Celebrating the Grand Canyon

AGENDA, A GUIDE FOR GREATER GRAND CANYON’S

APPRECIATION AND PRESENTATION, PROTECTION

(necessarily, a work-in-progress, maps to follow)

Using the institutions and procedures of the present, and those offered in Baaj Nwaajo NM, these comments are aimed at strengthening  the presence and understanding of the Greater Grand Canyon. Integrating the GC National Park and North Kaibab is essential in this effort.

Activation of section 5 of P.L. 93-620 could provide one aspect animating procedures of Baaj Nwaavjo, strengthening understanding of the Greater Grand Canyon and its peoples as an entity. Overall, this understanding could mark the beginning of an over-arching cooperative mode within the GGC, putting into the past the many efforts, large and small, to use our national governmental structure as the mode of decision-making.

Looking outward, there could be integrative maps and tours, introductions to the GGC, its country and its peoples.

A rectification of the GC-Parashant NM would see its northwest half as part of a north-running Grand Wash Cliffs/Colorado Plateau’s west rim and wildlife orientation, while the southeastern half would be oriented, together with the drainages (Kanab, Tuckup, Whitmore) and plateaus (Kanab, Uinkarets, Shivwits). into a conceptual presentation unit of the western Grand Canyon.

Continuing recognition and appreciation of the Canyon’s western ending and the Colorado’s exit into the Basin & Range would involve an integrated understanding, running from the Westernmost High Point, (south of Pearce drainage—a B&R feature), across the Sanup /Esplanade platform, down the Sanup escarpment to the Colorado at the exit butte Waving Farewell, then climbing south on the crest of the GW Cliffs, and re-introducing the Hualapai lands and developments into this west end within the Greater Grand Canyon.

Among the many opportunities for naming recognition in the west would be the appreciation of the late Congressman Raul Grijalva’s multi-year contribution to the GGC’s protection and the emergence of the Greater Grand Canyon as a result of the proclamation of Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni NM. 

The effort to find the fittest feature and names for other locations can mark an appropriate statement of recognition for the GGC and its constituent peoples.

Should this appropriate time ever come, discussion of the management and designation of the Grand Canyon’s wild land could be included.

A special deliberative effort would be well made for the Kaibab Plateau. Following the several fires on the forest, there could be discussion of appropriate visions for the plateau’s great forest. The place of the bison, of the wildlife overall, the future of cattle in a restorative effort, could be integrated into such visions of the GGC and the southwestern landscape.

The huge, sprawling, and not completely comprehensive research activities oriented in and about the GGC could be conceptualized and publicized in a cooperative mode strengthening it as an enhancement of public appreciation.