's story is in Stephen Hirst: Life in a Narrow Place, The Havasupai of the Grand Canyon, 1976. Hirst has updated this essential work to: I am the Grand Canyon; the Story of the Havasupai People, 2007. In both his presentation and mine, the reader is going to confront how the whitefolk political-legal system that we live under dealt with, and was dealt with by, the Havasupai, a long-established First-American people. We may not always agree, but I hope our work is supplementary or overlaps comfortably.
Certainly, the reader should also know that I was as ardent a defender of Grand Canyon National Park as Hirst was of the Havasupai in the 1972-5 congressional struggle. I have dealt with this from one perspective in my entry of 13 May 2011. There is more to be said, but right now I want to assert that, converted by my research, I agree that the legislative process dealt justice (well, an approximation thereof) to the Havasupai by repatriating to them pieces of the Kaibab National Forest and National Park & Monument, land as I have said elsewhere could have been in their hands from the 1880's, saving a lot of heartache and worse.
However, I do not deal in this series of sections with the 1972-5 congressional adventure from the perspective as I lived it. Since I have brought the story of the Park into the 1960's, I am very close to being able to grapple with the bi-polar period in the not too distant future. Hirst, however, presents the Havasupai view, and I do summarize that in these sections.
The OUTLINE:
CELEBRATING A CANYON:
A Political History of the Grand Canyon and Its Futures
Dedication: For EMIQR., their contemporaries & beyond
I-12*. Overall view of what this is about; statement for the future
Theoretical/rhetorical considerations
Not a topographic/geologic feature just, but a human construction (conceptualization)
[ Quick overview
The place
The owners; the tribes; the communities. Their “mission statements”
Havasupai—land repatriated
Hualapai—land for income
Navajo—land acquired
Hopi—land visited
Paiutes—land lost
Whitefolk I—land revered
Park, Wilderness, Environmental icon, Landscape for science
Whitefolk II—land exploited
Mining, dams, logging, grazing, industrial tourism
The conflicts
The alternative paths ]
My belief:
The Canyon, a standard, a reminder
Not an exploitable landscape; elaborate into the biological imperative; to be countered
II-12. Recent views
Current events
Critiques of specific authors’ views of Canyon, some trash-the-icon
Pine
Hirsts
Geographer B. Morehouse
Indian historians Keller & Turek
Analysis of NPS & tourists (author?)
General “answer”
Our adversarial political system demands
1. partisanship
2. attempts to subvert, internal and external
Transcending through understanding (both senses)
III-6. Consideration of place of archeo-history
Does it, in past, have any pointers?
Relation to contemporary tribes; more than political point?
IV-11. The actors; beginnings
A. Hopi, past into present
B. Hualapai, way of life pre-F, war, to Reservation
C. Havasupai, way of life pre-F, first Reservation
D. Paiutes, way of life and extirpation
E. Navajo, expansion, and re-expansion
F. Europeans
Exploration
Spaniards
Americans
Powell, esp.; and as a scientist
V-10. Overview at “beginning” of political history: 1880’s
Seeds of trouble, seeds of hope
Re-view of IV, looking forward; “goals”
A. Hualapai
B. Havasupai
C. Americans
Cattle
Mormon settlers
D. Navajo (settle dates as between C & D primacy)
VI-20. Land ownership; Reservations & Reserves; the next century laid down; pre-1900
A. Hualapai
B. Havasupai
C. Navajo
D. Federal gov’t
Railroad lands
NP, 1st try
Forest Reserves
North Side
Other private lands
VII-18. Exploitations
Opinions & desires; conflicts
River development; water reservations
Logging
Settlement & grazing
Railroads
Mining
Hunting
VIII-20. National Park, to 1919
Views of vision
GCNM
Local views, gov’t & private
The establishment
IX-8. Summarizing the actors’ view of their landscape
Tribes & Park
BIA & NPS, FS
X-20. Park expansion
Attempts & wishes
Adjustments of 1920’s
GCNM II
Left-over issues
Development
XI-20. Water development: plans
Pre-Hoover
CAP/Bridge
Post-WWII; first try
XII-20 Hualapai Consolidation & Economy 1900-1960’s
XIII-10. Navajo through full Res
XIV-20. Havasupai struggles (into 1970±)
XV-15. Other issues (ownership by use instead of occupation)
Grazing Service and North Side; Dixie to Kaibab
NPS administration (Anderson);
Tourists, esp. motorization (windshield, overflights, boats)
XVI-18. Dam fight
River uses
Hualapai
XVII-20. Park & Wilderness ideas (incl. GCNP effort, 1973-4)
The contestants
The desires
The winning and the losing
XVIII-12. Park/Havasupai War (1972-5): The Bang
XIX-20. Outcomes & Aftermath: Not Just Whimpers
Studies (incl Hav Use & Land Use)
What everybody really did
Wilderness stalled; river use degraded
Hualapai re-emphasis to tourism
And along comes the caboose/next step: GC-PNM
Re-thinking the Arizona Strip; uses, abuses, & hanging on to the Old West
XX-12. Recent years as rhetoric/actions projecting futures
(presented for each tribe/actor? or in a blended way) including:
mining, conveyor-belt (Las-Vegas) tourism, w’ness advocacy, Kaibab (grazing, fires)
Other matters (how do I learn about what is relevant in view of each?)
XXI-5. The Landscape of & for the future of all of us
Do the cynics (= realistic smarty-pants) get the last sneer? OR
Is there a global, human vision that we can grow into, work toward?
* The second number is a page target to indicate my assessment of the kind & importance of the content. The total comes to ~320 pages. That does not include index, footnotes, bibliography, reader’s guide appendices – my thought being to cover those in a very summary way, and then put the details on a website, along with, if it proves a happy idea, expanded substantive chapters.
The total also does not include illustrations and maps, both of which should be included in the text where they are most appropriate.
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