celebrating the Grand Canyon

Hualapai - NPS Core Team; Oct 2004 meeting: De-Cooperation

2012-02-13T17:13:00.000-07:00

In three previous entries on this story, posted January 2011, I summarized and discussed all the documents which the Park had furnished me under a FOIA request. The last meeting of the original series, held in October 2004, was not covered because its minutes had not been approved. However, in reading through the documents, I found that participants in a follow-up meeting in 2007 had decided that approval was not required. So I requested the Oct 2004 minutes on that basis, and recently received a copy. I am grateful for this, for these minutes provide a substantive answer to the question of why such a seemingly successful process as the Core Team meetings stopped. I note that the meetings were not public, so there was no reporting on them, and perhaps no news at all, although I have not checked newspaper archives.

To recap, over the years 2000-4, the highest authorities of Grand Canyon National Park, the Hualapai Tribe, and Lake Mead National Recreation Area had met several times a year to discuss issues that arose in connection with management of river affairs in an Area of Cooperation, i.e., the river and its shore where the Hualapai and Park lands adjoin, down into Lake Mead. Judging from the formal minutes only, this appeared to be a useful and productive enterprise. The issues were significant, and not always easily susceptible to full resolution. The will to continue, however, never seemed impaired. Significantly, the three top participants remained the same.

In June 2004, things changed. The Hualapai had elected a new chair, Charles Vaughn. He had the tribal counsel read out several grievances, a list attributed to the previous chair, oddly enough. The meeting continued, but appeared to be quite stiff, even argumentative. The details are near the end of my Summary, posted 11 Jan 2011. What follows is my reading of the October 2004 minutes.* As Margo said in "All About Eve": Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night!

8 October 2004, Boulder City (hotel), LMNRA

Present:

Core Team: GCNP Sup't & Dep. Sup't

LMNRA Sup't & Dep. Sup't

Hualapai Chairman

Also 19: 6 Park, 9 HT, 4 LM

Content:

Vaughn wasted no time; when asked at Opening if the usual procedure would be followed of allowing staff to speak without being called upon, "he said that he would call on tribal representatives when it was appropriate that they speak." He asked "for the opportunity to review the minutes from the June 16, 2004 meeting for potential changes…The focus of the Hualapai Nation comments in the minutes (would) be his comments, not those of his staff."

Vaughn continued, attacking on overflights. [This was not, on the surface, an issue the Core Team would deal with, since it arose from a law that was intended to help restore natural sound levels over the Park. However, Hualapai helicopter operations to carry river passengers in & out and for Vegas sightseeing affected the non-Hualapai users of the Area of Cooperation. So far as I know, these operations were not run by Hualapai, but by whitefolk companies contracting with the Hualapai. In any case, the operations located near Whitmore were specifically to be taken up by the process of writing the new river management plan (CRMP).]

What triggered Vaughn was a Flagstaff meeting hosted by NPS and the Federal Aviation Authority. He objected to information about the Hualapai being distributed without permission. A FAA-NPS agreement did not include the Hualapai as "sovereign", but only as an "interested party". He stated NPS has a "trust responsibility" and should look out for Hualapai interests. [Vaughn's rhetoric confounds NPS duties with those of the Secretary.] If harm to Hualapai economic development "continues", they would leave the Core Team and "assert their rights in another forum". [From my point of view, the Park had been leaning over backward for years to accommodate Hualapai industrial, mechanized mass tourism. So was this a Hualapai proto-dictator demagoguing or was it indeed part of a strategic attack aimed at wresting control of the lower river?] The CRMP did not reflect the Hualapai position; as a sovereign, they should be exempt from NPS regulation. The Hualapai had asked for a river concession to run trips from Lees Ferry; NPS has the authority to grant it. The Hualapai is required to do things other river concessions do not have to. "All the other operators are from Flagstaff except Hatch, which demonstrates discrimination." [Factually, this is false, but even if they were all from Flagstaff, so what?] The Hualapai are the "only Tribe in the river corridor". [Not true; the Navajo occupy the same status along the river shore below the Paria.] Hualapai cooperation has not been reciprocated. NPS is rigid in the CRMP, while the Hualapai have reduced their numbers. The Hualapai claim to the river center, but this is not stated in the CRMP or on NPS maps. [And rightly, since the sovereign United States does not recognize the Hualapai claim, having set the reservation boundary on the south shore.] NPS is uncertain of its claim, since they have not removed the Hualapai from the Park. [And we can well ask, should not the Park have followed the hothead route and asserted United States sovereignty through some physical action, e.g. building a fence on the historic high water line at Diamond Creek, and arresting Hualapai that come down to the river? Or reciprocally, why did not the Hualapai arrest NPS rangers who had boats on "their" side of the middle line? The silliness of this just points up the weirdness of Vaughn's behavior.]

Park Sup't Alston now replied. [Was he steaming? What kept him in his seat? Did he have any real hope of regaining the tone of the previous 4+ years of meetings?] We have come a long way to cooperate; we have met in the middle; we are willing to review "Charlie's comments" and respond for the record; we wont respond point-by-point now. The Interior Solicitor is involved; the Park relies on that legal advice; the Hualapai receive the same advice. The reason we meet regularly is because we have different perspectives.

Alston went after the FAA; their relationship "has been contentious". The FAA released the numbers; NPS had agreed to keep them confidential. After a year's work, NPS and FAA were ready to talk to the public. The FAA was told it should consult with the tribe, and should improve in the future. Later, he added that "the only agreement between FAA and NPS is that they will stop arguing with each other".

Unmollified, "Charlie" reiterated that only the Hualapai can represent their interests. Furthermore, the Park and the Hualapai are unable to resolve other issues like law enforcement and permitting. [Very true; as the previous meetings had shown, the lawyers were having a good time, but nothing was accomplished.] Vaughn brought up again the complaint that river runners land on the Hualapai side, but pay nothing. [Very true, and way back in the 1970's, the Park should have found a way to accomplish this; instead they claimed they did not have the authority, which I doubt.] Vaughn zinged in from another angle: he had been called about a river fatality. [It is hard to credit this as a rational strategy of laying out a case; much more like a strategy that wildness will intimidate and carry the day.] The Hualapai always make the concessions; that will not continue.

Sup't Dickinson of Lake Mead "respected Charlie's observations. His were a fresh set of eyes on a long-term process." [Indeed he said he had been attending such meetings for 10 years, so there must have been something going on before the Core Team was set up in 2000.] Dickinson thought the Core Team brought understanding, if not agreement. Too bad if the process were abandoned.

When facilitator Orton asked if the meeting should go on, Vaughn said his position was now in the record, and they could continue. However, in the near future the Hualapai may quit the Core Team. He wanted to see the FAA-NPS agreement and wanted it review to include the Hualapai. When Alston replied there wasnt one, Vaughn said he would present "an issue paper" on how others are to work with the Hualapai.

Alston insisted NPS would be a Hualapai advocate and help present their concerns to the FAA. He also described two fatalities. He thought they had carefully described the boundary in the CRMP.

Quickly, Vaughn charged there had been an NPS visit to the Hualapai overlook without notification to them. NPS said notification had been given. Charlie said then that since a lawyer had been with them, he himself should have been notified, and someone had complained to the FAA about safety, "hot fueling". The Hualapai are open to safety suggestions, but "they are the final arbiters on their land".

[There is a bit more, but at this point, it is very clear why the Core Team ended and the Park abrogated the memorandum on the boundary and an Area of Cooperation. The only possible strategy for NPS would be to finish up the CRMP, and see what the Hualapai did.]

After some other matters, the Hualapai reported on a meeting at which they had attempted to convince the solicitor they should have a full-river concession, after they had written to the Secretary. The Park supported "exploring the idea", but the solicitor said the Park cannot directly negotiate a permit with the Hualapai. Legislation would be required; NPS support for that is in the CRMP EIS. Vaughn countered that 36 CFR does too allow NPS to grant an "Indian preference". By not granting a permit, NPS is hurting the tribe economically and is liable. The Hualapai attorney suggested NPS set up another meeting, since they want to "talk directly with the decision makers".

LM reported that lake level challenges continue. The Hualapai request for a Pearce Ferry road is being considered. All were in agreement that the take-out process at Diamond was working out. Research permit notification was improving, but not fully satisfactory. Vaughn complained about a Park map he had seen recently. Alston said he would look into it.

The CRMP EIS executive summary was distributed. CDs had been mailed with the full document, and comments were due by Jan 2005. The Hualapai were asked to attend public meetings; travel funds were available. They were going to have "trial runs" of the meetings first, and there would be training on media and hostile audiences.

When Alstron tried to start substantive discussion of the summary, Vaughn said NPS did not understand the plan's impact on Hualapai economic development. The Hualapai would be better off as "intervenors", and they were not interested in working cooperatively since NPS "has proven to be adverse to the Tribe's interests". The tribal attorney said she planned litigation unless NPS agrees it has no jurisdiction to regulate Hualapai activities, so it would be better to have no further discussion. Alston expressed disappointment. Vaughn said he had to leave, and he would meet with his staff and let others know if they would continue with the Core Team Process.

[So perhaps, NPS let the Hualapai drop the knife. Was Vaughn a wild man? He is still a tribal council member, and involved in the current fracas over the skywalk. What role did the tribal attorney play? Had they developed an overall river/boundary strategy? Was this just part of a bullying technique to gain some advantage? Were internal Hualapai politics involved? Did any of the parties lose anything by the Core Team process ending? What role is there for cooperation to play when the issues are so delicate and the process subject to a change in even one of the principals?]

*By the way, the minutes do not indicate who took them; usually it was one of the Park staff members. I have kept the same format as in my 11 Jan entry. [My comments are in square brackets.]

On the Edge IX: The Discussion Starts

2012-02-12T09:52:00.000-07:00

In the statement I prepared on the Park's Master Plan and Village Concept, I got to the bottom of page 3 before "grappl(ing) with what to do with all the cars". Should there be "an asphalt-steel-&-glass dumping ground, or should the parking areas be designed in such a way as to be dispersed, small, and as little disturbed as is possible?" (Did I mean "disturbance"?) I admonished the planners, from my eminence, to prepare genuine alternatives reflecting different advantages and disadvantages. "Please do not just present one plan plus a bunch of nonsense." However, "I have long argued for the idea in the plan that the rim should be natural and should be approached naturally." Buildings, roads, parking lots, & other constructions should be absolutely minimal aids.

While fuzzy about how to do the parking, I declared that a large new reception building was unnecessary--another bland, unused fiasco, I feared. I made this allusion to the existing visitor center for a good reason, I wanted to insist that "interpretation is dependent on people", and what was needed was a gigantic increase in "interpreters, question-answerers, guides". So instead of a large new building, there could be a few small kiosks in the parking lots, and the mass transit could be a site for "interpretation, with even more staff available near and on the rim". The Plans "both should be calling, over and over, for a massive increase in the people who meet people". "There is no justification for this bureau except as every opportunity is recognized and taken to encourage & strengthen the wish, will, & need of people to learn about the Grand Canyon".

So I wanted modest, dispersed facilities to bring people into the Park, leaving their cars some distance back of the rim, being taken by transport or walking near the rim, then walking up to the rim on a trail for "the shock, the wrench, of this unexpected, unworldly experience. For some that is just about enough…for others, there are varying degrees of a felt need to learn more and to do more." And that is the time for contact with interpreters. This was a real concern at the time, when the increase in police-type rangers seemed to be so great as to eclipse the educators.

This meant removing asphalt and constructions at Mather Point, while providing access trails to other points along the rim. People should be able to disperse along the rim, not having to congregate at one point. Park transport should be quiet and far enough back to be unobtrusive, far enough away to keep trees between it and the rim.

On the matter of historic buildings, I doubted the need for a special "historic village" with a pedestrian center--a concessionaire's dream-- and championed a gradual phasing out of structures on the rim, which after a period of extended healing would be in a near-natural state. I wanted to get and keep the rims natural, avoid massive new construction, gather and integrate all visitor-related activities onto already used ground about the campground. Above all I wanted alternatives offered. Perhaps one day all overnight facilities could go. So overall, there would be day-tripper facilities on the east; then the shopping-overnight complex; then a renaturalizing area where the railroad was, and south of all that, Park facilities and residences.

Now this was not all that different as an idea from what NPS offered in the Development Concept. However, the latter "disquieted" me because the massive reconstruction would cause interpretation to continue to be slighted, a need particularly for aiding day trippers, the priority goal of the Village. I wonder now if this different focus of mine blinded me to the need to support strongly what NPS had done in its Concept. Of course, that is always the question, isnt it -- support a good plan from NPS when it puts one forth, or argue for a better?

Since there was also a Master Plan for the entire (pre-1975) Park, I made some comments not relevant to the Village Concept, but which indicate the shape of my views on the Park:

1. There is a topographic unity, and we can hope for human cooperation in accord with it, even though and especially, there are large, important parts of the Canyon in other ownership. There are parts south of the river and west of the (pre-1975) Park adrift, cut loose from any joint planning process for the Canyon's sake. Cooperation ought to be an urgent priority.

2. The Navajo Nation has set up tribal parks. GCNP should work with the Navajo on the proper presentation and protection of the Canyon.

3. Why is joint planning with Lake Mead NRA not a top priority?

4. There are impact zones, areas that impinge on the Canyon and the Park, administered by others, e.g., the Forest Service and BLM. GCNP should take the initiative in working with these agencies on Canyon-related matters.

5. Work is going forward on Wilderness designation in the Park and adjacent to it; an integrated proposal may be possible. However, NPS should get back on the track with respect to the River. After all the public testimony, the massive petitions, NPS decisions, "Wilderness status for the river, the very heart of the wild Grand Canyon is threatened by the transient interests of a few corporate motor-boaters." "They deserve to be phased out as they phased in: quickly." The action of banning motors after 1976 is entirely up to the NPS; there are contracts to be renewed. Let us enter this nations's third century without the smirch of motors in the Grand Canyon.

The NPS plan called for a radical clearing out and re-orientation with much construction. I was stressing what could be achieved by people working with people--whether in interpretation or cooperation. NPS thought about infrastructure; I thought about human interaction.

On the Edge VIII: A Radical Plan Advances

2012-02-12T09:23:00.000-07:00

The concept study of 1972(-4) was done by NPS staff, two from the Park, two from the Denver Service Center. In retrospect, it was a bold, forward-looking design that we Canyon advocates could have enthusiastically embraced and urged to fruition. Insofar as we pushed in the same directions, however, it was with different emphases, as I will discuss in the next entry. The Park Service itself did move the matter along, with some on-the-ground actions, and following its own procedural concerns. In 1973, NPS brought in the architectural, urban design and planning firm of ROMA, Rockrise Odermatt Mountjoy Amos, of San Franciscio. The Denver Center and ROMA contracted in June a Work Directive for the "comprehensive design of Grand Canyon Village, with Robert Odermatt being the principal for the work.

The introductory description said the work was the "beginning of a third phase" for planning and design of the South Rim developed area. Phase one prepared a master plan, along with wilderness and environmental impact studies. (Recall that NEPA was three years old, with the an initial period being spent on understanding what it required and establishing procedures. As a cutting edge weapon, it was in the process of being finely honed.)* Phase two brought the development concept plan and an environmental impact statement (EIS). The third task was to produce a comprehensive design for South Rim rehabilitation and development. It, too, would have phases, the first of which was to gain agreement and understanding on the broad planning concepts, and to obtain and analyze data for design alternatives. NPS would supply the data for ROMA to analyze the existing circulation and zoning, relating these to the environmental constraints. More than an inventory, a socio-economic structure and the political atmosphere would be identified. Finally, this phase would determine the "physical potentials", balancing functions, esthetics, and visitor desires to provide "a physical and emotional character in total harmony with the (NPS) objectives of this natural area".

The work under this contract was to be finished by October 1973. ROMA's data-gathering and analysis would use existing materials, and two trips to Denver. Visiting the Park was not mentioned. Clearly, this was a preliminary to any actual design work, and perhaps a validation process for the Development Concept report, completed but not yet approved. Certainly, ROMA came from a different orientation, having developed its services in "the design of civic, cultural, educational, commercial and industrial buildings and complexes; urban design projects in more than 20 cities; and community, industrial, recreational, and residential planning", according to the company brochure produced after it had started work at the Park. It had also consulted on Golden Gate NRA, and done planning for ski resorts. Not, therefore, a business with long-standing connections to the Park Service; perhaps that was the attraction.

Meanwhile, the Park administration was moving along a practical track, telling us in September 1973 of the coming start in April 1974 of a mini-bus system for the Village shuttles and West Rim Road. Private cars would be largely barred from the West Rim; otherwise, NPS was "hopeful" of people volunteering to use the shuttles, thus easing "traffic problems". Unlike the almost radical tone of the Concept document, this was all low-key and tentative; the service on the West Rim was called "experimental". Comments on the future of overnight facilities were bland. On the other hand, by August 1974, a writer in The Arizona Daily Star was amazed: the bus system had helped "get rid of" the litter problem. Traffic was definitely eased in the Village, the superintendent said, and praised the concessionaire for solving problems with visitor service. The air was not hazy.

However, the letting of the contract to ROMA had further stirred up suspicion, already aroused when some of us saw the inappropriate construction under Mission 66 auspices by South Rim concessionaires, especially Amfac (e.g. motels right on the rim; big asphalt parking lots; a super-market). So in early February 1974, John McComb (Sierra Club SW Rep.) and I visited Superintendent Stitt about NPS intentions. Then, having studied the contracts and related papers concerning the concessionaires and ROMA, we reported what was going on "to those concerned about Grand Canyon development plans".

First, we learned that concession contracts "require" money to be spent on construction and improvements, millions in the Village on visitor and employee accommodation and the new business center. Amfac was limited to 865 lodging rooms, however. More important to us, the completed Master Plan and Village Development Concept and their EIS's would soon be available and the subject of public meetings. After that would come a comprehensive design for the Village. ROMA's preparatory work was not quite done, so work directives for detailed plans were not available. We concluded there were no plans for significant new construction outside of developed areas. However, we were a bit naÏve there, not seeing that there might be places in the Village which we would become concerned about. As the EIS would point out, only 16% of the Village was developed. We ended by stressing the importance of the coming opportunity for public review.

In May, the Regional office released the draft EIS for the Development Concept, and in June, scheduled four public meetings on the documents, at which "all who are present and wish to make a statement (will) have had the opportunity to do so". (In today's buttoned-up and -down scenarios, there is no such forum for the public to make statements, which are part of a record, before the agency; now individuals can only come and chat with various staff who explain the "scope" of a proposed action.)

The EIS of the Concept summarized it as "maintaining the esthetic integrity of the immediate canyon rim", while separating areas for day use, overnight use, and residential and park support.(p.5) The interpretive zone on the rim will be buffered from the core village, and have only facilities for interpretation & visitor access, and historic buildings. The buffer will be undeveloped. The several maps of the Village in the EIS did not even extend so far north as to include Mather Point; all development was to be on existing impacted land. The three maps that follow come from the EIS, to show how existing area was to be used. First, as it was in 1972:

The numbers are 2 = Visitor Services; 3 = Visitor Accommodations; 4 = Residential Community;
5 = Park Support

Phase 2 would use the area marked by horizontal stripes for visitor services and parking, with a new access road from the south, and mass transit using the existing road to Yavapai:

Phase 3 would use a bit more of already impacted land, adding an "automated" transit route to Yavapai on the northwest, while keeping the buses on the east. Note that the campground was still shown, and even most of the motel units:

The big change brought by phase 2 was the building of the "proposed visitor-reception center" (p.11) with a "major parking lot" (p.9). The plan overall would "require massive reorganization" of the main Village, with "most existing structures … moved or eliminated" (p.9). The future bait-and-switch in Phase 2 was stated clearly: "a major visitor-reception center will be constructed east of the Mather Business Center "ON LAND NOW OCCUPIED BY THE TRAILER VILLAGE AND SIX ONE-STORY MOTEL UNITS OF THE YAVAPAI LODGE." (p12 & 15, my emphasis). Forty years later, and we can aptly say, "Promises, promises." Here, Googlemaps lets us see all the old development is still in place, with "Grand Canyon South Rim Visitor Center" occupying what was to be left alone:

Here is a later, 2011, Park Service photo looking southwest from over the Canyon, after the latest construction at Mather, with its intensified development. The storage tanks are as they were 40 years ago, anchoring the views & maps.

Anyway.

Back in 1974, the EIS of what was to be the guiding document said that it "assumes" that NPS would abandon trailer parks as "nonconforming uses" and the motel units, "built in the late 1950's, should be amortized sufficiently by the end of this phase (2, well before the year 2000) to make their removal economically feasible".(p.15) The reception center would provide "information and unspecified services (at the) mass-transit terminal". An integrated, pedestrian-oriented village center would be developed south of where the railroad yard was. New lodging west of that would replace (amortized) units removed elsewhere. In Phase 3, the rim zone would be cleared of such nonhistoric facilities as the Bright Angel, Kachina, & Thunderbird lodge/motels and all parking & roads.(p.16) "El Tovar will remain as a conspicuous feature in this zone, but presumably will not be used for overnight accommodations, dining, or other visitor services." Also promised: "a significant portion of lands (in development zones) will be allocated to open space and natural buffers".(p.18)

The existing Village "sprawled over the landscape", reflecting "dependency on the private automobile", with "facilities that have become nonessential or obsolete (consuming) valuable space". The Concept envisioned mass transit replacing the car, but the ultimate nature of the new system was not specified because "no one knows what technology will be available" in 2000. [Nor, as we learn from Brad Traver's narrative (my entry of 10 Oct 2011), did they know about Republican obstruction.] However, during phase 2, the reception center would be built on about 30 acres of the trailer village site, including parking for 3,000 cars, reachable by a new 1½-mile road. The mass transit system would completely eliminate the car in phase 3, perhaps becoming a fully automated driverless system. There would be two loops from reception, one to Yavapai Point for interpretation, the other circling about in the Village.

The Concept does provide some insight on the interests that could, and would, influence NPS decision-making on its radical reorganization of the south entry and Village facilities. Not only did it contemplate removing the trailer park and amortized motel units, it also proposed eliminating Mather Campground. Had these sites been cleared and the car bar implemented, the pressures for replacement development on Kaibab Forest to the south, as well as the tourist nexus developing at Tusayan, would have escalated. Active, too, was a proposal for a large-scale motel/campground four miles west of Tusayan, perhaps bringing pressure for paving the Rowe Well road. At that time, water was trucked in 60 miles, and providing water from the Park was frowned upon. Today, deep wells provide water, and Tusayan has grown, even without the closures the Concept called for. Also the owner of the Orphan Mine on the rim two miles west of the Village center still had the right (until 1987) and hope of taking out more uranium. That potentially messy outcome did not materialize. As the report said, extraction was then "economically feasible" (i.e., the price was up), a condition that did not persist.

The draft EIS has the value of serving as a snapshot in words of the Village, its infrastructure and activity, at a moment when values had indeed shifted, from being demand-friendly, toward a public and agency reassertion of Park System fundamentals. As it turned out, existing facilities and interests both would hinder and trip up that shift.

Other issues: Although the EIS said there were no "unusual" plant communities or species, what did became important in discussions was the ponderosa pine belt along the railroad line (p.32). "Grand Canyon Village is not a quiet place, nor is the park as a whole.(p.43) Noise sources were few, but pervasive: a generating station at Hermit's Rest, motorcycles, and aircraft, the last of which could be heard almost continuously from, in order, helicopters, tour & private planes, high-up jets. The numbers of overnight units seem small in comparison to the day visitation: 325 campsites, 863 rooms, 193 trailer sites, compared to 2-4,000 vehicles on a summer day. Under the plan, the capacity for day use would increase significantly compared to a decrease in overnight spaces (p.92). This would emphasize the quick-look experience 75% of visitors had, as against a longer immersion, which itself was perhaps a left-over from a time of slower travel. Perhaps a more apt comparison would be of the longer-stay visits in the Village with those below the rim -- hikers, backpackers, river-runners. Certainly, our concern was the pointed one of removing obstructions to a natural context for a satisfying "first look". Get us out of our cars, we say, and point the way to the rim, preferably through a bit of forest and so we can hear the breezes. The Concept emphasized that the putatively undesirable impact of building a 30-acre lot to leave our cars would be on land converted from already built-upon ground.

After going through the standard sections on impacts and their mitigation, the Concept EIS took up alternatives. It dwelt on an "interpretive" alternative of rail service along the Santa Fe tracks, with a parking lot in or near Tusayan. More conventional was the idea of re-starting Santa Fe passenger service. Also considered was a brand-new "bypass" of the East Rim road, but it was deemed wasteful and destructive. The concept of mass transit loops required more construction, but was still preferred over keeping a two-way road. Perhaps sensing that NPS determination to close the trailer park was not solid, the Concept considered putting the reception and parking area southeast of the East Rim and South Entrance road junction, on a site that "has been burned over and contains regrowth vegetation of less esthetic value than the mature ponderosa pines, pinyon pines, and junipers that will have to be cleared to permit construction…near the trailer village."(p.119) This could be done right away, though there would be an increase in operational costs. Or, was the next suggestion, go even farther, and put the "major staging area" at Tusayan (p.120). The operational costs would be even higher, and NPS control less. There would be various inconveniences, but Tusayan interests would be happier. So that idea was put out there, but the debate over parking-lot placement was barely begun. Other ideas of moving overnight and residential units here or there or out of the Park were dead on arrival. What the Concept had achieved, then, was to confront the car, and declare it non grata in its current buzzing, booming traffic chaos. The question not decided: What to do with it?

*The materials for these posts come from my files collected during the time. This contrasts with others of my blog posts in which I researched Park Service and other agency archives. Consequently, this story is limited by, and slanted toward, my experiences during the planning process.

For me, John McComb (my successor as the Sierra Club Southwest Representative), and other Arizona-based advocates for the Canyon, that process had started in the late 1960's as the dam fight was reaching its end. The local Club chapter had worked with me on our own master plan concept and document, along with wilderness and park expansion studies. While we did not command the technical expertise of NPS planners or ROMA, we were therefore deeply familiar as Canyon users and would-be protectors, in many cases with more Canyon experience than involved NPS or other personnel.

The 1960's & 70's were, unlike today, a charged time for environmental work and public involvement in governmental activities. Not only were new rules being written and tested out, but government staff were far more open and cooperative. The ossification, self-protectiveness, and impenetrability of today's environmental and land-use agencies and other entities is a sad comment on the bureaucratization of what, 30-40 years ago, was a process full of active interchange and some optimism. Although, as I often feel the need to comment, we did get frustrated now and then.

On the Edge VII: Setting the Scene, 1972

2012-02-11T19:01:00.000-07:00

The Canyon's Visitors: A Problem for the South Rim; no, Grand Canyon Village; no, Mather Point…

At the time, the 1970's, we have reached in this hopping-about narrative (last entries in Oct 2011), 90% of Canyon visitors clocked in through the two entrances to the South Rim. Seemingly, they all got off on Mather Point at some point in their visit. The questions raised about handling this human flood consumed NPS attention. When Mission 66 was conceived of in the 1950's, to upgrade facilities throughout the Park System, the Mather Point overlook was a solution. Twenty years later, in the 70's, and throughout the decades since, it has been the focus for NPS of the problem.

Here is one of those charts of numbers that seem designed to raise questions (updated to 1982):

For instance, the more detailed reports I have from the time show that most of the remaining 10% came to the North Rim entrance. In 1974, ~260k people arrived there, 13%. The next year, this shot up to 420k people, 15% of a big jump for the whole Park. It stayed that way through 1978: 477k people and 16%. Something happened then, for 1979 saw 241k people, 11%, and the number stayed about the same, with 216k visitors into 1982, not quite 9%. Even today, the North Rim's high 200 thousands are about 7% of the total; the north does not, therefore, stir up the same NPS anxiety as do the more visible crowds at Mather and the Village.

Were the glory years of 1975-8 -- a peak of 3 million reached in 1976 -- reverberations from our Bicentennial? That number was not reached again for 10 years. Even today, it bounces around, between 4 and 4½ million.* Whatever the cause, the higher numbers were the ones people were using when the discussion I am going to relate was going on.

My starting date of 1972 is somewhat arbitrary. NPS master planning was a fluctuating but always present activity, with contributions over the years from Park staff, its Region (which changed from the Southwest at Santa Fe to the West at San Francisco), and other parts of NPS, like the Denver Service Center. A draft Master Plan for GCNP had been released in 1971. Meetings were held in May, but discussion between the Park and the public had been on-going from the late 1960's, tied into the very hot topics of river management, Wilderness designation, and extension of the Park boundaries. A personnel change was the arrival of Superintendent Merle Stitt in late summer 1972.

It would have been no surprise, then, if a "development concept" document on Grand Canyon Village had been low on the to-do list. According to its Foreword, dated May 1972 (other dates in the document indicate it went on being prepared and printed through 1973 into 1974), planners had been working over a couple of years on plans for the Village to deal with "pressing minor problems". However, these "expedient solutions" were not responding to a basic recommendation of the existing Master Plan, namely that the private car should be removed from the village, replaced by public transport. "We were at the dawn of another era in the physical development…quite as significant as Mission 66 or the early automobile era".

Long-range direction was needed to effect this next major shift in the organization of the Village. Here is their map of how it had developed:

Looking back, the report says the first decade of the twentieth century offered "elegant accommodations for a leisurely elite" of railroad travelers.(p.5) The Park, the middle class, and the automobile all gathered force through the 1920's. The report labels the buildings put up then -- the powerhouse, laundry, Babbitt's store, park headquarters, etc. -- "obsolete".(p.6) Auto visitors' preferences set precedents for camping and cabins. This was intensified by the "enormously burgeoning" middle class with their time and proliferating equipment. Mission 66 was "an attempt to meet the needs of the visitor as the visitor dictated". (p.7) Now, diminishing returns had led to a new era that will provide "more meaningful experiences for the visitor while maintaining the environmental integrity of the park". Well, its Organic Act says NPS is to conserve the natural objects while providing for the visitor insofar as the natural objects are maintained. Surely, the report writer, Merrick Smith, had his heart in the right place.

Anyway, Smith's review indicates that NPS catering to the changing life-style demands of the visitor was acceptable with small numbers, but with millions coming, "it will be necessary to redesign the park to handle more people with less impact on the environment".(p.7) Eliminating automobile-based, sprawl-type development will increase the quality of the visitor experience and allow for more efficient park land use.

This seems like a good point to pause and meditate on what has, in fact, been done (see my entries of 26 & 27 Oct 2011). Would that park planner of 1972 nod in overall satisfaction? The private car was not removed from the park (to Tusayan, say), but after 40 years of start and stop work, is the visitor experience improved, land use more efficient, the environment less impacted?

Smith includes these goals (p.11): Structures "grouped for human scale", "open spaces … more intimate areas for pedestrian circulation and social interaction" (rather than, he hopes, "vast wastelands for automobile access and storage"). To get there, "major restructuring of the present village will be required". This is an arguable point, but as I see it, the major restructuring has been done in the Mather Point area, not the main village, the focus of debate in the 1970's, as we shall see.

He re-stated the master plan goals: 1. Preserve the Canyon . He added "in as natural a state as possible", which opens the door for mischief.

2. Provide a high quality experience for visitors, where they could feel the Canyon's significance. We argued such an experience happened by approaching the rim on foot in a natural setting.

3. Facilitate optimum visitor use subject to ecology, safety, and quality.

Problems are thick: facilities are inadequate for food, lodging, camping, interpretation, roads and parking. What exists may be decayed or obsolete, and was designed for the car, use of which is fast becoming outmoded. (p.15) This is true for Mission 66 upgrades, not yet complete, that are unsuited for the future--too far from the rim and lacking in human scale and interest. Uses conflict in many areas. Interestingly, he goes hard after the railroad "clutter, without distinction, charm, or sense of place",(p.16) but on the existing visitor center has only this to say: "there is an urgent need for a visitor reception/orientation facility where the arriving visitor, who now wanders aimlessly around the village, can get information and plan". So much for the Mission 66 centerpiece. However, there is to be no numerical limit of day visitors, only a geographic boundary and concern about environmental impacts.

The resident community is a major element in Village design, and, he notes (p.17-8), "dependent on an enlightened paternalism on the part of both concessioner and Government". "Few distractions or outlets are available for the residents, as they are surrounded by a monotonous and relatively hostile natural environment", with "relative isolation from urban services -- 60 miles to Williams".

The greatest problem, however, is transport; the car must be eliminated from the Village, and the Park will work gradually into mass transit. It must be short and carry heavy volumes. Thus the visitor should be required to approach the rim as close as is environmentally acceptable. A reception facility to handle visitors in volume will provide parking, services, trip planning and access to the Park transit. Yavapai Point is key, and reception should be close to it. The report presents a idealized plan as a guide. Here is the map for the east half of the Village:

What is striking about this map/diagram is how uninvolved Mather Point is in the concept. Reception (olive green square) is oriented west to visitor services (smaller light brown area) and north to Yavapai Point for interpretation. The dashed access for day visits, any parking, and actual reception buildings are all well back from the rim, and quite far from Mather and Yavapai Points, with direct mass transit only to the latter. The concept was indeed radical, and would have necessitated conversion to a day use focus of areas used for trailers, camping, and motels.

The next major re-conceptualization by NPS took place in the 1990's; I wrote about it in a 12 Sep 2011 entry. The comparison between 1972 ideas and those of twenty years later is, ah, interesting.

The document projected a work plan through three stages to the year 2000. The mass transit would steadily expand, and the reception facility would take over the trailer village. Services for the day visitor would be in the then-new business center, accessed by mass transit. In the final stage (p.30), cars would be separated from people, who would circulate using mass transit or bicycle, or on foot. Transit would eventually be converted to an automated system. A town center would develop. Yavapai would be the interpretive center, with Mather a subsidiary oriented toward the East Rim drive. That road could be turned over to mass transit if a new highway were built south of the Park. As Park and concessionaire facilities were amortized or became obsolete, they could be relocated, allowing space to be left open. The "rim experience corridor" (marked by red vertical lines on the maps above and below) would be open to public use, with all overnight accommodations south of the old railroad tracks. Thus overnight visitor use would be consolidated back from the rim in the Village, while the day visitor would drive in to a reception area structured to enhance a human-scale Canyon experience, one made physically easy by the mass transit. As the map of stage III makes clear, development for human use would be concentrated, rather than spread further along the rim, which was one of the major points in the debate about to start.

The plan study team --there were four including Superintendent Lovegren-- had thus set forth a path that would indeed have achieved what we, advocates for the Canyon, thought were environmentally sound changes that, at the same time, would bring visitors to a more effective "first look". It was an effort that would have enhanced the overnight experience, while also keeping all visitors within the Park environs. But, as we shall see, there would be major new participants in the process arriving, and the "gathering-in" of development that the Concept document set forth would be lost.

*For more recent years, after 1990, I obtained the numbers from the NPS statistical website at http://www.nature.nps.gov/stats/park.cfm?parkid=473 . The yearly total chart on that site shows consistently fewer visitors than the 1973 report, so NPS must have changed its counting methods.

Migration 13: Climate Changes, A Human Timetable, and The Canyon

2012-01-25T19:31:00.000-07:00

William Ruddiman has been a scientist of climate (see http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/ruddiman-william-f/) over most of the recent span of a tremendous growth in the study of that subject, a growth that continues a two-century surge in earth/life sciences, marked by the work of Hutton, Darwin, Wegener, as well as in the study of humanity's story. His most recent effort -- which I am attempting to extract from here (and any re-statings and errors in this entry are, be assured, mine) -- resulted in Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate (Princeton 2005). His work does not directly deal with the Grand Canyon, of course, yet his thesis is an important element in understanding the Canyon's human context, its politics. His thesis also impacts heavily on the idea of wilderness and what it can mean if we properly comprehend humanity's history.

Briefly stated, Ruddiman argues that human activities arising from the Neolithic Revolution have already had the not-to-be-understated result of preventing the start of a period of increasing glaciation. To show this, he summarizes the current picture of ice ages, emphasizing their periodicity. That periodicity indicated that a glacial was due and yet is not happening. In investigating why, he could find no convincing natural cause, and so studied human activities that might have increased the greenhouse gases of carbon dioxide and methane over the relevant period of the past 10+ millennia.

ON THE CLIMATE

I am not going to go into his presentation in detail; his book is readable and less than 200 pages. Here I want to summarize enough to set humanity's latest stage. For what I have found valuable in his book is his presentation of a timetable of human history set against the timetable of natural climate cycles. For the latter, his authority must be great, with a vita of work at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (Columbia Univ.) followed by a professorship (emeritus now) of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia. For the former timetable, however, he is, like me I hope, an informed, inquiring lay reader of the work of others, anthropologists, etc. Since the human timetable he presents fits what I have been able to glean, it seems an appropriate corroboration of my understanding. I should add that whatever our agreement on the human timetable that I present below, he still approaches this subject as a scientist, I as an activist. So our thoughts about what this all means are not necessarily in agreement.

So first, some climate science. In recent geological time, the Earth has been gradually cooling, enough to introduce a series of ice ages, times of glacial advance and then retreat. More exactly, 2.75 million years ago (mya) cooling reached a threshold such that ice sheets appeared and spread in the Northern Hemisphere. These glacials were followed by interglacials during which the northern ice sheets retreated. After considerable scientific labor, and taking more than a century, the theory was confirmed that these ice ages of glacial/interglacial periods were periodic, and due to three astronomical factors that affect how much solar radiation we get (see Ruddiman, pp. 24-54):

1. The angle of at which the Earth's axis tilts is not constant at the current 23.5º, but varies from 22.2º to 24.5º over a period of 41 millennia.

2. Our distance from the sun changes, with the orbital eccentricity changing over 100 millennia, though somewhat irregularly.

3. Precession --wobble of the axis-- has the effect of causing a change in the direction in which Earth leans on its tilted axis--so there is change in the amount of tilt and the direction of tilt. This cycles over 22 millennia. Eccentricity changes act as a multiplier on precessional changes.

The combined effect is that the periodicity from 2.75 to .9 mya was in 41-millennia cycles, and since .9 mya has been in 100-millennia cycles. Overall, there have been 40-50 cycles. These cycles are a phenomenon of the Northern Hemisphere; the Antarctic sheet stays in place. Also, the increase in global cooling has continued with the ocean getting cooler. The longer cycles now are the result of ice sheets not melting all the way, in between 100 ky peaks.

During glacials (nine in the past million years), there would be no forest about the Alps, but a deep tundra. To the south and east, Europe was grassy steppe, similar to Siberia now. In America, the jet stream was forced by the ice to flow more southerly, dropping more moisture in, for example, the Great Basin (and the Colorado River Basin?). Deserts expanded farther south. The windy, dry, dusty conditions picked up dirt and blew it around, leaving evidence so we can now trace history. After glacial peaks, the southern Sahara was wetter & greener, as from 10-5 millennia ago. This is traceable to monsoon strength, which is directly related to solar radiation strength in the summer. Also, methane increased due to vegetation flooding. Ruddiman doubts this overall history of these climate changes had direct impacts on our evolution. However, I think it fair to say that this part is all argumentative, based on his view that before 8 millennia ago, nature was in control with those ~3 million years of glacial/warming cycles.

The most recent glacial took over 10 millennia to melt, from 20 to 6 millennia ago, with the finish of the melting of ice sheets. A melting period is a contention between ice sheets keeping cold and warming from the sun plus greenhouse gases. So 11 millennia ago, the ice sheet was being melted, aided by high natural values of CO2 and methane. The gases reached a maximum, then started to decline toward the next glacial threshold. The maximum temperature occurred ~8 millennia ago. Or in summary, the significant markers were at 20 --> 11 --> 8 --> 6 millennia ago.

WHAT HUMANS HAVE DONE

Now we get to the fun part, dealing with Ruddiman's timetable for the most recent human times (pp 169ff). Earlier, p23, he had set up human evolution over a few million years with increasing brain size, improving communication skills, and spreading out, but still being deep in the Stone Age. By the way, he offers an interesting claim of child spacing at four years or more, which helped keep population down. However, his bibliography does not suggest a definitive source for this notion, which might or might not be relevant to the question of the organization of human bands.

So, 150-100 millennia ago there is us, "fully modern humans", few in number and moving about for food, with an increasing sophistication in (stone) tools, fire, burials. He ponders how they are like us, but with "primitive" lives. However, as I have found in other ponderers of early humanity, there is NO MENTION OF LANGUAGE, only his earlier note of an increase in communication skills.

50 millennia ago, human creative potential became evident, p55, in artifacts, painting, statues, jewelry, burial goods, bone for clothes-making & tent-making tools, rope, nets, hooks, spears. Also, by that time, we had managed the crossing into Australia. Again, I would argue the realization of this potential, along with so much else, was dependent on language and the type of sociality it encouraged.

12.5 millennia ago, (and probably before, I would add), humans were migrating into the Americas, and quite possibly employing our skill as hunters to push a number of large fauna toward disappearance. Ruddiman, speaking as an expert on climate change, does not accept an alternate explanation of the die-outs as being caused by the climate change; there had been too many previous cycles without such mass die-offs.

12 millennia ago, agriculture was "discovered", p4. I prefer the formulation that we invented domestication, first of plants, later animals. Ruddiman also uses the phrase "development" of cultivated cereals at this time, p10.

11.5 millennia ago, people in Mesopotamia "created" agriculture, p63.

Whatever the term, agriculture led to settlement and an increase in population.

On p65, he ruminates on the problematic advantages of agriculture for a culture of such botanically sophisticated gatherers, since nutritional balance would be sacrificed and energy expenditure in procuring food would increase. Perhaps, he suggests, there was enough bounty of gathered food that cultivation provided an add-on, not the only, source. Compared to forest or desert, the area was well-provided with food, and farming only enriched the bounty.

10 millennia ago, south Sahara was wetter and greener, due to the stronger monsoon. Then came a drying out, p50ff

Before 10 millennia ago, animal domestication began: dogs, then goats & sheep; pigs & cattle by 9 millennia ago.

10.5 millennia ago, permanent farm villages existed with hundreds of inhabitants. In Ruddiman's view, the increase in the numbers of children was connected to no longer being migratory. However, would not any problems with soil or water supply lead these (genetically migratory) humans to shift about? Could the impulse to migrate just have been lost? Indeed, it hasnt, ten millennia later. That is, I suggest, more children were desirable as labor supply, just as marriage and religio-legal bonding would develop as adjuncts to labor needs, and still later as defender/warriors.

9-8 millennia ago, agriculture was spreading into India.

8 - 5.7 millennia ago, it was spreading into Europe.

In this interval, irrigation was begun in Mesopotamia.

At 8 millennia ago, humans began to clear forests for farming in southern Europe & northern China. Deforestation spread over the following millennia. Burning over the land also added CO2. (Would there have been a contribution from more wood used as fuel for that increasing population, too?)

This deforestation, Ruddiman hypothesizes, is the source of the reversal of natural CO2 decline. Not sudden & dramatic, the action here was low level but continued and gradually increased.

7+ millennia ago, rice is being grown in China.

7 millennia ago, agriculture came into north Africa and southern Europe. (That is, around the Mediterranean; were there boats, and trade?)

6 millennia ago, metallurgy arose, and the Bronze Age started in north China, p71. The wheel was invented in southeast Europe. There were, perhaps, upward of tens of millions of us.

5 millennia ago, civilization, as we call it, began with Sumeria .

At 5 millennia ago, irrigating, flooding lowlands for rice, in southeast Asia, added increases in the other main greenhouse gas, methane, along with less powerful activities, p82.

4± millennia ago, in China, fortified towns arose, and then states. India too. Also pastoralism in central Asia contributed another strong move away from our natural, evolved huntiing-gathering economy.

3 millennia ago, iron production started in south China (71). Much of China was deforested by this time.

2 millennia ago, our population had reached 200 million.

Horses, oxen, and metal plows meant that "most" arable land in south Eurasia had been cleared and most lowland delta land of Asia was in rice. So CO2 & CH4 (carbon dioxide and methane) had by then increased above the natural trend, and were near the top of the range of variation, high enough to cancel the cyclic natural cooling, i.e., our effect was nearly equal to that of nature up to 200 years ago, when industrialization got underway, bringing faster deforestation for industrial fuel, as well as more farming as population rapidly increased.

~100+ years ago, use of coal, oil, and gas rapidly increased replacing deforestation as the primary human source of CO2. CH4 also increased from human activity: irrigation, landfills, releases from wells, etc. Our impact on the climate moved into an exponential increase, above anything in the last several hundred millennia, i.e., way above the natural cycles of past climate history over millions of years.

There are counters to that increase: solar radiation continues going down, there are lags in the climate system, and sulfate discharge is an anti-warmer. These will be overcome, Ruddiman argues, as greenhouse gases continue to increase over the next decades and centuries, to levels, and thus temperatures, unprecedented in the last several million years (p. 173).

A FEW RUMINATIONS ON MY PART

One conclusion that seems easy to draw is that anthropogenetic climate change will happen. Period. That has been proven by the fact of it's already having happened. We have already prevented a glacial period from starting, if unwittingly. Now, perhaps anti-wittingly, we are pushing change even harder. But we cannot escape the possibility that since we are shaping what is going to happen, we can make choices to bring about certain results. We are not the victims here; we are the perpetrators. The biggest problem, as in so much policy debate, is not in choosing this or that path, but in pretending that there is an inevitable path, one we have no control over. As always, that is, it is the stand-patters versus the alternative-seekers. And while what we do will affect the biosphere, the Earth, primarily we need to pull up our socks so we do not stumble into a future we would hate to live in.

Ruddiman's thesis might appear to be anti-wilderness. After all that we have done, in detail and in the largest Earth-wide terms, since the Neolithic Revolution occurred, there can be no non-human affected land-, sea-, or climate-scapes. Not the only influence, obviously, nor even always the most powerful. But what we have to accept is that wilderness is not apart from us, but is a concept out of us, something we needed so much that we invented it in order to help us make choices about what kind of world we want to live in.

There is a great range of -scapes -- from classic wilderness, to intense exploitation of the world's wood and metal and dirt etc., to every-square-centimeter urban development. We have to decide how heavily our hand will fall. We have to prove our capacity to continue by showing our respect for that which supports us. The choice to protect wilderness, wildness, wild things, is, just as the Grand Canyon is, an indicator that we do not intend to walk off the edge into the valley of the shadow we ourselves have conjured up.

From his 1954 collection, As I See, I have long treasured this warning, titled "The Triumph of Wit" by the artist Boris Artzybasheff:

The explosion, as Ruddiman makes clear, does not have to be immediate. It can gather force over thousands of years, and still be a destroyer. Except now it is counted in hundreds of years.

The Canyon's climate is going to change, just like for the rest of us. The climate will affect the flows into the reservoir behind Glen Canyon dam, and the qualities of the water that is released directly impact the Canyon. It will affect how far back into the Canyon Hoover dam's reservoir intrudes, and thus the fact of ¾-century's accumulation of debris. We can decide to do more damage or less; it may not be the primary motivator for some, but everyone needs to recognize the damage, how it is caused, and what might be done if it is deemed undesirable. Had those ice sheets returned in their natural cycle, and the jet stream brought storms of the magnitude that filled old Lake Bonneville, waterflow and life in the Canyon would change. If we have, as Ruddiman argues, altered that natural recurrence, then we will be contending with another species of change, perhaps an ultra-dry future. The Canyon offers us the chance to ponder the past, yes, and prompts us to recognize the future is heavily our creation.

Furthermore, in asking what we do with respect to the Canyon, we are asking not just what we do IN the place, like a dam or a skywalk or motoring-for-profits, but also seeing the Canyon as an icon existing WITHIN an even larger environment, emblematic of the condition we want our global home to be in, like powerplant pollution and endless noise from the sky. If we are careless about the Canyon and its environment, how likely is it that we will curb our carelessness and callousness for any other element undergirding our future? That is what having language, and being a social creature thereby, is all about. We are not the victims, and the Canyon reminds us that there are choices for us perpetrators to discuss and make.

We started on a fraught road 10 millennia ago. On the one hand, Ruddiman points with clarity at a most far-reaching of the changes we have brought about. On the other, the Canyon points at the choices we have yet to make, provoking us to think about the detailed results of what we do, wittingly or with foolishness.

Migration 11: Wilson and the Standard View (concluded)

2012-01-19T17:04:00.000-07:00

Done with the chimps, Wilson wants to learn (82 ff) about the past from current hunting-gathering societies, though it is not clear how influences of the past 10 millennia are to be partitioned off. He lists tribes, aggression between them & war, territoriality, arranged marriage, polygamy, disputes over women, social hunting. His lack of interest in language shows up when he compares such hunting to the methods of lions, and when he says social evolution uses an "auto-catalytic" mechanism. Homo sapiens is not differentiated from other hominids of the past million years. Cro-magnon and Neanderthals are conflated. He says female continuous sexual availability is tied to male action. Males, of course, are described at length as, (using the work of Robin Fox): with complex social skills, controlled, cunning, cooperative, attractive, good with kids, relaxed, tough, eloquent, competent, knowledgable, proficient. "Brave, clean and reverent", too, these boy scouts. Actually, such qualities must have been characteristic of all band members for selective success. His hunters and gatherers are not pressed by agricultural societies, nor do they migrate. When they do talk, there is a lot of arguing, although child care is "improved by close social bonding between males and females".

He makes no big deal of the invention of farming, talking as if the development of political organization were primary in social change of the past 10 millennia, stating on 95, "I interpret contemporary human social behavior to comprise hypertrophic outgrowths of the simpler features of human nature." Child rearing and kin relations are simple extensions; religion and class are gross transmutations. Most significant has been the gathering & sharing of knowledge, a modern acquisition that will lift the trajectory of cultural evolution, 96. Hopeful as Wilson is, his basic stance is that what we are goes back more or less smoothly over the previous hundreds of millennia. This standard model not only favors chimps and ignores language, it does not, could not, take our propensity to spread and an invention like domestication into account. His uniformitarian picture has been distorted by the drama of world-wide migrations and the agricultural revolution with its impacts.

Chapter 5 attacks aggression. Humans, genetically, have a hereditary predisposition to aggressive behavior, 100. This is not, however, a general instinct, but a bundle of behaviors: territorial defense, intra-group dominance, sex, anti-weaning, predation, defense against predators, disciplinary. Moreover, 103, most of these are tied to "crowding in the environment" (remember, language is little explored; migration not mentioned). If no advantage is to be gained, then aggression is unlikely to be naturally selected for. So violence, in its forms & intensities, is learned, environmental, on an innate substrate of an evolved human pattern of behaviors, 106. Frankly, this seems to me a fudge. The selective disadvantage, always, of aggression is that of tit brings tat. In the world of 100 millennia ago, how could that compete with bands of mutually supportive individuals who use language to consider situations, come up with options, and make decisions. For a migratory creature able to communicate, would not an instinct of "fight or flight" have been less useful than "talk or walk" in the effort to handle crises? Again, Wilson shuttles for explanation back and forth between animals & humans, and early & current humans. His examples come from recent centuries. when migration would have been more difficult without conquest, which is the bastardization of migration by the post-Neolithic hunger for control over land.

His view: "Primitive men cleaved their universe into friends and enemies and responded with quick, deep emotion to even the mildest threats from outside the arbitrary boundary." "Primitive" sounds like guys drinking in a bar. He just states that this emotional over-reaction was institutionalized into state warfare. He quotes Quincy Howe that civilization drove "peaceful" hunter-gatherers to the ends of earth. Why? Cleaving the universe, again? It does not seem to have much to do with the basis of civilization being in agriculture and its need for land & labor. Later on, Maori are cited as examples of violence resulting from the density trap of an island, and on 119, hunter-gatherers settle disputes violently. His case for an innate aggression, expressed through an environment-shaped pattern, gets all confused in his examples and generalizations, not helping make a case for gene-based social behavior.

This is disappointing. The capacity for violence and aggression is of course easy to see all around today (even given Steven Pinker's new book on the decrease in violence), but Wilson cannot ground its existence in a social environment, in human history, just because his theory demands that it must be innate. I take the alternate view that we prospered in pre-Neolithic millennia as non-violent walking-&-talking responders to challenge. Thus, violence can be introduced as a response to a drastic change in that social environment, the desire & competition for land. However, that does not answer the question of whether there is some sort of innate capacity for violence, which has to be socialized and sublimated in a mutually supportive group society. Again, the examination of the question founders on our ignorance: What would be convincing evidence from pre-Neolithic millennia of the violent behaviors listed above?

I found his chapter 6 on sex equally unilluminating, dependent on a traditional description, taken only from post-Neolithic cultures. On 125, males are aggressive, hasty, fickle, undiscriminating. Females hold back until they can identify males with the best genes. This is followed by polygyny (which we have winnowed down to monogamy). The ultimate function of sex is genetic diversity, not reproduction or pleasure, 122-3. However, his picture does not promote genetic diversity in comparison to band-wide mutuality in attraction & satisfaction leading to multiple partners for both men and women over their active lifetime, which maximally enhances diversity, and justifies considering concealed ovulation as an evolutionarily successful genetic strategy. He sees, 128, male physical and temperament differences (compared to women) leading to male dominance, but keeps to his standard picture, whereas I see those differences as enhanced by the desire to control land and labor in successful farming. There is a predisposition, 137, to assemble into families; but again, is it a predisposition suppressed within the mutually supportive band or just the organization that arose out of the need to control farm labor?

Although he allows that cooperation arose a couple of million years ago, he asserts the male post-Neolithic scam that women with new-borns were encumbered and so needed to secure male allegiance through exclusive sex, thus resulting in the near universality of the pair bond. And I do not mind here jumping out of the pre-Neolithic to point out that this "universal" is challenged by many forms of connection today. And, I would argue, that is just because Homo sapiens has the capacity for a variety of relations, which has been suppressed and regulated for millennia by the need for control over labor. That is, we are actually well equipped genetically, men and women both, to deal with the societies we are now developing and living in.

However, one thing that will be required is dropping even more of the pseudo-scientific explanations of how things must be, as evidenced by this: the sexual bond and emotional satisfaction of family life are based in the physiology of the brain through genetic hardening. Wilson then flouts common sense when he parrots, 140: Women are extraordinary in lacking the estrus; ovulation being hidden, women are always receptive (oh, yeah?). This facilitates bonding, more tightly joining members of "primitive human clans". "Unusually frequent" sex cements the PAIR BOND (were you ready for that?). Even though, concealed ovulation would, without the social controls arising from the need for (male) control over land and labor, facilitate exactly the opposite, i.e., the propensity for any set of male and female to bond for a time and copulate. The chemical basis for attraction and "falling in love" is notorious for its lack of longevity, but evolutionarily it is a successful strategy since it keeps a couple involved over a long-enough time (months maybe in the sometimes tough environments of the pre-Neolithic) for conception to occur. As far as genetic diversity goes, the combination of the above genetically based characteristics, is a thorough winner, and I think, even more important given our migratory impulses. A mutually supportive band, that may move on, with child care and education embedded in the entire group would have no need for "male allegiance through exclusive sex". Such a band, with all members participating in support is a far stronger unit for nurture and protection than a simple pair bond. He throws out that homo- and bisexuals may help in bonding to help out relatives. But of course, within a mutually supportive band, that is even truer, especially when you realize that language leads to narrative, song, poetry, myth, and other forms of imagination that help perpetuate and educate band members.

His chapter 7 on altruism was, Im sure, a big challenge. I like this, on 157: "True selfishness is the key to a more nearly perfect social contract." If altruism were only tied to kin, it would be selected for less than if tied to a wider ability to share. Sharing then becomes, 159, a vehicle of individual welfare. I would ask if language, even thought, is a vehicle that enhances both individual and group. On 163, altruism in humans is characterized by strong emotion and protean allegiance; we have a selected-for impulse to want to make connections. We survive better if we share, i.e., give some, get some. And this would hold true within a band, with neighboring, somewhat related bands, or even unknown bands encountered in migration. And this is why the question of aggression and violence being innate is so important. Altruism, sharing, mutual support, strengthens the band and evolutionary success for the individuals in it, differentially compared to single or couple-only combinations (which, in reality, are not even conceivable as being selected for). For him, morality was invented and promulgated to reiinforce the group as the best form to enhance the individual's survival. Well, it took lots of his pages, but here, we are together. I suspect our different views have more to do with where we start; me with the genetic strengths of language, migration, and the mutually supportive band; him with chimps.

His last two chapters, on religion and hope, raise no new points. Rituals are a form of education in the band, narratives for reinforcement. He could have spent some time considering where our devotion to mystery comes from. He does say that myth, 192, comes from natural selection acting on the genetically evolving material structure of the brain, which I think must mean it strengthens our brain's ability to handle language and the social relations it fosters. Religion itself is another product of language, of communication and story-telling, helping bind the group. What happened to it post-Neolithic, in service to the state and its chiefs, is not part of this story, and though there are those who make a religion out of the Canyon, I hope it never becomes the kind of post-Neolithic activity that sacrifices individuals for the greater glory of the church. But then, is it all perspective? What exactly would a dam-builder think?

Migration 11: Wilson and the Standard View (revised)

2012-01-19T17:03:00.000-07:00

In building up my picture of pre-Neolithic Homo sapiens, I am dependent on finding a variety of scientists, experts, commentators, who have written about the relevant issues at a level I can comprehend and engage with. I certainly have done no original research, unlike my writing based on Grand Canyon archival work. This requires a rather different sort of respect, which is easy to show for the work of Edward O. Wilson, who combines immense authority for his research, e.g. on ants and superorganisms, while commanding attention for his writings, e.g. on sociobiology, in which he ranges far in the subject of human nature. Which happens to be the title of his book (On Human Nature, 1978, Harvard) I am currently wrestling with.

I see twined themes on which we both proceed: 1. From (page) 19: "The question of interest is no longer whether human social behavior is genetically determined, it is to what extent."

2. The answers to that question are, 96, deeply relevant and crucially important in the most important current issues of humanity and its future.

What makes Wilson's book so useful for me is that he presents something like a standard model of what scientists picture when they describe human development in the pre-Neolithic, pre-historical age from, say, 100 millennia ago. What surprises me is what is not emphasized in his writing, especially the role of language. Such a lack seems to me an error, whereas other aspects, such as his emphasis on male dominance, are perhaps more a matter of perspective and choice of model. I am also troubled by his ignoring our migratory character, but that may very well be due to the discoveries of the past 20 years underpinning the out-of-Africa hypothesis championed by C. Stringer, whose latest book -- not yet available -- deals with questions about and modifications of that hypothesis.

Wilson's comment, on 20 (of On Human Nature) is certainly widely shared: "Social behavior can be evaluated … by comparison with the behavior of other species and … by studies of variation among and within human populations." He sees the "picture of genetic determinism emerg(ing) most sharply when we compare selected major categories of animals". And, of course that means "the great apes and monkeys", "our closest living evolutionary relatives". Immediately obvious to me here is that such evaluations skip language. He lists, 20-1, four shared traits of pre-Neolithic humans with apes and monkeys:

1. Groupings of 10-100 adults. I am OK with that size of human bands.

2. Males are larger than females, although humans not so much, so "the predicted average number of females per successful male" is two; "we are a mildly polygynous species". This is a major difference with my view of more egalitarian arrangements among human mutually supportive bands.

3. There is a long period of social training -- that seems fine --, first by "closest associations with the mother", then with other children. But apes & monkeys do not migrate and they do not have language. A migratory language-using creature that requires years of education and upbringing in a world full of danger would surely be more evolutionarily successful if that upbringing were carried out as a group responsibility. If, for example, a mother dies during the baby's first year, would a child be abandoned? So "social training" is a major point to explore.

4. Social play features "role practice, mock aggression, sex practice, and exploration". What about the development of language? And for pre-Neolithics, was"mock aggression play" to show how to smash & bash, or an education on control of such behavior?

Wilson's turning to the chimpanzee to make other comparisons is a common trope, although the split in our lineages took place millions of years ago (mya). When Wilson wrote, it was 20 mya, what he called an evolutionarily short period. Now, Wikipedia sources say, it has shrunk to 5-7 mya. Yet language may be as recent as 200,000 ya or less. Wilson wants to show closeness by describing how humans have made chimps get some language. But he does not mention that even with 6 million years, chimps do not do such stuff on their own, nor teach their children or friends speech when we force them to learn it. He presses on, trying to find similarities, so he can claim, 31, "we have a little-brother species".

Then, 31, there is the huge chimp-human genetic overlap. The gross number, come up with much more recently, is 1-2% difference, but the details are devilish: Here is a 2005 abstract from Nature: Nature 437, 69-87 (1 September 2005) | doi:10.1038/nature04072; Received 21 March 2005; Accepted 20 July 2005

Initial sequence of the chimpanzee genome and comparison with the human genome The Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium25

Here we present a draft genome sequence of the common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). Through comparison with the human genome, we have generated a largely complete catalogue of the genetic differences that have accumulated since the human and chimpanzee species diverged from our common ancestor, constituting approximately thirty-five million single-nucleotide changes, five million insertion/deletion events, and various chromosomal rearrangements. We use this catalogue to explore the magnitude and regional variation of mutational forces shaping these two genomes, and the strength of positive and negative selection acting on their genes. In particular, we find that the patterns of evolution in human and chimpanzee protein-coding genes are highly correlated and dominated by the fixation of neutral and slightly deleterious alleles. We also use the chimpanzee genome as an outgroup to investigate human population genetics and identify signatures of selective sweeps in recent human evolution.

And another Wikipedia-sourced comment:

FROM DNA FILES WEBSITE

And while we’re discussing the genetic similarities of humans and apes, here’s a well-kept secret: we don’t share 98.8% of our genes in common with chimpanzees. What we share, for sure, is about that much similarity in our overall nucleotide sequence for the regions of DNA we share in common. Why is this distinction important? First, a single gene may be 400 nucleotides in length, but a change in just one of those nucleotides (far less than 1%!) can code for a different gene. Second, there are upwards of 700 genes in humans that are not found in chimpanzees. Third, there are nearly 5 million “indels” in each species (regions of the DNA that have been inserted or deleted). And fourth, there are major differences in the rate and timing at which genes we do share in common are turned on and off during growth and development.

Anyway, Wilson next reverses his view and gives primacy to chimps, wanting us to be chimp-like alpha-male-dominated creatures. It is worthwhile asking why chimps are such favorites. Wilson does not distinguish bonobos as models (Chris Stringer and Steven Pinker are more explicit in their rejection), with their female-centered social organization. However, bonobos and chimps are closer to each other genetically and developmentally than either are to us, and still came up with social organizations based on opposite gender assignments.

So it is relevant to ask, if these really, really close cousins can be so differently organized, why do we, not quite so close, have to be like either? Surely, our social organization, based as it is on language, could be as markedly different from any apes. as bonobos are from chimps. Moreover, even if a few million years ago we started out like something else, did not the genetic changes since the split provide us with opportunities and challenges that even way back then, showed up as changes in social organization? Then toss in, most importantly, the development of language. It may be fairly "recent", but surely it promoted, even evolutionarily selected for, a social organization to take advantage of its benefits. Benefits that seem to me would be maximized when they involve social, extended, open, back-&-forth. Language needed a group setting to develop, surely. Dictatorship and dominance do not promote speech and its benefits now, why should they have 100 millennia ago? Do we have to fantasize about an Arab Spring way back then, with old-fashion inarticulate alpha males toppled by the new medium of fluent language use? Could not earlier developments like being upright, having fire, eating cooked food, etc., have been producing a society in which language was nurtured by and reciprocally nurtured openness, discussion, narrative, speech-based learning?

So why do scientists like to cuddle up to chimps? Are we were so lonely that we need an extended cousinage? My own sense is that in understanding humans and how we lived 100 millennia ago, we are on our own, and ought to leave chimps in peace, instead of torturing them into Lamarckian behaviors. I would also suggest that when we look back into our prehistoric past, we need to be very careful of the distortions brought by looking through the lens of the tremendous changes wrought by the Neolithic Revolution.

Chimps aside, Wilson wants, 34, to restrict cultural evolution to the post-Neolithic, which I think is a serious limitation, given our pre-Neolithic accomplishments of spread and culture (think of boating to Australia 60 millennia ago and 30-millennia-old cave painting). Strangely, he then jumps way ahead to talk about Israeli kibbutzim to show the incest taboo as genetic. Another genetic-based trait, he says, is hypergamy, women marrying up. Since this has no place in the pre-Neolithic, he uses civilizations in China & India to clinch his argument. This, again, seems to be a practice that writers on humanity's development/history fall into: They compound their arguments from a mix of pre- and post-Neolithic, almost ignoring or down-grading the truly revolutionary impact of the invention of domestication. It does get confusing. For instance, Wilson argues, 80, we do not diverge culturally too far from what our biology allows. His politically correct example: Slavery goes through cycles in our history, and always self-destructs. Slavery is a culture-based relation fighting biology because of competition with free labor (US) and our desire to be in group relations. Reproduction declines, and violence is more & more required.

So much for slavery. Consider the (unrelated?) comment another skeptic makes about sex on the DNA files website:

There does not seem to be enough gene-stuff for behavior or sexual behavior to be the exclusive expression of the genes in humans or apes. Terry Deacon says it well: “Genes are under the control of epigenetics. Epigenetics are under the control of social behavior. Social behavior is under the control of culture.” Variations in sexual behavior are cultural, just as the notion of deviance is cultural.

Wilson instead argues by analogy with other vertebrates again; he says healthy males mate more; weaker may not mate at all maybe. But all females do. So if times are tough, then more daughters, because males die more, and genetics selects for daughters. A Wikipedia analysis of lineage for mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosome Adam show Eve back to 140-290 millennia, and Adam only 70, a sign that Y's have a higher extinction rate (in chidbirth, perhaps?). This could be support for the idea that successful males are differentially way more successful at having many, many children. However, if sexual activity were more widespread, it could be that weaker males just produce children more likely not to make it. And what about females going after a succession of males attractive to them? We, influenced by 10 millennia of the importance of heedless, headlong male activity may be uncomfortable with the idea of assertive females, but that does not mean our pre-Neolithic ancestors found mutuality and universal consensual behavior odd, particularly since it would have enhanced their chances for evolutionary success. That is, if sexual behavior is socially controlled in a concealed-ovulation, mutually supportive environment, wouldnt we have been better off with a set-up with all members acting on their attractions and trying to have sex, rather than the alpha-male centered view, more suited to an estrus-displaying animal?

We need, I guess I am saying, to take the plunge and accept our uniqueness. For centuries, we have been trumpeting the triumphs (science vs. the church?) of discoveries that have moved us and our world from being the rational lords, cynosure and center of all the universe, to peripheral, inconsequential, limited things. I would prefer that we accept those discoveries along with the sense of how unique (so far) they make us. Can we develop the strengths language provides us, and celebrate them?

--end of first part--

Migration 12: What Does Migration Have To Do With Grand Canyon, You Ask?

2012-01-18T16:32:00.000-07:00

It seems it is important to stop a moment and answer that question.

For one thing, there is much more I would like to write about migration, language, social organization, humanity's history, etc., that will not directly touch Grand Canyon matters, but would flesh out into a coherent picture of humanity, in the sense that how we evolved is vital information about how we live today.

Moreover, for the other, main, thing, I do believe that the fundamental reason for my trying to recover and present Grand Canyon's political, human, history is that the Canyon is, for today and continuing, an icon of immense significance for understanding what choices we humans are making about the world we live in and what we want it to be.

My guiding idea is that language is a genetic phenomenon: at some point in our evolution, there were mutations that made language possible, an adaptation strongly selected for because it increased the likelihood of individual survival. It is apparently a fairly recent development, a few hundreds of millennia, not millions of years, old. Not so clear-cut a genetic matter is humanity's characteristic of migrating, of spreading -- across the landscape, yes, but also in moving goods and ideas, things and concepts, technologies and inventions. A parsimonious theory would say that increasing sophistication of language use is the foundation of our migratory behavior. I do believe they are inextricable: we talk about moving, and we move. We move, and we talk it over. And after a hundred millennia or so, we have the internet and oil supertankers.

A hundred or more millennia ago, as a creature dependent on plants and animals naturally occurring for our food, humans' ability to talk and willingness to move on led, I think, to a social-cultural organization in which small (a few dozen, a hundred?, individuals) bands of more or less strongly blood-related kin prospered by being mutually supportive, more or less egalitarian in build and relationships, and in which discussion and sharing were the dominant behaviors, rather than violence and competition.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I was struck, for instance, reading about M. Knack's characterization of the Southern Paiute bands who live on the Canyon's Northside, as using accommodation for handling relations between different bands (my post of 29 Sep 2009), and even more foreign intruders. Sadly, it was a social tool that failed when used with Utes, Navajo, and Mormons.

This led me to wonder if it was the same tool used by the Havasupai. Could it be that they came to their canyon as an accommodation to resource needs of the several bands (now evolved into the Hualapai) on the plateaus of the Canyon's south-west? Even more to the point, was accommodation what Ko-hot' had in mind when he told army officers that all the Havasupai wanted was their canyon set aside so that pushy whitefolk now coming onto their plateau above would not cause them grief? (my posts of 21 & 29 Sep 2009). Which those whitefolk stockmen and prospectors, no accommodationists, then did.

Now where would that leave the Hualapai response, in which bands together responded violently to the violence deployed by the civilized whitefolk society that was radically intruding on their lands?

Of course, these were the descendants of those who had migrated into the post-glacial New World 10, 15, 20 millennia ago. They were peoples who did some farming, as well as hunting and gathering, not simply stamped from the template of those who left Africa 60 and more millennia ago.

The Hopi too have a millennia-long past of farming and settlement, but also one characterized by the need to migrate when conditions changed. Into the same lands they live on east of the Canyon, the Navajo showed up as pastoralists looking for pasture, and with minor interruptions, have been spreading out as much as they could. So even before the disruption by whitefolk, that area was the site of contention between sophisticated societies.

Are these just examples of the blooming, buzzing confusion of human relationships? How could we have gotten from those African bands of 100 millennia ago to these Grand Canyon stories?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Humans in those small, language-based, mutually supportive, migrating, egalitarian bands have left evidences of their sophistication in many areas of human activity, evidences that always astonish us when we find their artifacts. Surely, they must have been hit hard by the last glacial. Or perhaps it made them think really, really hard. For the most life-changing of all human inventions appeared as the ice retreated. Domestication, the Neolithic Revolution, did not tame human existence, it caused a true explosion. It may have been more like a slow-burning fuse than a Big Bang, but over these 6-7 millennia, our inventiveness is accelerating, if not always smoothly.

The Neolithic Revolution stimulated a cascade of inventions: To farm successfully we needed land and we needed labor on that land. Farming is hard to do combined with migration (though goodness knows, the two are intertwined in many ways), and so humans settled. More significantly, they took whatever notion they had of "mine and yours", and applying it to those essentials of land and labor, conceptualized property. Property accumulated and concentrated gave us villages, and eventually cities, states, and empires. Sometime in there, property and maleness got entangled. Maybe it was a differential strength thing; maybe a genetic imbalance of the ability to defend, or of assertiveness. Even if not a dominant component of our genetic nature, somehow competitiveness & acquisition bled into violence, and as populations grew and controlled territory, to more and more organized forms of war.

The need for stability to maximize crop yield from our seemingly wonderful new invention meant that property tied labor to the property owners. Not much of a step then to arrangements by which men bound women and their children. Mutually supportive, egalitarian relationships within a migratory, hunting-gathering band did not require paternalism; jointly taking care of children, of mothers, would tend toward evolutionary success. Contrariwise, to be successful, working and defending fixed property seemed to require those binding contracts, marriage & inheritance. Certainly, what had developed in a few hundreds of years' time was kingship and its supporting institutions like religion and civilization--you know, high, long walls, big self-important statues, sports stadiums, etc.

What may have been the most significant result of this Revolution will bring me back to the Canyon, for it concerns the environment. We all know about climate change from the industrialization of the past couple of centuries. William Ruddiman (Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum, How Humans Took Control of Climate, Princeton, 2005) presents the climatological case that the Neolithic led, at first very slowly, but accumulatively, to a growth in human activities that has been warming the climate for the past six millennia or so. Indeed, his work shows that this long-term gradualist climate change has deferred a cooling that otherwise would even now be leading into another glacial.

As an indicator of "humans taking control of their environment", thats pretty powerful.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

As an icon of "maybe humans need to think about what they are doing to their environment", I think the Grand Canyon is pretty powerful. Indeed, that is what I am trying to do here. Go back to the Paiute, the Havasupai, the Hualapai, the Hopi, the Navajo. Throw in the whitefolk, with all our various tribes: advocates for the Canyon, river-runners, federal officials, scientists, dam-builders, etc., etc. Each of these has contributed to the political history of the Canyon. In some sense, though there are always a diversity of views, each has a view of what they want when they seek to impact Canyon affairs. I have written, for instance, at length about the dam-builders and their vision for the Canyon, and by implication, for the nation and the world.

It is a very different vision from mine. Likewise, the Hualapai, once would-be dam-builders, have now migrated their vision to a different form, one still consonant with their determination that their Reservation can provide them with prosperity. And the other major land-owners, the Havasupai, the Navajo, the United States acting through several government agencies? All different visions of the Canyon. Each, it seems to me, must have explicitly or by implication from their actions, a view of the Canyon that is embedded in their view of the world and how it is legitimate to act.

In general, and in specific ways, then, this story I am offering about our ancestors -- language-using and migratory, mutually supportive and dependent directly on their environment -- is a story in which the Grand Canyon is an iconic landscape and people-scape. What we do there is what we are doing everywhere. What we believe we are doing there is a judgment on whether we are going to be, anywhere.

Hualapai - NPS Core Team Meetings, Summary

2012-01-11T20:12:00.000-07:00

This entry contains my summaries of the 2000-7 meetings of the Core Team, concerned with management and regulation on the Colorado along the reach of the border shared by Grand Canyon National Park (Park) and the Hualapai Tribe (HT), and on downstream into the area under the administration of Lake Mead National Recreation Area (LM).

Since this is a very long entry with considerable detail, I have further condensed it in a related entry on this date, labeled Part 2.

For each entry here, between sets of ====, I have entered the month, the location, and the host. The numbers of attendees are listed by agency. After June 2001, the Core Team consisted of the tribal Chair & Vice-Chair, and the two Sup'ts and Dep'y Sup'ts. The number of others attended varied from 10 to 27, often just under 20. The Core Team had a rule -- that only its members could speak -- which was usually waived. Following the attendee count, I summarize the content in order from the minutes, using various abbreviations and short-cuts. Any [comments in brackets like this] are mine. My own further condensation follows, all in upper case, giving my impressions of what was going on.

The source for this entry is the set of minutes furnished me under a FOIA request by Grand Canyon National Park.

I have called this five-plus-year exercise an "experiment". Given the sensitivities of the participants and the issues, I believe it was a success. Its double terminations remain a mystery, but failing some fatal flaw, I should think the parties could do well in considering re-starting this collaboration. Of course, it could be even more effective if it were more public, even at one remove.

=================

2000

February

No details were presented in the summary of a"brainstorm discussion" on setting up an "agreement of purpose" for three-way meeting format.

=================

March, PS (Peach Springs), HT

Present:

"Core Team": HT Chair & Vice-chair; 2 Supts and dep'y supts.

Facilitator: M Orton She was present at all meetings.

16 others; usually, no titles were listed

Park 3 usually included Jan Balsom, long-time GCNP w/ responsibility for relations w/ tribes

LM 3 sup't was succeeded by dep'y later in year

HT 15 incl staff of natural & cultural resources dep'ts, GC resort Corp.

Content:

Park Sup't Arnberger explained he had halted river and backcountry mgt planning, but Park had resources for these 3-party negotiations.

Problem was a divided river, with increasing recreation spectrum. Zones:

National to Diamond

Diamond to Separation

Separation to Pearce

Disagreement only over uprunning which HT allows, but not Park. (no mention of where)

Discussion indicated this was a meeting on process.

Decided to work first on "safety and management" and then "trespass and permits with respect to Hualapai land".

NPS asked HT for moratoriums on 1. increase in tribal contracts with independent river companies, 2. pontoon operations, and 3. ramadas & helipads. All then agreed to share in planning discussions.

PARTIES WERE CHECKING EACH OTHER OUT AS TO SERIOUSNESS AND WILLINGNESS TO ENGAGE. MORATORIUM REQUEST WOULD IMPLY THAT NPS WORRIED ABOUT HT ACTIVITY AND ITS IMPACT ON RIVER AND TRAFFIC WAS A DRIVER. BUT ALL HT PARTIES, INCLUDING GCRESORTCORP, SEEMED WILLING TO ENGAGE. POSITIONING WAS FOR DISCUSSION NOT CONTENTION.

===================================

May, BC (Boulder City), LM

Present:

Core Team: 2 Park, 2 LM, 5 HT

Also 11 others: 4 LM, 2 Park, 5 HT

Content:

A technical working team had developed drafts on commercial river running standards, helispots, and emergency response. The minutes indicated these were for HT operations, and were following the path of the Park. There was a detailed discussion of helispot operations, based on Interior Dep't standards. This again seems to imply that NPS had grown worried about regularizing HT operations using federal standards. The Hualapai apparently were happy to go along.

THIS GIVES THE PICTURE OF COOPERATION AS THE HUALAPAI LINE UP WITH NPS WAYS OF DOING THINGS. SUGGESTS THERE MIGHT BE CARROT/STICK.

=========================

June (2 days), Flagstaff , GC

Present:

Core Team: 1 Park, 2 LM, 5 HT

Also 7: 1 LM, 2 Park, 3 HT. DOI person from Asst Sec office had been showing up, too.

Content:

Worth noting, mtgs always opened with prayer, not always by HT.

An indication of the complications was that the drafts from the previous meeting were approved, corrected, so they could be submitted to the HT Council.

The three entities presented their permit & fee systems. Park said it issued few permits for the lower river, but couldnt talk about "confidential" commercial operations. When HT asked about permits for Hualapai for traditional purposes, facilitator said another time; this was on recreation.

LM permits various operations, but only boat retrieval (4 companies) goes into Park; a tour boat service only goes upriver to Park boundary.

HT permits various activities, but is referring to entire reservation. Helicopter transport was mentioned, as well as river tours.

Proposals were offered: LM had four zones, by adding a dividing point at Quartermaster, allowing for a jet boat tour to go there to connect with HT helicopter trip. This would help tribe while dealing with physical & social carrying capacity problems. The lower Canyon would be a heavy recreational use area, appropriate to an NRA, but not a Park.

HT agreed to the LM zones, with four different permits utilizing dual permitting. It called for cooperation on enforcement. Its presentation utilized a lawyerly assertion of sovereignty. [As I have discussed elsewhere, the HT stance towards its reservation models it as an anti-migration zone, reminiscent of China under the impact of Europeans during the decline of the Qing.] HT wanted free private trips by HT if starting on reservation. HT also wanted allocation of trips through entire Canyon.

Park agreed with LM zones, saying point of origin should control permit. Said solicitor would allow Park to provide % of fees to HT based on use. [This is turn-around from 1970's; did it ever happen?] Of course, should be reciprocal. BUT Park says no to upriver from Diamond because of safety, unless for adm purpose. Says commercials negotiate with each other as river trips go along, so cannot predict who will be on reservation bank. HT says some camp w/o permit. Park says maybe can be worked out. [Note that Superintendent not there, with Alaska in his near future, and river planning in an uproar.]

They broke into discussion groups, to look for common ground and sticking points. Depending on what the atmosphere was, this could have been a make-or-break point in indicating whether to go on. For instance, all agreed on no upriver traffic from Diamond, but the Park did not want any from Separation unless it was in rubber rafts and heavily regulated.

Nor did it want jet boats above Quartermaster or commercial trips upriver to Separation, although tribal tours could be considered. [In fact, Congress had given GCNP jurisdiction over the water surface down to Grand Wash Cliffs; but it had done little with that except mis-step by claiming to the historic high water line, and now, apparently worried about HT ambitions, was attempting to regain ceded ground.]

The list of agreed items included: sharing use information, carrying capacities for river and camps, making the anything-goes zone from Quartermaster (zone 4) down, attempting fee sharing, issuing permits for film, science & education, and protecting the resource, Hualapai culture, & visitors. The configuration of activities in zone 4 seemed the most likely to lead to some serious negotiation. The Park having asserted its rights down to Diamond, all consented to discussing a mandatory commercial take-out at Diamond, with only HT outfitters below that point. And down to Quartermaster, bigger, faster trips, and upriver traffic would be discussed. Moreover, zone 4 itself could be pushed upstream, to allow hard-hulled motorboats, jetboats, passenger pickup. The picture thus emerges of Park wilderness river management upstream from Diamond, and a recreation-area [or sacrifice] zone 4 above Quartermaster (r.m. 260), largely for HT profit.

GC Resort Corp reported working on ambitious multi-spectrum marketing plan, but it was not presented in minutes.

THIS MEETING THREW INTO SHARP FOCUS THE DIFFERENT APPROACHES OF THE THREE PARTICIPANTS. THE LAKE MEAD AND HUALAPAI PROPOSALS PUSHED FOR AN EXPANSION OF RECREATION-AREA TYPE ZONE. THE PARK RESPONDED WITH A RE-STATEMENT OF ITS INTEREST IN WILDERNESS MANAGEMENT (PART-YEAR COMMERCIAL MOTORS EXCEPTED) ABOVE DIAMOND. THE NEGOTIATING GROUND SEEMED TO BE SET BY NOT DISTURBING THE PARK'S RIVER ARRANGEMENTS, AND THE PARK WILLING TO DISCUSS AN UPRIVER MOVEMENT OF LAKE MEAD AND HUALAPAI ACTIVITIES.

=========================

September, PS, HT

Present:

Core Team: 1 Park, 2 LM, 4 HT

Also 9: 2 LM, 2 Park, 5 HT.

Content:

The subcommittee on permits and fees that had been set up in June reported in detail, followed by discussion. Fluctuating lake levels affect safety.

HT described its whitewater trip: fly from Las Vegas and drive to river. Boat to Quartermaster by 3 p.m., then fly back to Las Vegas. Boats take new passengers down to Pearce. HT worried about "boatmen fatigue". Foot traffic impact came up. There was discussion of how much traffic was generated by HT activities, with many being surprised that 50% of river trippers leave or enter by Whitmore heliicopter. HT plans to take 800 people in 2001 upriver about 8 miles to r.m. 217, about 5% of their passenger load. The Core Team agreed to hold use numbers at their current levels, e.g., no tours from Lake Mead, HT takes 80/day down from Diamond, three private parties launching from Diamond. Also it was reiterated that there would be no upriver running from Diamond after the 2000 season.

The Memorandum of Agreement was reviewed, to go to Interior, then the Hualapai Council for approval, in order to be signed by the two superintendents before their imminent departures.

The zones were revised: 1 starts just above Diamond; 2 goes down to just above Quartermaster (Separation no longer used); 3 to the Park boundary at 278; and 4 to Pearce Ferry. [This would seem to indicate that the suggestion to extend recreation-area activity above Quartermaster was dropped.]

THIS MEETING SEEMED FAR MORE SUBDUED THAN JUNE'S. IT SPENT ITS TIME ON DETAILS, AND AGAIN SEEMED TO BE RECOGNIZING THE PARK'S CONCERNS AS PARAMOUNT.

=========================

October, BC, LM

Present:

Core Team: 2 Park, 2 LM, 6 HT (only counting those attending)

Also 7: 1 LM, 4 Park, 2 HT.

Content:

The Agreement had been successfully approved and signed.

There was a presentation on proposed carrying capacity indicators and monitoring, and the committee on fees and permits was renamed the Carrying Capacity Committee. Capacities will be established for a certain flow from Glen Canyon. River user numbers were presented for the Park.

The zone proposal now called for 1 to r.m. 224 above Diamond; 2 to r.m. 257 at Triumphal Arch just above Quartermaster; 3 to Park boundary; 4 to Pearce. HT was not satisfied with zone 2 given the restriction on river uprunning; they want the option even though they have no such trips now. The Park stated its concern with safety. HT wanted to be the sole provider of trips, but this might be troublesome. HT will continue to discuss the issue.

With further discussion, a fees and permits subcommittee was (re-)established.

ALTHOUGH DISCUSSION ABOUT SOME HUALAPAI OFFERINGS WAS ACTIVE, THE MEETING REFLECTED THE DOMINANCE OF THE PARK THROUGH THE INFORMATION IT COMMANDED, AND ITS GENERAL POSITION ON PROJECTING ITS VERSION OF RIVER MANAGEMENT AND PROTECTION.

=========================

2001

January, Flag, Park

Present:

Core Team: 2 Park, 2 LM, 8 HT

Also 11: 2 LM, 6 Park, 3 HT.

Content:

LM & Park both had new sup'ts, but LM had been there as dep'y and Park had come from GCNRA.

Started with bang--go into executive session to discuss an unauthorized dock built by a coptering company at r.m. 263. HT had ordered it removed--pontoon boat/gangplank structure. HT affirms commitment to no new structures. HT will report sanctions to core team in secret. HT will review its internal communications. [This just reinforces my developing sense that this exercise was NPS trying to bring HT into line on river activities.]

Comm. set up on joint law enforcement. Also HT will review its contracts and perhaps allow NPS to review them.

Zone discussion was put off, but possibility brought up of more HT activities in exchange for cutting down on uprunning. Park and LM agree boundary is at 277 [correct; right where the GWC comes down to river on the south side].

HT had written EPA about water quality standards in Feb 2000. EPA had now written NPS asking whether HT had jurisdiction over river. [NPS feathers very ruffled, but HT had not mis-stepped.] Supts both pressed HT on how this could bring up boundary. Decided to work on reply together. Feathers settle down.

Use data presented fm Park, but HT didnt have. Discussion of how to measure use & impact.

HT insistent that cultural activities are like adm and not subject to regulation; core agrees.

Capacity & monitoring discussion; [la-la land].

THE ASPECT OF BIG BROTHER CHASTISING LITTLE BROTHER IS HARD TO ESCAPE. NPS HAD A GOTCHA ON THE HELICOPTER DOCK AND SPANKED. IT THEN MIS-STEPPED ON LEGITIMATE HT REQUEST TO EPA. OTHERWISE, NO ACTION.

=========================

April, PS, HT

Present:

Core Team: 2 Park, 2 LM, 7 HT

Also 10: 2 LM, 5 Park, 3 HT.

Content:

Feb mtg had been set, but not held. Good feeling expressed by Orton and HT chairwoman.

HT still unready on zones. HT had now approved 3 sets of standards, in line with NPS standards.

HT said contract not to be renewed w/ hel. company which built dock.

Hunting discussion: HT says not much by river--too inaccessible. Alston [is he a hard-head] says he cannot allow in "Area of Cooperation"; may end up in court. HT speaks of sovereignty. So Park-HT comm formed to seek fed legn to allow traditional hunting like Havasupai. Ban on AOC commercial hunting was agreed to, although hunters could be transported through AOC by HT. but not upriver.

LM says lake will drop; Pearce unavailable. HT says South Cove too far; may helicopter at 260 or jet boat.

Discussion of law enforcement leads Park to say it has l.e. jurisdiction in AOC and is considerate of HT. All other committees had nothing to report.

MARK-TIME MEETING, EXCEPT FOR PARK SUP'T ASSERTING JURISDICTION.

=========================

June (2 days), BC, LM

Present:

Core Team: 2 Park, 2 LM, 2 HT

Note: HT core now limited to chair & vice

Also 15: 1 LM, 5 Park, 9 HT.

Note: HT usually includes Dep'ts of Cultural and Natural Resources and GC Resort Corp

Content:

HT still working on zone boundaries, incl. river trip and attorney consultation.

Discussion of cultural resources brought out that the Colorado is one. Park & HT may try to specify sites to be avoided. Alston makes comment implying Park owns to HHWM.

HT working on mgt plan for lower Colorado [loose usage]. Sup'ts push for this to be a joint process. HT wants to move more quickly, and have it sovereign, not NPS, process, says [wf] tribal attorney. Later, HT agree to slow down. LM suggests more slowing by studying planning some more, and HT can learn from NPS. Att'y pushes air & water quality and jurisdictional statement. Alston has mystery DC fax for all to discuss. Much discussion and DC call.

THE INDICATIONS ARE THERE OF CONTINUING TO WORK ON THE ISSUES. PLANNING PROCESS BRINGS OUT NPS ANXIETY ABOUT HT WORKING ON ITS OWN. TRIBAL ATTORNEY SEEMS TO BE PUSHING HARDER THAN HT MEMBERS. MYSTERY ISSUE.

=========================

July, Wms, Park

Present:

Core Team: 2 Park, 2 LM, 1 HT

Also 15: 3 LM, 3 Park, 9 HT.

Content:

HT chair wants to share cost. Then an exec. session.

HT not ready to discuss zones; when Council approves, core team can try for consensus; if different, back to HT. HT att'y doesnt want to be stapled on legal opinions. Hunting comm re-org'ed. HT & Park will meet on overflight, Reid leg'n.

Discussion on permit issuance, if cooperation is goal. Would be difficult but comm. will work on it. Capacity and monitoring still in talking stage; more research needed. Law enforcement coop has to worry about jurisdiction. Joint planning, CRMP lawsuits also discussed.

Discussion of designating specific sites, e.g., hiking, camping, prohibited.

NPS says it wants to help find altrenative to Whitmore helis, so HT keeps income.

Most of fees and permits discussion put off because of zone.

Plan for Aug overnight river trip & mtg in Sep.

THIS COULD BE SIGN OF CONTINUING TO TRY TO WORK TOGETHER, OR THE DIFFICULTY OF DOING SO. LITTLE SUBSTANTIVE ACTION.

=========================

Nov, BC, LM

Present:

Core Team: 2 Park, 2 LM, 1 HT

Also 10: 3 LM, 2 Park, 5 HT.

Content:

HT desires Interior rep, perhaps for First American liaison.

Noted Reid air route leg'n; will follow.

Sup't reports on suit settlement to re-start CRMP; done by 2004. Says Park may be "forced" into looking at entire river, so how to mix that with cooperation of this group. HT says they are fearful of a negative econ. impact from settlement. Park says it will formally consult w/ HT. Whitmore is discussed and consultation will be done. Question of open, transparent planning affecting core team work. LM wants core kept going for trust and relations. Park Sup't wants to know what HT CRMP concerns are, e.g., preservation of sacred sites, helicopters.

HT says EPA agreed to joint planning and extension to 2004. Park says coop could continue under NEPA. Park will hire planners, and HT could be in process. All agree on joint & coop for lower river. LM suggests a "task agreement". Park points to entire river, motors, private increase as big issues. Says has to give "equal attention" to all tribes.[!] HT keeps bringing up its draft lower river plan, but Park says worried about NEPA.

Zones set: 1 to r.m. 225, Diamond. 2 to east side of Q Canyon, r.m. 260. 3. to boundary buoy at 277. 4 to Pearce. LM says this has to go through NEPA [!!]. Activities: no upriver travel in 1. Pontoons go up at Q, but below r.m. 260. No more Diamond to Travertine round trips now. Helis at Q. HT offers Diamond to Pearce trips. NPS wants up only in 3 & 4. LM interested in HT economy, esp. if they agree to limits. NPS oversees lots of downriver trips. Also 1 jet boat to 277; no further pending discussions. Also jet boat to get passengers, depending on lake level. Individuals can go up to Separation.[??] LM & HT interested in jet boat scenic tours up to Q.

NPS says jet boats to Separation was in 1981 plan.

Zones agreed to, only change to upstream side of Diamond to keep road in 2. [note that same over past year, after Separation removed, so 1 & 2 are Park recreation, and 3 & 4 HT/LM recreation.]

LM says planning now needs to look at activities, to get consensus when going public. Close coop would then be demonstrated. LM plans consistent with this, only leaving open is tours to Q.

CRMP DOMINATED AND SEEMED TO ENERGIZE DISCUSSION OF WORKING TOGETHER AND REACHING CONSENSUS. ZONES AGREED TO, WITH 3 & 4 BELOW QUARTERMASTER AS MULTI-USE SACRIFICE ZONE. PARK ALL FOR COOP & SHARING; QUESTION IS WHAT WILL CRMP PROCESS REQUIRE? MANY COMMITTEES HAVE TASKS; WILL WORK GET DONE? LEG'N (TRAD. HNTG.), LAW ENFORCEMENT, FEES AND PERMITS, MONITORING, CARRYING CAPACITY.

=========================

2002

March, Flag, Park

Present:

Core Team: 2 Park, 2 LM, 2 HT

Also 18: 3 LM, 6 Park, 9 HT.

Content:

Law enforcement discussed as joint and mutual effort.

Group agrees to oppose Reid bill to remove restrictions on air tours with "quiet technology".

HT reported on various little env. projects.

Park goes over plans for CRMP. Discussed how to involve HT, coop &/or consulting. LM pushes zones as part of scoping/alternatives.

Comm. presents zone activities: 1&2 are primitive; downriver; HT permit required to stop on left. 3 & 4: up tours, pontoons, jetboats, individuals, but not PWCs. Questions indicate skepticism about uses of 3. HT want tours to go up from Separation, and LM instead offering to bring visitors to Q. Dock at r.m. 262.

Permits Comm. recommends joint permits issued at point of origin. To continue working on consolidated permit, incl fee distribution.

Monitoring still talking.

HT BRING UP ITS LOWER RIVER MGT PLAN. CRMP MAJOR ORGANIZING FOCUS, E.G., ZONES. ACTIVITIES IN THEM ARE LAID OUT AND QUESTIONED. STEP FORWARD ON PERMITS BEING CONSOLIDATED.

=========================

May, PS

Present:

Core Team: 2 Park, 2 LM, 2 HT

Also 26: 4 LM, 4 Park, 18 HT (many River Runners, contractors)

Content:

Purpose of meeting is to figure out how to interface with CRMP. Comm to provide input, issues, and make comments. Discuss how to fund.

HT want to build stairway at r.m. 262 to get up bank to helipad and bathrooms, from Diamond- down day-trips. Park wants to consider.

HT presents its problems with 4-stroke engines hitting bottom at 232; want to use 2-stroke. Park will check.

THE PRESSURE IS ON TO USE THIS FORUM TO GET HT INFLUENCE IN CRMP. EXPECTATIONS ARE RAISED; PARK IS WILLING. ALSO OPERATIONAL MATTERS COME UP.

=========================

June, PS, HT

Present:

Core Team: 2 Park, 1 LM, 1 HT

Also 22: 2 LM, 5 Park, 15 HT.

Content:

Cross law-enforcement doubted by Park atty. HT flip at r.m. 232 reported. Discussion of 4 stroke w/ dealer. HT moved ahead on env. improvements.

CRMP Comm would deal with recreation, impacts, resources. Discussion on how to finance coop by HT. HT wanted scoping mtg and to give input on process. Park & Orton will do this. HT repeats it wants to be part of budget, and lobbies Park hard.

Discussion of dropping lake level; dredging suggested. LM mgt plan out for comment.

HT caucus on CRMP participation and then push for paid role. Park talks about considering.

HT PRESSING HARD AGAIN TO BE IN CRMP PROCESS, INCLUDING HONORARIA AND EXPENSES. GAP MAY BE APPEARING HERE DUE TO HT EXPECTATIONS. COULD HT BE PART OF CRMP PROCESS?

=========================

Aug, BC, LM

Present:

Core Team: 2 Park, 2 LM, 1 HT

Also 18: 3 LM, 7 Park, 8 HT.

Content:

Park Sup't says he will meet Sen. McCain to brief him on CRMP, and will bring up HT participation funding. HT chair had met w/ delegation to urge funding, too.

LM had taken Nevada delegation on tour and talked about take-out issues.

Park offers to build log steps at r.m. 262. Approvals will be sought.

LM talks of dropping lake and need to re-do facilities and plan better. HT Clay Bravo suggests temporary road over flats at Pearce for take-outs. LM opts for South Cove.

Discussion of removing trout at LCR. HT express concern, but say "extinction is a natural process". {Not, I hope, of human sub-groups.]

BLM wilderness in Nevada comes up; HT wanted to be consulted.

Park reports on scopings. Lower gorge issues not of major interest. HT reps attended, and their info enhanced the meetings. Heli use raised repeatedly. Many questions about HT river trips.

Park welcomes HT as cooperating agency. Scoping at PS in Sept. HT want to help review RFPs. Park will consider. HT presented its budget for participating in CRMP, doing analysis. $300K, with Park paying half. Park says it will look for it.

Discussion of cross-deputization and Park says probably not; each fed agency can enforce its laws only within its jurisdiction. Maybe a mutual aid agreement incl BIA.

HT CONTINUES PUSHING ITS ROLE IN CRMP, HAVING JOINED IN SCOPING, AND NOW WANTING $300K TO ANALYZE ALTERNATIVES. LM FALL WILL HAVE EFFECTS; HT SUGGESTS ROAD AT PEARCE. CROSS POLICING UNLIKELY.

=========================

Oct, Flag, Park

Present:

Core Team: 2 Park, 2 LM, 1 HT

Also 17: 4 LM, 5 Park, 8 HT.

Content:

Difficulty in cross policing leads to request to look for consistency in enforcement.

Discussion of FOIA applicability. Not everything, e.g., CRMP, but usual assumption is information is.

HT wants reference to their river company on Park website to be more friendly.

Mention Kyl proposal to pipe water out of Canyon for coal slurry.

McCain visit was on overflights, and funding for HT in CRMP didnt come up.

Log steps at r.m. 262 all set to be built.

LM reports leads HT to mention economic impact on their operations. LM has no extra resources to help right now. South Cove is focus.

CRMP scoping at Peach brought different perspective. HT now a cooperating agency. They had attended scoping in Calif & Md. HT budget to analyze CRMP being worked on by Park. HT wants Alston to tell Parks Advisory Board about their issues.

Mutual aid in policing agreement ok'ed.

A MEETING THAT COULD BE CHARACTERIZED AS SHOWING THE PROCESS HAD REACHED THE STATE OF BUSINESS AS USUAL. VARIOUS MATTERS WERE BROUGHT UP AND HANDLED. A POSSIBLE COMPARISON COULD BE MADE WITH THE FIRST MEETINGS WHERE NPS SEEMED TO BE TRYING TO BRING HT INTO LINE ON RIVER POLICIES; MORE RECENTLY, HT HAS BEEN PUSHING PARK ON CRMP PARTICIPATION.

=========================

2003

Feb, Lake Mead Lodge

Present:

Core Team: 2 Park, 2 LM, 2 HT

Also 18: 3 LM, 6 Park, 9 HT.

Content:

Park says solicitor believes passenger numbers may be exempt from FOIA. [This could make a nonsense of monitoring and planning.] FOIA may apply to this group. [What is the concern?]

Discussed fire management and tamarisk encroachment.

LM thinks South Cove will continue to be usable. Worry about possible waterfall. Road to Pearce discussed, maybe on old Mormon roadbed. LM not encouraging about a road. HT not prepared to have all trips exit at Diamond, and worried about impact of depending on South Cove. LM suggests trip with Park to look for roadbed. HT want to go. Group criticized private parties monopolizing take-out. HT did not attend LM meeting on low water. HT will report on Diamond factors, following a field trip.

LM mgt plan complete; complications with PWC rules.

Park website no longer has language objectionable to HT.

HT met with elders on river plans; "many do not have first-hand knowledge of the river".

Work on HT as cooperating agency with budget nearly complete. Park wants HT on inter-disciplinary team.

Park had asked NPS Advisory Board to meet with stakeholders, including HT, on a "citizen's alternative" dealing with motors and use allocation. Board has to take initiative.

On CRMP processs, 21,367 comments in database being analyzed in bulk for trends. Inter-disciplinary team formed to look at sites and impacts, to be used with computer models of launch schedules. Expert and stakeholder panels had been held, with HT participation.

Mutual aid in policing being worked on; Park asks that is solicitor be contacted.

FOIA CONCERNS VOICED. RESOURCE ISSUES DISCUSSED. LM IMPACTS NOW WORRYING HT; PUSHING PEARCE ROAD. HT IN TIGHTER ON CRMP. MEETING WITH SIGNIFICANT CONTENT.

=========================

May, PS, HT

Present:

Core Team: 2 Park, 2 LM, 1 HT

Also 18: 1 LM, 7 Park, 10 HT.

Content:

Bus trip to the River down Diamond; paper distributed on HT views on CRMP, Diamond, Whitmore. HT may re-route away from residences, and Pumphouse. Many side canyons on lower end lead to flooding, and need for 4-5 gradings a year. There is a dam with a recreational reservoir, also First Ramada near Diamond junction. HT worried about ElderHostel hikes impact; may take action. Crowding at beach discussed; will increase due to lake level. HT may reserve times for their trip put-ins, and may set up staging areas for other trips. Because Diamond is culturally sensitive, there will be no helicopter use there, although it will continue at Whitmore and Quartermaster. River runners can schedule to avoid copter noise. Road will not be upgraded due to cost. Elders do not like heavy use, but economic development is important. So HT is looking for balance between economics and protection.

Discussion of HT exclusive beach use in morning brought Park objections on behalf of river trips. HT may re-institute its shuttle monopoly, discontinued in mid-1980's. Also, may try to share expenses and installing scat machine. Private trips blamed for breaking down or not paying, although commercials sometimes dispute amounts. HT is ready to use motorboat or copter to regulate for fees, campsites, and hiking, and may want to collect in advance.

Meeting discussed Diamond issues. HT repeated no road up-grade or helicopters. Wants some kind of fee sharing for left bank use. HT emphasized need for river runner respect, regulation, and enforcement. Discussion of cooperative steps to increase awareness of HT concerns. HT pressed on exclusive morning put-in for its trips. Scheduling will be key for Diamond use. Park suggested HT make these points, so that NPS can alert public through CRMP of HT concerns and powers. HT was appreciative, but stressed lack of information for decisions.

LM noted there were both operational and CRMP issues.

When asked by HT about EA on number of river trips, Park said no [! weird], but CRMP EIS would do that. HT wants its traditional sites kept pristine. Park was looking for balance between river trips using Diamond and HT needs. HT wanted to take proper care of Mother Earth. HT businesses had been started without knowing of negative impact on cultural sites which need to be respected.

LM suggested river runners would understand if tribe reserved time at Diamond, and HT asked Park to help alert outfitters for this season. Park demurred; outfitters already set for year. More notice needed, and HT can always close road. HT says Council not yet decided, but also area is managed for Hualapai, and may get out of control. So HT will continue to discuss internally and make a decisions. Meanwhile Park and HT will send letter to all trip leaders explaining crowding, lake level, and negative impacts at Diamond; they will only request that certain hours be avoided.

The Multi-Species Conservation Program may restrict use of Spencer Canyon, to protect the southwestern willow flycatcher.

Park said HT input subject to FOIA, just like NPS. Request had been received on traditional hunting discussion, but plan to say no decision made, so exempt as deliberative.

LM reported that after investigation, road at Pearce is not feasible and there is no take-out, but South Cove will be ok for a year or two.

HT presented plan for new Quartermaster dock to replace old, smaller, less-safe dock. Dimensions would be 34' into river and 75' along it for 5 pontoons. Pylons into riverbed would stabilize it. It would be aluminum and stairway would go up bank, replacing one Core Team approved. Ready to go, although HT have not approved. NPS worried about length and reflectivity. Also it looks like a pre-decisional action not integrated into CRMP.

An incident had occurred of research on reservation at Mohawk without previous notice or approval. Park was apologetic; HT should always be involved in AOC and reservation.

The HT CRMP cooperating agency agreement had been signed. An FAA suit is mentioned giving HT authority over "Whitmore Wash". Park anxious to set up meeting to receive HT recommendations. [This is odd; hadnt this already been done?] Park reported on CRMP progress. Alston reported "the most difficult and embarrassing" experience in trying to get Parks Advisory involved.

Mutual aid on policing moving along, and question is now on developing protocols for cooperation in law enforcement.

A MEETING HEAVY WITH SUBSTANCE, ALTHOUGH IT SEEMS MORE OF POSITIONING THAN RESOLUTION. FIELD TRIP DOWN DIAMOND TO RIVER. THE SITUATIONS AT DIAMOND, QUARTERMASTER, AND LAKE MEAD LANDING SPOTS ARE SEPARATE, BUT INFLUENCE EACH OTHER. THE APPEARANCE NOW IS OF THE HUALAPAI PUSHING THEIR AGENDA, WHILE THE PARK IS TIED UP IN THE CRMP. LM, FOCUSSED ON DEALING WITH DROPPING LAKE LEVELS, AND THE PARK ARE RECEPTIVE TO HT WORRIES ABOUT ECONOMIC IMPACTS. NO INDICATION OF BASIC DIFFICULTY, THE DISCUSSIONS AS REPORTED INDICATE AN ATMOSPHERE OF LISTENING AND TRYING TO WORK ON PROBLEMS. IT IS NOT CLEAR WHY THE SITUATION AT WHITMORE HAS NOT BEEN PREVIOUSLY ADDRESSED IN THE CRMP PROCESS. HOWEVER, THE FIELD TRIP DOWN DIAMOND AND SUBSEQUENT DISCUSSION INDICATE THAT, INDEED, NPS IS NOT AWARE OF THESE SITUATIONS' DETAILS. RESEARCH PERMIT INCIDENT AND DOCK REPLACEMENT ALSO INDICATE THAT GOOD INTENTIONS DO NOT NECESSARILY LEAD PEOPLE TO AVOID UNILATERAL ACTIONS. ALL OF THIS MAY INDICATE THE NEED FOR SUCH MEETINGS IN ORDER TO GET PEOPLE'S ATTENTION.

=========================

July, Flag, Park

Present:

Core Team: 1 Park, 2 LM, 2 HT

Also 19: 2 LM, 9 Park, 8 HT.

Content:

Park wanted to ease process on research permits, wishing to notify and coordinate, not always have to obtain HT permits if work is not done on Hualapai shore/reservation. Procedures for notification will be strengthened. LM raises question about take-out coordination; discussion with Park later.

Park notes attempt by pro-motor outfitters to get administration to send Congress a Grand Canyon Wilderness proposal without river, which was then opposed by wilderness advocates. Ten letters for no-motor plan; 15 opposed.

HT raised question about wilderness in GC-Parashant NM and impact on Bar 10 ranch. LM says situation has left BLM in confusion. LM sup't says 95% of that monument was found wilderness-suitable, but the word is not to be used, by Interior order. In any case, the road to the Bar 10 is cut out of the suitability map. There remain questions about the road and traffic.

Park reports on having done legwork on HT complaint about a private website. [Query: why HT not do its own checking? Is this a grievance arena rather than an operational?]

HT brings up lack of Park response on dock. Park says it is too big and wants it as an alternative in the CRMP. HT say it is on their side of the river; want it resolved. Alston says Park could be sued if not NEPA compliant. HT reply they did EA, and do not have to go outside reservation. Park says it did not receive an EA. So item is continued. [This is cutting close; dock is clearly in/on the Park. HT clearly want it badly. Can this format resolve such an issue? Or…]

Entry of Mohawk in AOC for lion monitoring re-brought up. Park says it has obtained permits from HT only outside AOC. HT: Was NHPA observed? Park: NHPA is property, not animals. HT: entire Canyon is Register-eligible, and worried about archeology. HT chair: researchers used to get permission; proud of her staff; glad for discussion; appreciates all work. Upshot is that Park will notify HT for its research.

Previous incident about private party cutting tamarisk had been checked by Park & HT. Found to be slander.

Diamond: commercial leader taking out yelled at HT staff. So, HT asked Park to notify all that 7-10 is HT time. Money lost by HT unimportant compared to need for respect. Park tried to shift problem to non-commercial. HT reiterated; abuser was commercial co-owner. Park continues to take outfitters' side, saying HT has control over road, but beach "problematic". So HT could say road was closed, and so trips could schedule arrivals. Park continues to push concerns of commercial parties. HT reply is that they have tried individual approaches and it is time to say who is in charge. HT will work with outfitters, if he can. Decided that trips arriving before 7 have to be done by 7. HT insists beach be clear for their trips. Supt continues to protect outfitter. HT declines to meet with outfitter political group. HT says effective date is Aug 1; letter will be sent; Park will notify trips at Lees.

LM remains "unenthused" about any Pearce road. Too much money for a temporary road; also, current too strong, army requirements, flycatcher. South Cove good enough for two years, even though HT economic hurt. Water then at end of S.C. ramp.

LM to work on air tour mgt. plan soon.

During report on CRMP, HT asserted right to be involved in any action that affects their resources all along river. Park says it needs info on closures etc. now.

HT & Park had met on Whitmore, and come up with alternatives. Not in minutes.

LOOKS LIKE THE OUTFITTERS BROUGHT THE DIAMOND EXCLUSION PERIOD ON THEMSELVES. GCNP'S DEFENSE OF THEM WAS INAPPROPRIATE. STILL, THERE ARE MIXED INDICATIONS AS TO WHETHER HT JUST WANT TO COMPLAIN OR ARE ABLE TO ACT ON THEIR OWN. THE QUARTERMASTER DOCK IS A CRUCIAL MATTER; THE PARK DOESNT LIKE IT, AND THE HT WANT IT. WILL THE PARK GO ALONG? PARK DID PUSH ON RESEARCH, BUT CONVERSATION AMELIORATED STANCE. HT SEEMS TOUGHER. LM TAKE-OUT A GROWING ISSUE.

ALL IN ALL, A SIGNIFICANT MEETING FOR WHETHER THIS FORUM CAN SUCCEED IN THE FACE OF DEEPLY FELT NEEDS OR PREROGATIVES.

=========================

Sept, LMLodge, LM

Present:

Core Team: 1 Park, 1 LM, 2 HT Alston absent

Also 19: 4 LM, 6 Park, 9 HT.

Content:

GCMRC told to obtain permits for all work on HT land. Park now sends outside requests to HT. HT & Park to reciprocally notify.

Park says no reaction to letter about Diamond hours. Ranger says it is working. HT grateful. HT invited to concessionaire meeting.

HT flip not reported, and Park says it should be notified.

HT has endangered fish pond in Lost Creek, and Park worries about an escape.

Park states it would like to make dock upgrade part of CRMP. HT says it is 4 years old and new one would meet safety standards. Also log trail caving in, and they cannot wait. Park repeats stand, and would like all HT development ideas in EIS to take care of compliance. HT repeats need to make safer, even if not NEPA compliant. Wants categorical exemption. Park notes that pylons would require Army (C of E) permit. Park notes new boat, and HT asks if there is a cap.

LM reports on air tour mgt; basic disagreements with FAA. LM says 400 flights/day; FAA 100. Most are to HT facility or to GC. LM wants to regulate paths to protect wilderness and resources. FAA says it does not have to consult HT.

South Cove ok for take-out. LM still doesnt like Pearce road.

Most of the rest is progress reports, not action.

On law enforcement, HT wanted all parties to be enforcing each other's permits in AOC, but Park said it cannot.

HT AHEAD ON RESEARCH PERMITS AND DIAMOND. ASIDE FROM THE ON-GOING EYE-BALLING OVER THE DOCK, THIS WAS A MARK-TIME MEETING, INDICATING WHAT COULD BE EXPECTED AS TO HOW SUCH A PROCESS WOULD WORK IF IT WERE PERMANENT.

=========================

2004

January, Flag, GC

Present:

Core Team: 2 Park, 2 LM, 2 HT

Also 21: 3 LM, 11 Park, 7 HT.

Content:

Park recounts effort by outfitters to get river-less Wilderness proposal introduced. McCain asked for process to run its course. No action by NPS.

In response to request, facilitator reported on accomplishments. She thought good relations and collaborative problem-solving had been accomplished, also 3 rule-sets for HT operations and zones, et al. HT noted change in June of tribal chairs. She was proud of staff, now positive about Park relations, believing they respect HT. LM reinforced this view; trust established is building block for future. [This quote would be good to use in letter asking why not resume?]

Research requests will now go to HT for review and all launches except patrols are posted online. GCMRC is now also in line on notification & permit procedures. LM asks to be included, since nobody knows what goes on now.

Discussion about HT endangered species facility.

Fire planning discussed.

HT now up to 7 boats, and wants to increase operations, so when will moratorium end? Business has grown for 3 years.

Need to discuss Diamond closure further, so meeting with outfitters needed. Also on South Cove, as area shrinks.

CRMP team working hard. Diamond down alternatives to be discussed with HT soon. HT asked about allocation from Lees. Park will check with attorneys, and HT should, too.

AN EVEN SMOOTHER MEETING, WITH POSITIVE REFLECTION FROM HT & LM. BUSINESS AS USUAL FORMAT.

=========================

March, PS, HT

Present:

Core Team: 1 Park, 2 LM, 2 HT

Also 22: 5 LM, 8 Park, 9 HT.

Content:

Discuss research up from the lake.

HT says it had denied permit to UNM group, which had been doing research for 5 years. Discussion comes down to researchers who think they can go on HT land if they want. LM steps in, issue is complex, with various parts, and core group has only started on them. Comm on research permitting set up.

HT reports on its endangered fish facility, looking to help in H.chub recovery.

LM & Park working on fire mgt plans. LM has 3 prescribed burns on Shivwits.

In discussion of lake level, HT again worries about cost of going to South Cove.

LM working with FAA on air mgt; trying to get HT & Park added.

Park said solicitor said no to negotiating HT full-canyon trips. HT presents counter-paper justifying such a negotiation and allocation. Park's only concern is legality. HT claims priority over other tribes, and wants to be isolated case.

Good will in presentation to out-going HT core members.

Park brings up traditional hunting to repeat it is only willing to see about leg'n in AOC, since group is making FOIA request.

Discussion of towing pontoon out.

Park brought up problem at Diamond involving $385 to "disembark temporarily for take-out assist". HT will check.

HT wanted another letter from Park to outfitters on Diamond. Also suggested alternatives for CRMP if South Cove closed. Want to be able to change CRMP in that case.

Discussion leads to decision that use moratorium ends with CRMP adoption.

ALTHOUGH THIS TOO SEEMS A BUSINESS-AS-USUAL MEETING, THE HT ARE CERTAINLY USING THIS AS A PLACE TO PUSH ITS AGENDA. EVEN ASKED ABOUT HUALAPAI WHO ARE GRANTED TRIP PERMIT BY HT.

=========================

June, Flag, GC

Present:

Core Team: 2 Park, 1 LM, 2 HT HT new chairs

Also 27: 2 LM, 12 Park, 13 HT.

Content:

Park reports on fuel cell bill to get around any change in motor use.

HT has lawyer reading a May 7 letter from previous chair to Park, laying out HT issues:

1. no response to request to look at concession contracts.

2. asked Secretary for an allocation

3. no discussion of copter use at Whitmore in CRMP

4. Lower Gorge alt. 5 must be selected in CRMP as Park's preferred, to protect land and water rights of HT.

5. Wants Park to help enforce 7-10 a.m. ban on take-outs, to regulate road problems.

6. There should be cross-permits for HT land. Park should collect permits and fees, and move this forward.

Park response is just as stiff: Alston notes presentation by HT counsel changes nature and tone of meeting. [How is this not sandbagging? What led the HT to ambush this meeting if they had already sent the letter?] He cannot answer w/o consulting solicitor. HT says he did this because he was new, but wanted to participate in spirit of cooperation. [Note there were 4-5 more HT than usual. This is either HT's clumsiness, lack of diplomacy, or something deeper. Was Louise Benson just summing up? A bad move. And note that Dickinson was not there.]

Answers:

1. Concession contracts are public, w/o financial information. CRMP administrative record is available, though staffer said the files were just delivered by contractor, and will take a couple of months to organize. Park has also furnished all core team meeting notes, email, & data transfers to new chair.

2. HT lawyer repeats that Whitmore coptering should not be treated in CRMP. Park replies noise impact is of concern, and lawsuit settlement requires Park to address coptering. Attorney replies that settlement says nothing will affect HT rights, and they may have to pursue this in legal challenge. [More and more bizarre.][Exchanges were considered in alternatives, but of course, decision was status quo.]

3. Group discussed attempting to have a core team preferred alternative. Park asked for HT comments on ch. 1 & 2. HT said it was better; more changes need to be made. HT said Park has been very open to HT changes. Park asks for HT preferred language. [Result was agreement except HT wanted more pontoon passengers, and fewer upriver.]

4. Park said Region will set up meeting soon with HT on full-river concession. No permits now open. Secretary can negotiate in exceptional circumstances, so Park asks for HT to furnish legal arguments. HT says no other tribe interested. New chair talks about always trading to east , and always having access to Canyon corridor. Says permitting process biased since most outfitters live in Flagstaff; HT would be first outfitter outside immediate area, so process discriminates against HT. [Bee-zar-er and Bee-zar-er. This guy is a mouth-foamer.] Another HT says if other tribes had wanted contract, they would have asked. [Navajo part of Fort Lees operation in 1970's. Have Tribal Park, which Hualapai dont.] She adds she found no references to other tribes in the Grand Canyon " in the literature". [Was everybody too dumbfounded to speak? Or were they laughing too hard?][This has not come to pass, but it and Navajo interest in Lees-LCR trips probably remain. If such a process were reconstituted, they would have to be accommodated, yes?]

5. On Diamond, Park says it cannot close beach, but willing to help manage and working on voluntary compliance. However, some outfitters seem to be misinformed. [That is not a credible statement, given the length of time since 7-10 started, including a concessionaire meeting.] In practice, HT gets there early and rigs, then move to side to let others take out, even giving them a signal. So trips do wait upstream, but says HT, it still gets congested. [If its THEIR beach, why dont they manage it better?] Private more problematic [of course]. If HT has consistent policy, it can be posted on GC website. After CRMP adopted, new launch schedule will reduce congestion. HT will draft letter on take-out policy, and sent it to outfitters, while Park will send it to all private and other users. [HT still trying to reserve 7-10.]

6. Discussion of Park issuing permits for use of HT land and sending fees to tribe. [This should have been started in the 1970's, if only as a sign of good will and desire to cooperate and respect HT rights. That damn Merle Stitt!] So Fees & Permits committee revived. [Could this have gone anywhere?]

LM reports, surplus allocations of river eliminated < 1125, and long-term projections call for 1111. South Cove still ok, but future unclear. Now talking to Fed Highway Adm on Pearce. Air tour mgt making slow progress. Zebra mussels of concern.

HT continue work on endangered fish facility.

Five working pontoons, with one more as gangplank. HT wants more. Jetboat wake damaging boats at r.m.262.

Park staff now writing draft EIS, and distributed confidential summary of alternatives; goal is September. Report of Research Permits Comm. will be emailed.

Meetings set for 8 Oct 2004 (LM), and 5 Jan 2005 (HT). The first was held, but minutes not furnished. The second was not held. CRMP ROD was Feb 2006. Alston was sup't until 2007.

THIS MEETING IS ONLY EXPLICABLE BY INTERNAL POLITICS OF HT. THE PRESENTATION AND CONTENT WERE COMPLETELY OUT OF LINE WITH PREVIOUS FOUR YEARS OF WORK. SO WERE THERE HT FACTIONS? WHY DID LOUISE BENSON WRITE THE LETTER? WHAT DID VAUGHN INTEND HERE BY HIDING BEHIND LAWYER'S SKIRT? AND TO THE POINT, DID THIS SABOTAGE PROCESS SO THAT IT WAS JUNKED BY PARK, OR …? SO WE HAVE TO END WITH A MYSTERY.

=========================

BUT IN 2007-8, THERE WAS A REVIVAL, AND THREE MEETINGS HELD; MINUTES ONLY FOR FIRST, THEN SILENCE.

2007

Sept, Scottsdale, GC

Present:

Core Team: 2 Park, supt (Martin) & depy.

2 LM, same as in 2004

2 HT vice chair & CEO GCResort

Also 9: 0 LM, 3 Park, 6 HT GC previously attended; some HT, too.

Content:

Asked to say why they re-convened:

LM: Had been productive; appreciation of others' concerns; friendships & trust by addresssing river mgt issues. Excited to build on earlier. Work for mutual progress.

HT: Address common concerns. Back because there were new players & perspectives at NPS. Cannot ignore river, and must arrive at joint solutions.

GC: Agreement essential on econ, protection, visitors; Looking for fresh ideas to move collaboration.

Agenda calls for review & next steps.

Facilitator: progress on mutual mgt, collaboration, sharing info, consultation forum, model of govt-govt work.

Specifics: zones, explore collaborative permitting, no upriver from Diamond, no commercial hunting in AOC, seek legn on trad. hunting, share info on projects and activities, joint FOIA.

Robust committees.

Discussion of previous documents led to: need to go from Pearce to South Cove for AOC. Update to CRMP, and discuss its issues, although MOU and AOP good framework. Decided to keep.

Listed 2 dozen issues. Decided to prioritize for next meeting.

"CONSENSUS: The group agreed that:

...

The October 2004 minutes did not need to be approved." (p. 5 Core Team Minutes, September 21, 2007)

Meet 10 Dec & 29 Jan 2008.

THE QUESTION HERE IS WHO INITIATED; WHAT THERE ANY URGENCY? THEN, DID THE TWO MEETINGS SHOW IT WASNT IMPORTANT OR WORKABLE? FINALLY, WHY DID IT QUIT FOR GOOD?

Hualapai - NPS Cooperation: An Experiment, Part 2

2012-01-11T20:07:00.001-07:00

Conclusions

The dynamics and narrative arcs of the Core Team collaboration from 2000-4 are both inspiring and instructive. Set up within a formal framework, the series of 20+ meetings provided solid evidence that a multi-agency forum could coordinate constructively a range of matters related to a limited but highly important area of Grand Canyon management. The meetings were more important as a kind of switching center for information, discussion, and direction rather than as a place for decision and action. Negotiation and action were usually carried on by joint committees appointed as issues arose. What is striking is how the Core Team provided a face-to-face venue where the three entities had to deal with each other's realities -- interests, concerns, restrictions, etc. And personalities. Given that the principals of all three remained unchanged over almost five years of effort, it may be that this experiment was dependent on that particular mix of individuals. Certainly, the introduction of a new Hualapai Tribal Chair in the June 2004 session seems to have altered the tenor of the discussion. Had the meetings continued, perhaps this would have appeared only as an adjustment. However, there was only one more held in 2004. The three-meeting resumption in 2007-8 has no significant public documentation, and only Lake Mead provided continuity to the previous successful series.

(Note: The detailed summaries are in an accompanying, very long, post of this date, titled "Hualapai - NPS Core Team Meetings, Summary".)

From one angle, the Core Team experiment was unfairly timed and burdened. It coincided with the development by Grand Canyon National Park staff of a new CRMP with its EIS. On the one hand, this meant that river business as usual was over-shadowed; on the other, it meant that the stakes were set at their highest. In the event, the participants apparently were able to use the Core Team forum to advance joint work on the CRMP, along with setting templates for dealing with the details and on-going matters of river traffic management. If the success achieved in 2000-4 was in fact due to the three leaders (Hualapai Chair Benson and Sup'ts Dickinson & Alston), then they and their staffs of the time should be given a round of applause, even if their success did not become a model for continuing the collaboration. If, however, there really did develop a dynamic that brought the parties into a solid, convincing, productive web of relationships, then perhaps this review will stimulate discussion of how to try again.

Existence of such a dynamic apparently was the assumption of those who tried in late 2007 to re-start. I cannot know now why that attempt led to only two meetings, but until there is further information on the 2005 and 2008 terminations indicating some major flaw in the idea of collaboration, I will continue to think that the 2000-4 meetings can be pronounced a success that should inspire a new attempt. Since the CRMP implementation started in the 2006 season and has been on-going for six years, this period might have seemed ideal for the development of a permanent work-a-day collaboration. That conclusion is only strengthened given that the Navajo -- with a geographic relationship to the Park similar to that of the Hualapai -- have recently indicated their interest in river business. Well, the opportunity for 2006-11 has passed on; perhaps 2012 is an appropriate moment to explore the pros and cons of trying collaboration again.

The Narrative

Introduction and Overview

What follows is a condensation, a sort-of story, of a condensation of condensations. That is, the original minutes were themselves often sketchy and indicative, not full recordings of the proceedings. Naturally, the tenor of the conversations, the tensions and relaxations of joint work over a period of years, rarely comes out. From these official, approved, summaries, I extracted what I thought was the meat of the discussions. So my extracts of the minutes' summaries leave out, for instance, boiler-plate and process reporting. Nevertheless, mine is a quite long document. Therefore, for this post, I have compressed my extracts into short highlights, again trying to provide for the flow of affairs and my characterizations of events.

Abbreviations and shortcuts are rife. HT is Hualapai Tribe. Park is Grand Canyon National Park. LM is Lake Mead National Recreation Area. NPS refers to both of those. Of course, what is meant that the speaker has that affiliation, and is taken to be speaking officially. CRMP = Colorado River Managment Plan (a terrible misnomer; it only covers the river under the Park's jurisdiction and it is a traffic management plan, not covering resources). FOIA, EPA are from the usual political discourse. PWC stands for nasty, noise-making skidooish things.

To start, there was a

Feb 2000: "Brainstorm discussion" was held to set up three-way meetings.

Mar 2000: Parties were checking each other out as to seriousness and willingness to engage. Moratorium request by NPS seems to imply that it worried about HT activity and its impact on river and traffic. However, all HT parties, including Resort Corp, seemed willing to engage. Positioning was for discussion not contention.

May 2000: This meeting gives the picture of cooperation as being that HT will line up with NPS ways of doing things. Suggests that NPS got very worried all of a sudden about the growth in HT. Was there a carrot/stick?

Jun 2000: This meeting threw into sharp focus the different approaches of the three participants. LM & HT proposals pushed for an expansion of recreation-area type zone. The Park responded with a re-statement of its interest in wilderness management (part-year commercial motors excepted) above Diamond. The negotiating ground seemed to be set by not disturbing the Park's river arrangements, and the Park willing to discuss an upriver movement of LM & HT activities.

The list of items to investigate together featured: sharing use information, setting carrying capacities for river and camps, starting the anything-goes zone from Quartermaster (zone 4) down, attempting fee sharing, issuing permits for film, science & education, and protecting the resource, Hualapai culture, & visitors.

Sep 2000: This meeting seemed far more subdued than June's. It spent its time on details and numbers. Again, the discussion seemed to be recognizing the park's concerns as paramount, e.g., dropping Separation as a zone boundary. The Memorandum of Agreement was finished so the two departing superintendents could be signatories.

Oct 2000: Zones and numbers were discussed. Although discussion about some HT offerings was active, the meeting reflected the dominance of the Park through the information it commanded, and its general position on projecting its version of river management and protection.

Jan 2001: The aspect of big brother chastising little brother is hard to escape. NPS had a gotcha on the helicopter dock and pounced. It then mis-stepped on legitimate HT request to EPA. HT got agreement that its tribal culture trips should be treated like administrative.

Apr 2001: HT had now approved the three sets of standards (on river running, helicopter spots, and emergency response) bringing them in line with NPS. Traditional hunting brought up; would require legislation. This was mostly a marking-time meeting, except for the Park asserting jurisdiction for law enforcement. LM says lake drop will cut out Pearce.

Jun 2001: They continue to work on the issues. Planning process brings out that NPS shows anxiety about HT working on its own. Tribal attorney seems to be pushing harder than HT members. A mystery issue was discussed.

Jul 2001: This meeting could be a sign of continuing to try to work together, or the difficulty of doing so. There was little substantive action, but HT was more assertive.

Nov 2001: CRMP dominated and seemed to energize discussion of working together and reaching consensus. HT has economic concerns. LM anxious to keep core team going. Park wants HT involved. Park all for cooperation & sharing; question is what will CRMP process require? Zones agreed to, with 3 & 4 below Quartermaster as multi-use sacrifice zone. Many committees have tasks: Leg'n on traditional hunting, law enforcement, fees and permits, monitoring, carrying capacity.

Mar 2002: CRMP major organizing focus, e.g., zones. Activities in them are laid out and questioned. Core Team committees working along.

May 2002: The pressure is on to use this forum to get HT influence in CRMP. Expectations are raised; park is willing. Also, operational matters come up; Park wants to consider Quartermaster stairway.

Jun 2002: HT pressing hard to be inside CRMP process, including honoraria and expenses. Park is considering how could HT be part of CRMP process? LM now beginning to deal regularly with dropping lake, and impact on river take-outs.

Aug 2002: HT continues pushing its role in CRMP, having joined in scoping, and now wanting $300,000 to analyze alternatives. LM talks of lake fall and effects; HT suggests road at Pearce; LM not positive. Cross policing, pushed by HT, appears unlikely.

Oct 2002: This meeting could be characterized as showing the process had reached the state of business as usual. Various matters were brought up and handled. A possible comparison could be made with the first meetings where NPS seemed to be trying to bring HT into line on river activity and regulation; more recently, HT has been pushing Park on CRMP participation.

Feb 2003: FOIA concerns voiced. Resource issues discussed. LM impacts now worrying HT; pushing Pearce road. HT in tighter on CRMP. A meeting with significant content.

May 2003: A meeting heavy with substance, although it seems more of positioning than resolution. Field trip down Diamond to river. The situations at Diamond, Quartermaster, and Lake Mead landing spots are separate, but influence each other. The appearance now is of HT pushing their agenda, while Park is tied up in the CRMP. LM, focussed on dealing with dropping lake levels, and Park are receptive to HT worries about economic impacts. No indication of basic difficulty, the discussions as reported indicate an atmosphere of listening and trying to work on problems. It is not clear why the situation at Whitmore had not been previously addressed in the CRMP process. However, the field trip down Diamond and subsequent discussion indicate that, indeed, NPS is not aware of these situations' details. A research permit incident and dock replacement also indicate that good intentions do not necessarily lead people to avoid unilateral actions. All of this may indicate the need for such meetings in order to get people's attention.

Jul 2003: Looks like the outfitters brought the Diamond exclusion period on themselves. Park's defense of them was inappropriate. Still, there are mixed indications as to how stiff HT wanted to be and whether they are able to act on their own. Quartermaster dock is a crucial matter; the Park doesnt like it, and the HT want it. will the Park go along? Park did push on research, but conversation ameliorated stance. HT seems tougher. LM take-out a growing issue.

All in all, a significant meeting for whether this forum can succeed in the face of deeply felt needs or prerogatives.

Sep 2003: HT ahead on research permits and Diamond. Aside from the on-going eye-balling over the dock, this was a mark-time meeting, indicating what could be expected at times as to how such a process would work if it were permanent.

Jan 2004: An even smoother meeting, with positive reflections from HT & LM. Business as usual format. HT continue pressure on Diamond and increases at Quartermaster.

Mar 2004: Although this too runs as a business-as-usual meeting, the HT are certainly using this as a place to push its agenda; looks like a 180 reversal from the 2000 start. HT even asked about individual Hualapai being granted a trip permit by HT.

Jun 2004: This meeting was an ambush of the Park by the HT, front by their attorney reading a letter written a month earlier by the outgoing chair. It is only explicable by internal politics of HT. The presentation and content were completely out of line with previous four years of relations. So were there HT factions? Why did Louise Benson write the letter? What did new chair Vaughn intend here by hiding behind lawyer's skirt? And to the point, did this HT action sabotage the process so that it was junked by Park, or …? So we have to end with a mystery. Here are the six issues in the letter, written by previous chair and read by attorney: HT

1. wanted to look at concession contracts;

2. asked Secretary for an allocation from Lees Ferry down;

3. forbade any discussion of copter use at Whitmore in CRMP;

4. demanded Lower Gorge alt. 5 must be selected in CRMP as Park's preferred, to protect land and water rights of HT;

5. asked Park to help enforce 7-10 a.m. ban on take-outs, to regulate road problems;

6. insisted there be cross-permits for HT land. Park should collect permits and fees.

Oct 2004: meeting held; minutes not released.

Sep 2007: But in 2007-8, there was another attempt, with a new Park sup't & HT chair. Three meetings were held; minutes (stating good, bland intentions) only for first, then silence.

Hualapai-GCNP Cooperation: An Experiment

2012-01-03T14:15:00.000-07:00

OVERVIEW

The on-going story of managing river traffic through the Grand Canyon delights those who love complicated, detailed, fragmented complexes of issues. (See my Hijacking A River.) One story piece that has had less attention than it deserves concerns the lower river, the western end of the Canyon. This is variously described:

The upper end of Lake Mead, fluctuating from the Grand Wash Cliffs up to a maximum at ~river mile 235, which not accidentally is at the Bridge Canyon site for the Hualapai Dam. Informally, this reservoir section is identified as starting near Separation Canyon (r.m. 239.5), and for some is the "flatwater" stretch of the Canyon.

Another reference point to start is at Diamond Creek (r.m. 226); going down, it is described as the lower 40 miles.

Above that, other reaches are of connected interest, up to Whitmore Canyon and the Hualapai's helicopter landing spot (r.m 187 or 189.9 ?).

Before 1975, Lake Mead National Recreation Area administered the right bank while the 1883 Hualapai Reservation owned the left down to r.m. 273.3, with the common boundary being undefined, a matter that concerned nobody much as long as the usual assumption was that a dam was to be built that would flood the Canyon back to Kanab Creek. Once that assumption was reversed (1968), and Grand Canyon National Park was extended in 1975 along the south (left) bank to the Grand Wash Cliffs, the exact GCNP-Hualapai boundary became a contentious matter -- as I have described in several earlier posts. This Park enlargement removed LMNRA from the Canyon near the river, while leaving river trip end points like Pearce Ferry under LMNRA jurisdiction.

The river management regime set up by GCNP was hugely concerned with river traffic down to Diamond Creek. Below that, there was less GCNP interest, even to the point that LMNRA had more expertise and say, especially when the reservoir was high and the water flat and sluggish. Today, with the water flowing past Pearce Ferry and beyond, it is clearer that GCNP-NRA cooperation for traffic management is a continuing necessity, just as is true for the river trip starting point at Lees Ferry in Glen Canyon NRA just upstream from the Park's beginning at the Paria River.

Motorized, up-river boat traffic from the lower reservoir has been an object of desire and a matter of concern for over 60 years. Even earlier, the Park Service and others fantasized about scenic tours that would go up into the Canyon as a regular visitor service. Lack of interest and the difficulties of navigating among the silt deposits helped quash that idea. It does, or did, happen that motor craft come up-reservoir to meet and tow river trips to the developed boat landings like Pearce, South Cove, and Temple Bar. And there was no great regulation of those who wished on their own to take Zodiacs and other such boats upstream from the Grand Wash Cliffs. Today, upstream traffic may go to Separation.

This comparative lack of rules and GCNP interest also applied to river trips that did not end at Diamond Creek, where many exit with all their gear and boats up to Peach Springs. River concessionaires took advantage of the bifurcated jurisdiction to use helicopters near Whitmore to transfer river passengers in and out of the Canyon, with those coming in getting a shorty trip of a couple of nights or so. So it was not unusual for commercial companies to go to the reservoir to end their trips, loaded or not.

The Hualapai interest in the part of the river bordering their land has taken many forms. As far back as the 1930's, Hualapai thought of how they could benefit from the river as a resource, either dammed and/or for its recreation & visitor potential. Their tribal involvement in lobbying for a dam waned in the late 1970's and appears extinguished. Their claim for a share in river traffic has correspondingly grown, showing itself in the 1970's in a mixed tribal/whitefolk attempt to run trips. The Diamond Creek exit/entrance and the helicopter transfer spot near Whitmore have become important income generators. At present, the Hualapai's greatest involvement is their industrial tourism complex involving Las Vegas-generated visitor groups that take in the Skywalk development above r.m. 265, a motor-raft ride off a boat dock, a walk to Travertine Falls, and a helicopter swoop-in, landing near Quartermaster above r.m. 260. (For details, see http://grandcanyonwest.com/.)

THE EXPERIMENT

As of 11 Oct 2000, GCNP, LMNRA, and the Hualapai entered into a memorandum of understanding that 1. recognized the longstanding dispute over the GCNP-Reservation boundary, 2. accepted that the dispute interfered with effective river management, and 3. therefore committed themselves to mutual management of an Area of Cooperation. That Area went from r.m. 164.5 (eastern Reservation boundary) down to Pearce Ferry, and across the river from high water mark to high water mark. They agreed that the tribal chairperson and the two superintendents (or their alternates) with Working Teams should meet once a quarter, using a facilitator (the ubiquitous Mary Orton). It was all quite formalized and respectful.

The context for the MOU had been set earlier by then-Superintendent Arnberger, who in the late 1990's had been dealing with updating backcountry (wilderness management) and river management plans. In 1999, he had started a simultaneous public process for both plans. Then, perhaps alarmed by the enthusiastic, even raucous, public interest, had abruptly stopped the effort in February 2000. This occasioned an even more intense storm as well as a suit demanding the process be re-started. (See Hijacking A River.) So when the first joint meeting was held a month later, in March 2000, Arnberger had to reassure the other participants that he was committed to carrying out the idea to draft a Memorandum and then meet substantively. However, he only attended one more meeting, in May, and by the fall was gone, reassigned to Alaska, although he did sign the Memorandum of Understanding on 22 September.

Nevertheless, the idea had staying power and regular meetings were held thru October 2004, with Arnberger's successor, Joe Alston, attending. There was then a three-year interruption, which started as NPS staff was preparing the Environmental Impact Statement for the new river plan. Meetings had been set through January 2005, but none were held after October 2004. A meeting in September 2007, with new GCNP Superintendent Martin attending, was followed by two more. However, after that of January 2008, the experiment ended, and the Agreement to disagree-but-work-together was formally suspended. Since minutes of 8 Oct 2004, 10 Dec 2007, and 29-30 Jan 2008, being unapproved by the parties, were not supplied to me, I am left without that source as to what happened. Certainly, there was disagreement by the Hualapai over the river plan. However, more than speculation will have to come when other sources are available. In the next post, I will use the minutes to summarize what the experiment did accomplish.

Source: Grand Canyon National Park, response to FOIA request for Memorandum of Agreement and consequent meeting minutes from 2000-8, except that minutes of 8 Oct 2004, 10 Dec 2007, 29-30 Jan 2008, being unapproved by the parties, were not supplied.

Migration 10: Flannery's a Good Guy, But ...

2011-12-17T19:55:00.000-07:00

Tim Flannery's writings on natural history in the longest term are always stimulating. His book on North America evokes nostalgia for all the wondrous land- and life-scapes this continuent has hosted. He combines the naturalist's curiosity with the environmentalist's despair in Here on Earth, A Natural History of the Planet (2010, Atlantic Monthly Press), and I wanted to offer a few comments stressing my own pecuilar structuring of the past 100 millennia.
For instance, here is Flannery on human sexual selection, pp 64-5: Other living things impact an individual's reproductive capacity, driving evolution by natural selection. A most important pressure is that from the opposite sex judging attractiveness. Stop. Then, without further preamble: "in many traditional societies men go to considerable lengths to control the sexual (reproductive) potential of women". However, on 74, he writes, "The population of breeding men, it seems, has long been small relative to that of women, probably because an exclusive group of high-status men has tended to father most children." This is the sentiment that appears in many of the writers (Stringer among them) about human development, all seeing the pre-Neolithic hunters & gatherers through the blue-tinged glasses of the post-Neolithic Age of the Male, when control and domination became primary human characteristics as a result of cultural innovation. It is not clear to me if Flannery has sorted out this development, since he does argue, 64, that recently women have taken control, thus themselves becoming the shapers of tomorrow's men. In contrast, I see recent changes, in the status of marriage for instance, as based solidly in human genetics, and getting less and less distorted by Neolithic developments.

If my view of pre-Neolithic times is more correct, featuring a social organization of mutually supportive bands with more egalitarian gender weighting, then Flannery's statement is a neat example of how the post-Neolithic cultural evolution that brought male domination influences our look backward. In the mutually supportive bands of pre-Neolithic times, reproductive success was due to attractiveness on the part of both male and female, since with concealed ovulation, mutually pleasurable sex, and chemically based "falling in love", mutual attraction would clearly promote more chances for conception than between Mr Chest-beater and Ms Coy. The Neolithic revolution's foregrounding of the need to control land led to the distorted (from the point of view of a hunting and gathering society's distribution of tasks) role that male strength came to play. The reproductive potential of an agricultural society needs to be controlled in order to provide labor to work the land; land that disparate strength permits men to accumulate. It would be a neat result to find that the sexual dimorphism of pre-Neolithic peoples was less compared to that of the last 10 millennia. How nice a test of natural selection to find that male muscularity and size increased once domestication was invented, particularly since women have so often played so great a role in actually carrying out the work of farming. Did the accumulators of farming land and controllers of farming labor get differentially bigger?

On 78-9, Flannery describes Homo erectus as a hunter whose activities did not bring about extinctions, in contrast with us, the megafauna slayers, deployed in an immensely more sophisticated society based on language. We were the pillagers, destroying the defenseless fauna as we went. He draws a fractured portrait of us as relentless risk-takers, whose reward for migrating on was a feast of country and food that we quickly impoverished. But he cheers up (101ff), talking about the social preservation of echidna in New Guinea. Oddly, he says nothing about the role of language in this preservation, though clearly education and narrative were crucial.

Flannery's discussion of cooperation (120ff) is disappointing. He presents Hamilton's rule as a way of getting at when organisms are willing to make sacrifices for others, and then ties it all up in a discussion of ants and superorganism theory. I am not convinced that he has it right. For me, he does not take enough account of the huge distinction between ants and humans around reproductive activity and sexuality, and the relationship of eusociality to superorganisms. ( Edward O. Wilson and Bert Hölldobler (2005-09-20). "Eusociality: Origin and consequences" (PDF). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (United States National Academy of Sciences) 102 (38): 13367–13371. doi:10.1073/pnas.0505858102. PMC 1224642. PMID 16157878. Retrieved 2008-08-04). Our development of cooperative behavior was based on the evolution of language. It was reinforced, not by the suppression of sexual activity, but by its intensification in both genders. It was lost because the invention of domestication and farming seemed to offer a better life. These were all developments dependent on language. Superorganismic structure just doesnt fit.

Nevertheless, his description of the downsides of domestication (124ff), which probably should be called "the evolution of de-civilization" is scarily dark. Yes, our numbers increased and we settled. But, he says, our frames got stunted, new diseases struck, our independence eroded, our finest faculties diminished, our mental acuity dimmed. Human agricultural societies are powerful entities (ants, you see) made up of incompetent individuals with shriveled virtues. Etc. I am sorry about his rant here. He does celebrate hunter-gatherers (125-6) but for exactly the wrong reason: He sees them as excelling individuals, not as members of cooperative, sharing, mutually supportive groups.

It is a bit odd to read this screed, for when Richard Dawkins argues for natural selection and the "selfish gene", he is vigorous in attack and joyful in battle. Flannery is anti-Dawkins, wanting there to be altruism & cooperation, but is as gloomy as you can get.

And a further indication of where he has gone wrong comes on 129, when he asserts that "prior to the agricultural revolution, everybody lived in family-sized clans, each led by an adult male or a group of men, and it was they who administered justice. But by the eighteenth century the clans had cohered into …", and I stop here. Look, I do not believe that my hypotheses about human evolution are unchallengeable, but Flannery's statement is embarrassingly ridiculous, even were he right about male leadership in pre-Neolithic times -- as I think he is not. To jump from 13000 BCE to 1700 CE just points up how he falls victim to the fallacy of seeing the pre-Neolithic through the lenses of post-Neolithic cultures. How else to puzzle out how someone so committed to saving the world can fail to understand the genetic underpinning for the counter-Neolithic changes he wants to bring about?

He does it again on 133: "In the Stone Age the politics of the clan were simple and also recognisable in numerous other mammal species: a family structure at whose centre sat a dominant male, one of several mature females and their offspring. The first villages must have consisted of clusters of such units." Stringer, I think, has looked at other primates and their social organization. There are a variety, with the one Flannery describes just one of many. And I have to admit, Flannery's picture applied, say, to Cro-Magnon peoples alone, seems just dumb, a lazy extension of non-migratory, non-language-capable animals such as chimps. I dont believe it because I dont think it would have worked as well as cooperative, mutually supportive bands of contributing adults jointly raising children that require a long period of parenting/education. Again, here is a modern male scientist looking back and seeing his own predilections reflected at him.

He also indulges our love of violence by trotting out the evidence for it in bygone times (130ff). The question of how pacific or how violent we were 40, 60, 100 millennia is extremely important. Stephen Pinker has just put out a book claiming violence is decreasing, and I want to read it. Flannery's Hobbesian view obviously does not convince me, and somewhere I have read that tools, not weapons, dominate pre-Neolithic grave finds. The depiction of early human cultures does seem to me to have less room for inter-personal violence, "war", if migration and language were genetically based adaptations based on natural selection. Still, like the question of territoriality, violence is something I want to read more about.

He suggests, on 137, that climate change led to farming. The strange thing about that, for a migratory species, is that the ending of the glacial would have greatly expanded the places people could have gone to and exploited by hunting and gathering. You might think that it would be more likely that huddling down in a warmer area, away from the ice, would have stimulated talk and inventiveness, and watching grasses grow, and grow again…

On 136, Flannery quotes Daniel Webster: "When tillage begins, other arts follow." This, we now know beyond doubt is completely off the mark; arts began 100 millennia before tillage. Then he adds: "The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization." Well, if he means property, slavery, empire, and Iran's search for a nuclear deterrent, he is correct. Flannery, however, is back on ants and superorganism, which is how he describes civilization. He is getting ready for the second half of his book, which shows just how awful everything is today. So I am off the bus. I think he downplays the role of migration in humanity's history, but perhaps that is appropriate in a book that is focussed on humankind as living in antnests.

McPhee --> Brower --> Dominy

2011-12-17T13:00:00.000-07:00

In The New Yorker of November 14, 2011, John McPhee, reflecting on his writing life, structures a "Progression" that takes off from the pieces he wrote using David Brower as a common denominator, Encounters with the Archdruid.

For me, the most memorable of the three encounters is, of course, the raft trip Brower, McPhee, and Archdambuilder Floyd Dominy took through the Grand Canyon. (Although the line I remember best comes from the hike into the North Cascades, when rain led Brower to the reassurance: "Clothes'll dry; skin's waterproof.") Dominy was Commissioner of Reclamation in the 1960's and building a Grand Canyon dam would have been his triumph.

In this article, McPhee uses up a column encapsulating Dominy, including a long quote where the latter demonized Brower (p.40). What struck me while reading this passage is how it validates my strong and long-held view that people like Dominy -- builder types, construction mavens, hard-headed bull-dozers, engineers full of facts and numbers and blueprints -- are romantics: Dreamers who use their formulas and figures to fill out fantasies of re-making the world in their own images of concrete and steel, dams and developments. Oh, the products they do get to carry through on are solid enough, but what drives them are the visions they have -- the gleam of the tower, the sweep of the damfront, the endless spread of the house-and-lot. They see a landscape and fantasize smashing it with their gigantic thumbprints pressed into the Earth. They pretend they deal with the "real world", and yet all their hard facts are just selected out and shaped to give color and shape to their dizzy imaginings. They convince themselves they have their feet on the ground and everybody else's head is in the clouds.

And so they end up like Dominy in McPhee's quote, saying "because (Brower)'s so God-damned ridiculous(,) I can't even reason with the man." When Dominy said "Brower hates my guts", he was projecting his own anger and frustration at his dream being thwarted. He put his dam fantasy for the Canyon up against Brower's vision of a natural Canyon, and he lost. No wonder Brower reminds him of a steer he owned, "an independent bastard" that he shot "right in the head", as "the only way I could get rid of the bastard".

It was a pleasure to defeat him and his dam dream.

And he was wrong, anyway, about Brower hating his stuffing. Brower was not a hater nor a prophet full of "Pentateuchal" anger. What drove him was love, of the land and of people. He did not rage and rant; he reached out and inspired. He dreamed and spoke out so that lots of people could know they shared that dream, and that it was worth working for. Who could be surprised that he gave Dominy's ilk hissy fits?

Migration 9: The Clash of Migration and the Hulapai

2011-12-15T15:42:00.000-07:00

The pre-Neoliithic has left us little evidence of human debate over migration: when to do it, where to go, what thwarted or directed it. After the revolution that brought farming, property, and the heightened struggle over land, the records proliferate. We can see the impulses to migrate, and the resistance to it; we can see the sweep of conquests and the variety of ways in which over-running peoples treated the more sedentary resisters. We can also see the strengthening of the hands of the latter in more recent times, until today migration is an epithet, bigotry toward migrators is acceptable, borders are made sacred, conquest has lost its glamor.

So it is possible now for the last half-millennium's natural spread of peoples (in this case from far-western Eurasia, i.e., whitefolk) to be demonized as imperialism and colonialization. Just as it is possible for these colonialists, once settled, to demonize later migrants in turn. What is curious is how Shepherd's screed (see my 25 Nov 2011 entry) against whitefolk trampling the Hualapai down fits into this post-Neolithic world. To the Hualapai, that area of northwestern Arizona where they ended up a millennium ago after their own extensive travels is their world, the place of their origin, their land from time immemorial. Control of the remnant called the Hualapai Indian Reservation is thus a primary issue for them, just as the whitefolk in central Arizona are determined to use anti-migration legislation and an army of border police to bolster their ebbing control of the state and its government. All over the world, we are creating these jurisdictional islands where the natural human characteristic to migrate is anthema, unnatural, even illegal.

If we forego the romancing of the noble Indian, the Hualapai Reservation is more clearly seen as a "special-use zone" where migration by non-Hualapai is controlled and taxed, stifled and prevented. As curious as is this incidence of modern human anti-migrationism, it must be admitted that the same is true of Grand Canyon National Park, a special-use zone of the strictest order, where a stance against migration (and change and land grabs) is heightened all the more because the Park's condition is (supposed) to be maintained as it was just before whitefolk in their millions set sail across the Atlantic (and Pacific and Mediterranean and Indian…). Isnt it odd that these special preserves of Park and Reservation preserve what humans are genetically not -- static and fixed in place? Meanwhile, and in spite of those who want to turn places like Arizona in its entirety into such special preserves, the very legitimate, genetically speaking, migrators uphold the banner of the wild and freely moving Homo sapiens of pre-Neolithic times. Is New York City more of a wilderness than the Grand Canyon?

Migration 8: Bites Too Big

2011-12-11T15:58:00.001-07:00

Several months ago, when I picked up on the migration angle, the Grand Canyon connection was very clear. I was reading books (by Chris Stringer, e.g.) that laid out humanity's history over the past 100 millennia as one in which migration was an essential component. Originating in a corner of Africa, we spread over that continent; we spread eastward along south Asia and to Australia; we spread north and west into Europe; north east into Asia; then with the right conditions, into the Americas; and, astonishingly, across the Pacific.

Into such a story, we can comfortably fit the migrations of the Paiutes to the Canyon's north side in the last millennium or so and the Pai to the south side, then, more lately, the Navajo coming south and west. And long before, the Hopi, carrying on the Puebloan traditions of settlement and villages that reach back more millennia, reinforce this view of humanity's multiple moves. In that scheme, the arrival of whitefolk -- Spanish, English & French -- is just another wave, one of many with sources in Europe and Asia, which continue from all over.

What I thought of as a strand of human history that would support, in a fundamental way, the largest view of Grand Canyon history, got away from me. The books piled up; my need to make sense of them intensified. I set aside Grand Canyon matters while I tried to absorb, even haphazardly, items that contribute to a more general framework. Most especially was understanding the invention of domestication and the subsequent agriculture-based Neolithic Revolution ~10 millennia ago. Revolution, indeed, for out of what I was reading came a pre-farming picture of us, humans, as, yes, hunters and gatherers, but with all manner of the sophisticated characteristics of human culture we think of as civilized. And primarily, that most important, and genetically based, ability, language.

With language, our tremendous capacity to migrate into so many unknown spaces becomes almost a corollary. For migration is an aspect of spreading, which in our case involves imagining, discussing, story-telling. But language is not just an aid to figuring out whether we should move and if so where, it also undergirds another kind of spreading: that of ideas and technologies; we almost compulsively seek out, try out, share or steal, acquire and modify stuff and uses. On-line commerce may be new, humans shopping around goes back to the beginning, 100+ millennia ago.

Language has this central element: it is social. One person, nor even a couple, could not have done language. Whatever the genetic components of language in our brains and head structure, language only works between us; it only blossoms as a shared tool. (Censorship is not just stupid, it is fundamentally anti-human.) Indeed, it could only blossom, it seems to me, in groups of humans organized to be mutually supportive, i.e. to cooperate in sharing and transmitting (i.e. education) the knowledge needed for successful hunting and gathering, migrating and spreading.

It was this mutually supportive, language-based, culture that made the relatively small bands of humans so successful for all those millennia of living off the land as they moved across it. And that is what made the Neolithic Revolution such a massively disruptive, change-full event, with its need for land and labor to make farming succeed. Land then became property; labor went from joint work to bondage, and even slavery. Cultural evolution brought settlements, villages, aggressive accumulation, trading centers, violence, cities, religion, states, war, empire; all we now think of as Civilization. (Ursula LeGuin re-imagined all this in her "Always Coming Home".)

Developing this framework does seem a digression, but I found it was necessary to cope with what I fear could be a flood of books, tempting and intriguing in themselves. Stringer, for instance, has a new one that sets forth a substantial change in the out-of-Africa picture; and in any case, i know already that his view of humanity seems more influenced than mine by ideas arising out of our recent cultural evolution. I need also to deal with Richard Dawkins and his more Darwinian selfish-gene view, as well as Tim Flannery's fractured presentation at once despairing and hopeful, with its grand sweep of earth history, and a bagful of good intentions. And then there is Steven Pinker, whose contributions now range from language to violence and so are unavoidable if the framework I offer is to continue to make sense.

And what about the Canyon's history? Well, there is the next installment dealing with rim development, yes, and I do think that delayed though it is, someday, the NPS decision about the Park boundary description will be available and have to be reported on. It will then be time, if I am to be responsible, to deal with that epic, the 1965-8 battle to keep the Canyon free of dams. So there is entirely too much to do; my reach exceeds my grasp. Just as it should.

Migration 7: Flannery's Cooperation

2011-11-25T20:21:00.002-07:00

If Flannery (Flannery, Tim; "Here on Earth: A Natural History of the Planet",2010, Melbourne) wants to counter Dawkins' selfish genes, he needs cooperation to work at all levels, and most especially the human. He needs to counter "ruthless selfishness" (17), and the example of the child using its smile to manipulate the parent. Which he does with an assertion of complexity.

Humanity, however, can take its complex, rich place in his gaia-structure more deservedly than that. My argument has to start at several places at once. It must say, in the first place, that the Neolithic Revolution of ~10 kya is a cultural mutative event in the evolution of humanity. The invention of domestication, the development of farming with its increase in population, its need to stay in one place (settle) and to acquire/amass land, leading to the invention of property, and thus to the understanding that strength can be power to control resources, with the shift to seeing women and children (anyone weaker) as labor, necessary to cultivate the land, giving us slavery in various intensities, male domination, mono/poly-gamous couplings, government, omnipotent-being religion, the monopoly of violence & its threatened use, the monarchical state. All this evolution is cultural, not genetic, yet in a few thousand years, perhaps a hundred or two generations, gave us civilization and its own rules of development by selfishness and competition.

Second place then is that we evolved genetically, through 100's of thousands of years of hunting & gathering, of cooking and the use of crude tools, into the threshold of Homo sapiens. That was genetic, and those forms of earlier Homo and their precursors, lived in groups. Can we distinguish whether they were chimp or bonobo or whatever groups? We cannot, but lets continue. These beings 100-200 kya living in groups, hunting & gathering, migrating if need be (i.e., not totally afraid of moving into unknown territory) also had other characteristics: concealed ovulation, recreational/promiscuous sex for pleasure equally for either gender, the chemicals necessary for falling in love, i.e., being enamored long enough for procreation to take place, and fading away, thus allowing other matings and foregoing paternity, the ability to be attracted/attractive (for whatever characteristics worked; point is, both genders were attracted/attractive and pleasure-able and infatuation-prone as well as infatuation with a short shelf life). This is the time where the band, the group, would have been "getting used to" being together, while at the same time, with migratory impulses, also able to deal with strange H.s. groups sexually as a form of getting along, i.e., not being hostile and using violence.

Third place is the evolution of the Homo sapiens sine qua non: Language. This is it, the evolutionary, genetic development that defeats the selfish gene by making genuine, multi-form, complex cooperation not only possible, but more rewarding, even more, necessary for survival and procreation. Language is above all else, a group property, not a selfish, individual (or even couple-based) property. It arose out of groups, it fructified in groups, it strengthened and reinforced groups. It is the great leveller, as well as the great cementer. Add in language's products: education, narrative, history, hypothesizing. All of these activities reinforce the group; all require several individuals living/working together, benefiting and reinforcing the benefits. Misbehave, get greedy, demand obedience: what do you get? Ostracized, the silent treatment, the conspiracy of others to bring you down. Leading to the stories of what happens to the one who does not contribute to the mutual support of all. Language is both the binder and the threatener; the reward for mutual supportive behavior and the punishment for not.

Fourth place is migration and culturation: These groups of mutually supportive H.s. mature: education, gossip, story, art, explanation, consideration of the past and of alternatives, of solutions to problems. And they migrate, and over some 2-3000 generations, cover the world. And that story, that history, so little known in detail, is the great story of humanity, complete with all the necessaries and luxuries that are needed to survive, prosper, meet adversity, build culture & cultures, societies of complexity, and then, one day, invent domestication, the machine gun, and the iPhone. And threaten Flannery's Gaia.

HE IS AN INDIAN HISTORIAN; A book critique

2011-11-25T15:38:00.000-07:00

Part 1

In WE ARE AN INDIAN NATION A History of the Hualapai People (U. of Arizona Press, 2010), J.P. Shepherd dedicates his work to "the people of the Hualapai nation", and then spends several pages introducing the ambiguity and ambivalence that attend his book and the Hualapai -- just like the history & politics of the rest of us.

"The point of this book, then, is that colonization and persistence can exist in the same geographical and interpretive space."(page 8) Of course it can, for under other names, these are the qualities that characterize the actors, players, protagonists, who engage with each other in the American political-legal system; the system, Shepherd would remind us, put into place by whitefolk conquest. And in this system, colonizers and persisters, dominant groups and challengers, rulers and petitioners, stand-patters and protesters, the status quo and the counter-culture; all come and go, form, shape up, exercise power in some way, fade or get a place at the trough.

Shepherd offers this: " 'Indian nation,' in particular, indicates Hualapais' sense of themselves as a politically, legally, culturally, and geographically distinct people." (p.11); "an organic sense of peoplehood articulated in lived experiences and ongoing struggles to hold onto land, history, and cultural homelands."(p.12) I would add a "distinct people" who operate within (and Euler & Dobyns would argue have been in part defined by) the American political-legal system. Shepherd then seeks to keep both his allegiance and his analytical framework by quoting this (p.12): "The ideal of the nation, transplanted across the globe from its Western heartlands, has brought with it confusion, instability, strife and terror (offering) a narrow, conflict-laden legitimation for political community, which inevitably pits culture-communities against each other." Well, as I have pointed out in other posts, I believe this kind of "legitimation" arises from the political organization that grew out of the Neolithic Revolution, with its invention of agriculture, property, settlement, and eventually the state. If he thinks the "ideal of the nation" has brought "strife and terror", he should take a look at the 1000 years of the Byzantine Empire.

To return to the subject, and trading on Shepherd's terms, what characterizes the Hualapai, and the neighboring Havasupai, is how formidably they have persisted until the time arrived when they could become, if not colonizers, then the dominant group in their arena. The tools, arguments, and rhetoric they use are, of course, "distinct", particular to them and their situation. Their successes are directly attributable to their skill and activism in deploying their particular tools to push for their goals. That is the way the American political-legal system works. Shepherd prefers to recast the system into the more pejorative terms that "American Indian historiography owes … to decolonization scholarship and decolonial narratives."(9) Nothing wrong with that; it places his book squarely in the category of another element usable by the Hualapai in pushing their agenda.

What the book does not do is concern itself overly about accuracy or comprehensiveness so far as the narrative it purports to relate. Whether this is a contempt for "colonialist" history or sloppy writing is not clear to me, but while it serves its purpose as a political tool, I did not find it reliable as a source or in recounting the Hualapai's story. I would contrast it in this regard with the detailed and inspiring MAKING INDIAN LAW: The Hualapai Land Case and the Birth of Ethnohistory by Christian W. McMillen (Yale Press, 2007). (Shepherd and McMillen, equally pro-Hualapai, are friends and colleagues, as each makes clear in his acknowledgements.) This suggests to me that perhaps Shepherd's much larger canvas led to his making unfortunate compressions.

My conclusion, then, is that it seeks to "help undo the long trajectory of colonialism" by "providing a forum for listening to the voices of Hualapais as they adapted to and resisted change around them"(10). Yet it eschews satisfaction at Hualapai triumphs. The Skywalk "was an unpredictable alliance created from economic desperation and bold decision by a tribe that has surmounted incredible obstacles." Thus he limits the opportunity to celebrate (to use the word) how the Hualapai have overcome, by persistence and skill, and with important alliances, in their long and continuing effort to make the Reservation an economic foundation for their prosperity. That is how I understand the story of the Hualapai and their Reservation. Without denigrating any other aspects of Hualapai life, I believe they have for 130 years concentrated on this goal, which is, after all, a very common, very human, activity. They have sought this goal through wage labor, grazing, logging, mineral leasing, dam-building, gambling, recreation, and tourism. Often, that goal over a century+ has been inextricably intertwined with the Grand Canyon as a physical place, a locus of economic activity, and as for all of us, an iconic indicator of how humans in their varieties deal with their home planet.

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Part 2

The rhetoric of Shepherd's analytic framework is enough different from mine that I have puzzled over a method to deal with his book. What I have done is go through the index and pull out clusters of entries that I believe cover how Shepherd has dealt with the Hualapai and their connections with the Canyon. In presenting them, I will try to be less concerned with his accuracy and tilt than with trying to gather and present the threads of a Hualapai/Grand Canyon tapestry.

In the index, there is no entry for the Grand Canyon as such, nor for Hoover dam, Lake Mead or the LM National Recration Area. The most relevant entries seem to be the Colorado River, origin stories, NPS/GCNP, river running and recreation, dams and related items, Sierra Club, GC West, Skywalk, and water rights. Other entries that need to be checked include the Havasupai, Indian Claims Commission, Dobyns & Euler, Royal Marks, Sec. Int. Babbitt, mining, farming & ranching. The numbers in parentheses are pages in the book.

I start with something that puzzles me; not, I hope, because in my skipping around, I missed Shepherd's explanation. He uses 'Hualapais' as plural, implying a grouping of individuals, instead of Hualapai as a collective noun. Also he uses the terms Pai and Pais, perhaps in part to include the Havasupai, though this is not always clear. Such usages can be tempting, and sometimes contentious.

In his Introduction's summary, Shepherd writes of the Hualapai waging "a three-decade-long campaign to build Bridge Canyon dam across the Colorado River in an effort to bring water and electricity to the reservation." The campaign may have been even longer; he does not indicate whether the Council ever formally withdrew its support for the proposed Hualapai Dam in the Grand Canyon. Please note the differences: Given the effort the Hualapai put in getting the name change, why go back to the old Bureau of Reclamation label? And to say a dam across the river, instead of in the Grand Canyon, smacks to me of old-time Reclamation misdirection. It is similarly misleading to speak of bringing water and electricity to the reservation, neither of which the dam would have done; indeed, it would have evaporated tens of thousands of acre-feet of water a year. And, it was a dam to be operated to generate high-priced peaking power as a way to maximize revenue for water-transport development, most importantly for urban areas, Phoenix and Los Angeles being prime recipients. Do such cavils matter? To me, his wording tries to personalize the dam and its purposes, while placing the Hualapai in the forefront of "the campaign". I would argue that this attempt by the boomers and boosters at massive industrialization of the Grand Canyon used --or gave into-- the Hualapai as prettying-up of what would have been an ugly, counter-productive destruction of the region. While the Hualapai would have gained revenue, at least partial control of recreation resources and some additional power -- thus boosting the reservation's economy -- it would have been in the service of the national, regional, and state entities that were only too happy to buy off the Hualapai in exchange for the good publicity they brought. That is to say, the colonialism of the Hualapai that Shepherd decries would have intensified.

In his next sentence, he writes of "their exclusion from regional water compacts that allocated the water, which Hualapais could not use despite their reservation running along one hundred miles of the river." Well, rights to water in the West depend little on riparian ownership. The Colorado is a federalized river, or in Shepherd's terms, the whitefolk conquest of the West included domination of the Colorado and its colonialization through multiple levels of government. What interests me about this statement is that as far as I can tell, the book totally ignores the fact that the Hualapai have never made a peep about the repeated drowning, silting-in, plant invasion of, and re-excavation of a strip of their reservation along almost 40 of that 100 miles. In the Hualapai story as it unfolded in the 1920's and 30's, it is not hard to see how they could have been paying attention to matters other than the promotion and construction of Hoover Dam, completed in 1936. Neither then nor later did they demand compensation, water, electricity, or even recreation rights. Yet that 40 miles has been irrevocably taken over by the vagaries of regional water supply and management, apparently with no remuneration of any kind to the Hualapai. Why not?

Also in the Introduction, he notes the bright spot of "the creation of the Hualapai River Runners, the only Native-owned and -operated rafting business on the Colorado."

However, the Hualapai (and here I will scan in the text on 16)

Great rhetoric: "perceived power", "ongoing colonialism", "much like the Santa Fe", "despite origin stories and tribal memories", "Devaluing", "legitimate owners of the land", "deploying the powers of the state", "alienate them from the river", "and their cultural identity", "the hegemonic powers", "contemporary American governance". Powerful stuff, this.

The above is, of course, all about the northern boundary of the Reservation, about which I have written a number of entries. It is relevant to note here & now that the Park Service is preparing a long-overdue rigorous review of the boundary of the Grand Canyon National Park. When that is made public (public input was not wanted during the last two years as the intra-agency discussions have tried to deal with the ambiguities), there will no doubt be more to say about the quoted land mines above. I would like to note here that it was Congress and the President, not the Park Service, who extended the Park's boundary on the south bank of the river along the Reservation. The Park Service over-reached in its interpretation of "bank", but it was Congress passing a law defining the Park boundary that deployed the powers of the state to alienate the Hualapai from the river and confine them to the riverbank, locking them onto their million acres. The Park Service has since issued them a permit to use the river, like all the other down-trodden colonials NPS allows to float downstream for fun and profit.

Speaking of "origin stories and tribal memories", Shepherd offers this one on 18-9: Canes were cut from river and piled on the riverbank, becoming people. These moved around, always near Madwida, their birthplace "on the CR". But they argued, and so were told to leave Madwida. Under a variety of spellings (whitefolk maps use Meriwhitica), Madwida is a canyon with a broad floor, leading to an "Indian Gardens", which has a spring and ruins from the time when it was regularly used by one or more of the bands that came to constitute the Hualapai. It is actually a side canyon two miles from the river up Spencer (named, but not ironically, for one of the XVIII-century whitefolk ranchers who deployed their powers to alienate the Hualapai from the springs), which itself cuts on down through the schists to the mainstem of the Grand Canyon at river mile 246. Lake Mead has been here, depositing silt, and the canes are now replaced by other exotic vegetation. Shepherd's recounting emphasizes people originating in the region--but downstream of where Hoover dam is-- a version of the story that has a flood, with a Being striking his spear to create a grand gash, so the waters ebb away, allowing the peoples to settle at Madwida.

In passing, Shepherd notes on 20 that the Hualapai did trade "extensively" with the Southern Paiute living north of the Colorado. The extent of activity across and along the river is, again, a matter stimulated by boundary claims, with testimony given during the Indian Claims Commission attempt to determine exclusive use and occupancy from time immemorial, as the formula goes. Just as the Hualpaai were pressed (including a war) from the south, the Southern Paiute were pressed by the Latter-Day Saints coming from the north. Testimony spoke of Southern Paiute coming across the river, and even marrying. When and how intensely is probably not recoverable now, though, as Shepherd points out (20) about the origin stories, "they deemphasize linear time", creating "cultural landscapes that explain behavior, import morals, and often mark the boundaries of the community itself".

This deemphasis really shows up on 20 with "The eastern stretches of Hualapai territory cross the Little Colorado River and overlap land of their allies, the Hopis and Navajos, with whom Hualapais share a common reverence for the San Francisco Peaks." This benign summary of a highly complex narrative is maybe just more conflation of the Havasupai and the Hualapai, although it rings a bit of cultural imperialism. It is in the class with "Evidence of Pai habitation in northwestern Arizona stems from excavations along the Colorado River…", leaving hanging the questions of "which Pai" and "what part of the river". Certainly not in the Canyon, where intensive archeological work has yet to be done.

How the reservation boundaries came to be (54-60) is an object of consuming interest, and I would have been delighted to have learned of more than the events of July 1881, when Hualapai and USArmy officers met and settled on lines that were first the military reservation, then the Presidential one. On 54-5, Shepherd points to an 1875 discussion several times, finally identifying it as the subject of a 1928 letter which posited a staking out of the Hualapai "claim" by Hualapai, army, and rancher Spencer. Unfortunately, no detail is provided as to the justification for any part of what came to be the boundary description. Also puzzlingly, Shepherd says, referring to the Big Sandy Band, the reservation "ran along the Colorado River and placed the band near their point of origin, Spirit Mountain". Its territory is some distance south of the main reservation, so they had a right to be concerned about a reservation which runs "along the Colorado River", but in the Grand Canyon. Spirit Mountain is in Nevada, by the way. More relevant is Shepherd's report (57) that the army had found 200 Hualapai around Spencer's ranch in Matawidita(sic) Canyon in the years around 1881.

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Part 3

Chapter 7, "Local Realities in an Era of Self-Determination", subsection "A Hundred Miles on the River and Not an Ounce of Water", (168-82), takes up the issues most directly concerning the Grand Canyon: water, dams, the National Park Service, Park enlargement and related matters. Shepherd sets his stage with a disingenuous fantasy that with 100 miles of the reservation's boundary along the Colorado, "the tribe should not have had difficulty finding water, and yet it did".(169)

He takes up the boundary first, stating that the 1883 Executive Order did not make clear where that boundary lay, allowing disagreement "over whether or not the boundary went to the center of the river or to the low- or high-water mark". While this ambiguity might have favored the Hualapai, he says, regional water use & compacts, and "the power of the Grand Canyon National Park" outweighed Hualapai interests. "(GCNP) expansion … created a powerful political counterbalance to Hualapais' claims that their boundary went to the center of the river. Indeed, the park had always opposed Hualapais' claims to the river, as it had direct lines of communication with the Department of the Interior and the office of the president. The park made repeated claims that the interests of the states and the general public, which relied on the river, vastly outweighed the needs of the Hualapai." Shepherd has no citations to support these goofy statements (totally untrue so far as I know), footnoting only a 1975 book on water and the West by N. Hundley about the Colorado River Compact. Of course, since the park is administered by NPS, a bureau of Interior, there is communication in the chain of the superintendent/region/DC offices/NPS Director/Ass't Secretary & minions/Secretarial subordinates/Secretary. But with the president's office? What fantasy of American government does Shepherd subscribe to? Now, if he had pointed out something parallel to the time that a Havasupai lobbyist had a contact in the Nixon White House and so was able to bring about a presidential endorsement of taking land from GCNP and adding it to the Havasupai Reservation, that would be something.

Shepherd continues that the Compact excluded the Hualapai (as it did everybody but the fed and the seven basin states). He then goes on to say that "few Hualapais even lived on the reservation", a curious admission in this context. Then he asserts that events after World War II further led to "structur(ing) the history of bureaucratic colonialism, technocratic exclusion, regional politics, and western demographic growth, which merged to alienate Hualapais from the river of their origins." In fact, right after WWII, the Hualapai were empowered by their successful effort to be included in legislation authorizing Bridge Canyon dam, a position they maintained in the 1950's and 60's, first through their partnership with the Arizona Power Authority and then during the (fortunately) failed attempt by Reclamation and the basin states to gain authorization for the Grand Canyon dams. And what does he mean by "river of their origins"--the part of the Colorado dealt with in their origin stories is, as I pointed out, way downstream and in Nevada. Shepherd's problem here is that he is jumbling together the question of the right to use the river's water, their effort to participate in the benefits of a dam in the Grand Canyon, and the question raised later of who was to regulate river traffic through the Canyon.

After an excursion into the sad story of the Peach Springs, Shepherd goes back to the early XXth-century and Girand's thwarted run at a Diamond Creek damsite (see my 2 May 2010 post for a full story). Whether as Shepherd asserts, Girand did not "consult" the Hualapai, he did worry about them. Moreover, Shepherd then goes on to confuse Girand with La Rue and the 1923 USGS river survey. He continues this confusion by squashing events, agencies and persons active in dam history in the 1930's and 40's. On 171 though, he does point out that the Hualapai were more concerned about their exclusion from discussions than about the "proposed flooding of the reservation". (As I pointed out earlier, they have never objected to the actual flooding by Hoover dam's reservoir.) Perhaps triggered by the then-current Arizona state effort, the Council passed a resolution of May 1939 asking the Federal Government for a portion of the water and a share of the power;

Shepherd ignores the successful effort to get Hualapai interests considered in the first CAP legislation, as he ignores the work of (non-Hualapai) tribal attorneys and other allies. He does introduce lawyer R. Marks in 1957 as part of talks with the Arizona Power Authority, which "began what seemed to be a fruitful relationship"(it was actually 1956).(172) Fruitful monetarily, too, since the APA paid the Hualapai a retainer, which continued into the late 1970's as an element of their partnership in pursuit of a Grand Canyon dam. For some reason, on 173, Shepherd is in a knot about Hualapai dam support. He stresses their right to determine what they could do with their land "even if that included flooding a portion of their reservation" and "even if their support for the dam was a surprising expression of self-determination". He talks of their leaders trying to balance damage to the reservation with potential benefits, but presents nothing about "damage" along with the quotes on benefits. I would be happy to find evidence of Hualapai discussions about damage to the Canyon; especially about the real and continuing effects of Hoover's reservoir.

Shepherd continues his summary of the events of the mid-1960's, still tangling the various threads of that already-complex story, and emphasizing that Hualapai property rights were not being protected.(176) However, he says nothing about the exciting events of 1966-8 in which the Hualapai were able make their case for participation, including having the proposed Bridge Canyon dam re-designated as "Hualapai dam", still its moniker. Even though it suits his overall presentation of the Hualapai as victims, his audience, and I think the Hualapai, would have been better served had he found the space to celebrate Hualapai successes in the dam politics of 1948-68. I have written about some of this in my 2010 entries on the dam fight.

Shepherd, interestingly, wrapped up the entire Park enlargement issue (177) with some vague sentences about promoting the project and traveling to Washington to advocate the dam. He completely omits the two-year effort Hualapai leaders, attorneys, & allies made to get pro-dam language in the GCNP enlargement bill. This would not matter if it were not for what he does write about. Still, I cannot resist offering this tidbit of Shepherdian analysis: "it was this odd combination of environmental sentiment against dams, a renewed and reactionary interest in fossil fuels, and an international political economy shaped by the cold war that worked against the Hualapai Dam." My.

However, Shepherd has smaller fish to fry, for (178-81) he is in full cry after "The Grand Canyon National Park, a seemingly benign bureaucracy with a relatively positive image". It "emerged during the dam controversy as an increasingly influential foe of Indian tribes in the Southwest". Support for this comes from three books that, I agree, weigh in on the side of our First Americans. So, for Shepherd, "The park and the tribe disagreed over economic development and natural resource management, … resurrect(ing) a near-century-old series of questions about the boundaries of the reservation and the tribe's ability to control its future economy and cultural history." This all, he writes, has its roots in conflicts between Indian nations and resources bureaucrats.

Shepherd summarizes the fight over the Canyon's designation, when "(NPS Director Mather) pushed in 1919 for President Woodrow Wilson to bring the Grand Canyon into the national park system. He did".(179) It is difficult, he writes, to know if the Hualapai knew about the park, but later events introduced them to NPS and "one of its frequent defenders, the Sierra Club. And it must have been a surprise when the Sierra Club, led by David Brower, questioned the motives of the tribe for supporting the Bridge Canyon Dam in the 1950s and 1960s." So much for that 50 years of history. "After several rounds of debate via national newspapers and periodicals, the Hualapais eventually invited Brower to the reservation for a trip down the river to see the artifacts and paintings on the canyon walls. They hoped such an excursion would demonstrate their history along the river and convince the club that their prior occupancy gave them the moral right to use the canyon for their survival." Stop a second. Shepherd says he is getting this from L.Morehouse, A Place Called Grand Canyon (a book I hope to deal with sometime soon). Too bad with all his access to Hualapai and their archives, he could not have illuminated this important debate, which had significant Hualapai successes (he does not even mention Henry Dobyns here, for instance). Oh, and Brower did go down the river at the peak of the dam fight in 1966. No artifacts; no paintings. But he did end up convinced that the prior occupancy of the area by the Grand Canyon gave it the moral right to survive without the unnecessary catastrophe of Hualapai dam.

Continuing: "The Sierra Club remained convinced of its mission to stop all economic activity within the Grand Canyon…Indeed, the Hualapais could convince neither the Sierra Club nor the National Park Service of their claims to the region." I wrote in my 27 Sep 2009 entry of the far-sighted Hualapai activist Fred Mahone, who in 1934, laid out a detailed plan for recreational use on the reservation arising from Hoover's reservoir. He got no Hualapai or BIA support for that very sensible economic activity within the Canyon. The second part of the statement is simply a lie. Whatever the dispute over the northern boundary, no one that I know of, Sierra Club or NPS or whatever, disputes the Hualapai ownership of the Reservation, and their right to do to it as they (and the money-bags from Las Vegas) wish.

Shepherd starts his summary of the 1972-5 GCNP enlargement fight with a howler: "the Hualapais defended their boundaries and access to the Colorado River when the park gained support for a new round of expansion to the west along the northern reservation border".(179) Defend their boundaries is the one thing the Hualapais did not do. During the 1972-5 period, they were obsessed with distorting the park enlargement legislation with some nasty language supposedly recognizing their right to build a dam, although they had been told by principal bill sponsor Senator Goldwater that the dam was dead and they should leave it alone. Their tribal officials, lobbyists, and allies kept right on pushing dead dam language, AND TOTALLY IGNORED THE BOUNDARY MATTER. Never once in over two years did they raise any objection as the legislation progressed, with the House resolving ambiguity by placing the southern park boundary (miles 164.8-273.1) on the south bank of the Colorado, a decision to which the Senate & the President then agreed. The Hualapai statements that Shepherd quotes all have to do with the park enlargement making the dam even deader, not with the boundary matter.

Watching as the Hualapai lobby went about Capitol Hill on its dam errand, I kept wondering why they did not raise the boundary question. Shepherd does not deal with this important historical question, preferring to segue quickly to 1975, and the post-congressional action by the Park Service claiming to the high-water mark--a puzzle I have tangled with in several October 2011 entries. Here he is on firm ground, though he adds no new information. He seems to prefer rhetoric (180-1). He complains that the Havasupai won an increase to their reservation, but the Hualapai efforts "to gain control over its land and resources" were ignored by the "hostile Grand Canyon National Park". He adds that "even in the twenty-first century, the Hualapai and the national park remain deadlocked in disagreement over boundaries and jurisdiction on the river". Contrary to his statement, those two parties, under a 2000 Memorandum of Understanding, met regularly through 2004 to discuss and deal with river issues in a forum of cooperation. Why the meetings stopped (there was a brief re-start in 2007-8) and how all this fits in with the park's river management plan of 2006, are questions Shepherd does not deal with, though he takes up river issues with the usual pejorative rhetoric on 202-3.

The sketchiness of his material does not stop Shepherd from sweeping to the claim that the Colorado River "constituted a central place in Hualapai identity: it was their place of origin, it watered their gardens, and it constituted a geographic boundary and marker for their identity."(182) I would answer to these three: 1. yes, but the origin was downstream, not along the current reservation; 2. no, "it" did not, although some of their gardens were in the Canyon's side canyons and up on its plateau; 3. the Hualapai bands and peoples used and occupied a much larger and more southerly area than the Canyon, and the river constituted a porous "boundary" and mutual place of crossing by both Hualapai and Southern Paiute individuals.

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Part 4

Final considerations

There are entries in his index that indicate that Shepherd takes up other economic areas the Hualapai worked on as bases for their prosperity: grazing, logging, and mineral leasing, especially for uranium. His chapter 8 takes a look at the on-going tourist development on the northwestern rim, including the Skywalk. There are the usual swipes at the National Park Service, and Hualapais are quoted on both sides of the tourism development issue.

In chapter 6, Shepherd takes up the Indian Claims Commission(148-50). In his telling, for some reason, he disses long-term tribal attorney, Royal Marks, saying that in the 1950's the Hualapai "also had the commitment of Royal Marks", although he had been hired by the tribe almost ten years before. Given Marks' 30+-year involvement in the tribe's political life (especially on the dam issue) from 1946, I would guess Shepherd's treatment of Marks' role was part of the former's desire to feature Hualapai leadership in all things. Shepherd does claim that tribal members "stressed the importance of the midstream and center of their boundary on the Colorado River, since there had been debate about whether or not the reservation ended at the high-water mark or the 'spine' of the river. If the tribe could prove that its aboriginal lands extended into the center, it could strengthen its legal claim to the river." Which may be true, but it was not in the first two drafts of their ICC brief, and they had to be reminded of it by the tribal business manager. Shepherd also fails to mention that the ICC decided that the aboriginal lands did not go to the center of the river (my entry of 6 Oct 2011).

In conclusion, the book seems to succeed in its goal of placing the Hualapai front & center. Personally, I find the Hualapai saga of trying to make their reservation into a supportive economic base inspiring. I can hardly cheer for all their choices, but they have been pretty consistent and very persistent; their successes deserve to be better celebrated. Their vision as one of the principal landowners in the Grand Canyon is their own, not imposed and not without worth. I certainly wish that the administration of Grand Canyon National Park were now and had been a cooperative force, as the 1975 Enlargement Act encouraged it to be. Issues and disagreements ought to be resolved.

Not About the Grand Canyon

2011-11-07T13:49:00.000-07:00

IS TUCSON AIRPORT AN APPROPRIATE EXAMPLE?

Nothing is quite so neat a microcosm of our security-based control-freak (S&C) society as an airport arrival-departure area. Larded up with uniformed shouters, bikers, threateners, and cloggers*, their basic stance toward people bringing and taking away other people is that of cattle-killing operators before the reforms of Temple Grandin**.

Here is a basic: What is going on at departure and arrival areas partakes of the sad and the happy***. That is, they are sites for expressing emotion, and rightly so. Not all of the activity, of course, is high-pitched (it ranges in emotional intensity up from the commercial handlers, who are, one hopes, calm and even blasé), but anxiety and relief can visit the traveller even when in the most experienced of drivers' hands. In any case, S&C attitudes and measures are singularly inappropriate, since they so often contribute more pressure than solution to the situation of smoothing this transition for travellers.

What solution, however, is there? What makes this question so intriguing is that there must have been years of thought expended on how to keep traffic moving, how to get people off- or on-loaded with expedition, and maybe even dignity. Yet the basic pattern seems set of vehicles crawling up, crowding around each other, nosing about for a stopping place, pausing while the business is done, and then searching for an escape route, all overseen, even harassed, by S&C herders. If there is a "better way", it has not become universal.

There is an example of an improvement, which may also point to one of the impediments****. The Cell Phone Waiting Lot (CPWL) has to have decreased and thus improved traffic flow, eased the pick-upper's anxiety, reassured the arrivals, and cut fuel waste. Wherever it was first thought of, it is a good idea that has spread its blessings. BUT: Why did it take a new technology?

The pattern, if parking was to be avoided, used to be to set an approximate pick-up time, then cruise by the exits. If the arrival had truly arrived, the task was done. If not, then circle slowly around the roadways, and come back to check an appropriate interval later. Repeat, until task done (or gas runs out). Why did breaking this pattern require a new technology? Consider if there had been WLs before there were CPs. Even without the connection provided by the phones, traffic and gas use would have been lessened. And if the bright soul who invented the CPWL had had the idea 30 years ago, say, might this have sparked off the thought to install an updating/refreshing arrivals board at the CPWL, showing plane arriving, passengers off, baggage arriving, people exiting, etc.? Indeed, maybe this is a good idea even now; for an innovation-seeking Airport Authority (AA), is it not worth exploring? Maybe polling those in the CPWL to see if they would find it useful?

So does not this example --a good idea, that arrived way overdue-- not point to the possibility of the problem's source, namely, the bureaucracy of AAs is not as welcoming to innovation as it might be? Is it perhaps too tied to shuffling the usual parameters around instead of taking them out of their boxes and playing with them a bit?

I have a personal example that I find puzzling. For my own travel, I use the bus system as much as I can; it is extremely convenient and laughably cheap. Over the years, the local AA has moved the bus stop to various more or less inconvenient sites. Today, it is an almost maximally ridiculous distance from the entrances. I would certainly agree that very, very few people use the bus, but is that due at least a small amount to the AA (and maybe the bus operation) not seeing that it would do well to make information about and access to the bus as convenient as possible (even an in-your-face parking area where the S&C vehicles now too often sit), instead of the reverse?

But back to the main question: Why is it taking so long for AAs to come up with an arrival-departure methodology that is smooth for drivers & travelers, provides optimum care for the emotions that may be involved, and dispenses with S&C wrangling? The case of the CPWL is worrisome. Does it suggest that a new invention is needed, a technological 2x4? Or maybe that a change will only come years after it could? Or that innovation and AA are not compatible concepts? On AA staffs, are there planners, innovators-in-waiting, people charged with out-of-the-box blue-sky***** thinking? Are the elements of a solution lying around, just waiting to be recognized, or does something all-new have to be born before there is progress? There are amazingly large prizes for contests and firsts of all sorts; couldnt one of the 1% be flattered into providing a prize for smoothing and humanizing the coming-&-going process at airports?******

Think of the pleasure of gliding up to the appropriate spot, taking the time needed for appropriate hellos/goodbyes, and whooshing away, all in a way that elevates what is now a hassle into what would be a strengthening of dignity and humaneness.

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*Do you notice the space taken up by parked police cars?

**There are both documentaries and biopics on this worthy human, I emphasize human(e), person.

***Conventionally, but not necessarily respectively.

****This discussion deals only with picking up travelers; then back to the overall problem.

*****Could not resist.

******Is one of the causes of AAs not pushing for a solution that a perquisite of the 1% is that they dont have to use the arrival/departure zones?

On the Edge VI: A Green Alternative

2011-10-30T15:47:00.000-07:00

In my previous entry about Mather Point, I was ambivalent about some of the features of the upgrade: the wide, black asphalt, straight, walk-ways in particular. Today, Mrill Ingram showed me some photos of a project that shared some of the goals, but is a step up in environmental consciousness. It is called WaterWash. Designed by Lillian Ball (she has a website), it is a recycling feature nurturing a wetland with a green infrastructure. I offer a few photos to compare with those of the Park Service's project at Mather.

A walk-way, narrower, not so straight:

Here it winds along a slope:

Some close-ups; the surface is permeable to water, made of recycled glass; a bit more restful to the eyes:

Up close:

And a water feature, aiming at restoring a wetland.

Revegetation is easier in New York, but even at Mather, the interface of land, path, and greenery could be greater.

There are a lot of ideas and experiments and projects to do with restoration and human-scale green infrastructure. This paraticular example emphasizes how Mather went away from that toward the geometic, the grandiose.

On the Edge V: In the Flesh

2011-10-27T17:37:00.002-07:00

On a visit to the upgraded Mather Point, Friday, 21 October, I walked about, listened, chatted with a few people, contemplated, made lots of notes, and took some photos with my Jobs-book. I left with the notion that I was having two legitimate reactions:

1. The changes at Mather Point and the new visitor center are greatly to be applauded; they bring a huge improvement. They are the ultimate realization of Mather's potential as a first-look orientation focus.

2. Why, oh why, couldnt it have been done with more inspiration from the Canyon and respect for the importance of the visitor's first look, that Spanish experience? (see my previous post, 26 October)
President Garfield said this about education: My definition of a University is Mark Hopkins at one end of a log and a student on the other. Well, that 1872 statement may need updating, but my definition of the first-look experience of the Grand Canyon will remain: A visitor standing on the edge, the Canyon opening out beyond. A straight-forward, untrammeled, connection.

But you decide; here is what I recorded:

To start, a couple of overall views, the first from 1956, looking from the south out toward the Canyon:

The second, an aerial of the 2011 upgrade, this time from the Canyon, looks southerly (that is, north is toward the bottom) over most of the new complex:

Two oval parking lots dominate; on the right for tour buses. On the left (east), for private vehicles, the lot is divided into 1 nearer the rim with a few cars and rv's, and 2 nearer the visitor center.

A curving, whitish, concrete walk/trail/path/broad-way is laid out from between the lots to the actual overlook on the west point, with the Park shuttle loop (with tree) stop to the right of that.

From Lot 1, there is a short asphalt walk-way to the rim. Another two lead from the tour-bus lot to the edge, half-way over to the overlook. Just west of the walk-way from Lot 1 is the new little amphitheater at a point on the rim.

Oh yes: it is not clear from the photo, but the drainage here slopes south away from the rim; the buildings are lower than the edge, and the walk-ways go up to the rim view.

There is an asphalt walk-way all along the edge here, though obscured by trees in some places. None of the asphalt looks very black in this photo, but see below. The big, brown, east-west swath is the old road and parking area, now being re-vegetated.

The importance of trees, their shade and visual relief, is indicated by their use near the walk-ways and parking lots, though this cover can be contrasted with the denser forest beyond the complex. Not just roads, there were also fire(s) in this area.

Lot 2 is closer to the buildings of the complex: bathrooms, beyond them the book store; on the right the visitor center/station-that-was-to-be. Lot 4 is beyond all that. Hands up; the cars have you surrounded.

Squint for a moment at the curve of the station building; imagine the lots disappeared, replaced by vegetated area, and see a curving track for the light rail coming through the trees on the left, passing around the station to stop on the north, and all of the slope between track and Canyon edge also with trees and other native vegetation. Imagine scattered cleverly among the trees several narrow, natural paths winding gently up the slope to the rim, where you stand, without a fence, but guarded back a bit by rocks placed much as they are along the edge in some of the photos below.

Here are the notes I made as I wandered about, trying to balance my impressions. Arriving during a very sunny October mid-morning, Lots 1 & 2 were easy to negotiate, the tree islands and other vegetated plots hoping to give a foresty feeling.

Walking first toward the buildings, it felt a bit like a campus with a central plaza. People moved about in every direction, a number that increased as the morning went on, and led me to wonder how it would seem in the height of the summer season. I thought of an anthill stirred by a stick; but perhaps that is unkind; there was more leisurely strolling than scurrying.

The bicycle rental spot is south of the buildings near Lot 4; $10-35. The activity was not feverish, nor did I see any cyclists.

The bus lot seemed huge, even with the attempts to break up the sweep of the asphalt.

Does the orientation work? Was the signage clear to first-timers? Is there a rationale to the shape and placement of the lots? I did overhear a first-time family debating where the view was.

The more I walked, the more it did seem as if the guiding spirit in the layout and physical appointments of the improvements leaned toward the clean and geometic, rather than the not-always straight-forward of a natural scene. For instance, the paths were very broad and very black, bordered by a rock line and chains, vegetation kept beyond.

Although not very obvious in the photo, I was struck by the large amount of revegetation work; in a few years, it should be a good case study for what can be done to re-claim battered ground in this location.

Next is the walk-way north of the lots and buildings as it slopes up, the Canyon beyond becoming visible, but not yet revealed. The concrete, longer, walk-way, moving at an angle to the rim (see aerial photo) comes to a crossing with a mandala for some of the tribes who claim a Canyon connection. However, important tribes -- scientists and river-runners come to mind-- were not represented. There were several very large standing boulders; I dont know why. Pretentious to me, but still, a number of people used the spot to take their pictures, even though the Canyon is still screened.

These walk-ways come to a fence at the rim; as always this sometimes just acted as a temptation for those who want to get as close as they can. The "planters" of trees at the rim reinforced the blessing of shade in our Southwest.

I found the rim amphitheater also a little pretentious: "Look at what we can do." (For NPS photos of that, see my 4 September entry). Still, compared to the more negative views I had of the entire upgrade in my 12 September overview, many of the choices the Park Service made (did they seek the public's or any non-NPS advice?) did seem to me on this visit to fit together, presenting a renewed, vigorous, conception of welcoming visitors, getting them out of cars, and up to the rim in a more ordered fashion. There is an integrity of perspective in the wide walk-ways, cleanly paved, neatly bordered, amid spruced-up vegetation. Not unusually, a gesture made of good intentions may have become ponderous and over-bearing in execution.

Next is a piece of the Rim Walk-way (this is not the road); quite broad, asphalted, with the trees kept back. However, the fence has ended, though there are some rock borders in places.

Perhaps my picture-taking exaggerated the road-like feel of the walk-ways; I think golf carts could pass each other easily. And I do wonder about the feel of walking here at 2 p.m. on a cloudless June day. Was I being too harsh in thinking here was the ultimate realization of Mather Point under the 1950's program of Mission 66? Yet, do first-time visitors care? The young couple I talked to about the Kaibab trail had used the visitor center and were very pleased. And after all, I can still say, with Mefistofele, that the Canyon, as always, evokes "Arrestati, sei bello!"

Here's a view of the outlook point itself. Interestingly, the outlook is offset from the walk-way approaches, so the crowd that gathers there does not interfere with the walkers coming up to the rim. I should have taken a picture from the walk-way where it turns to go out to this point: It impressed me as a huge mouth pouring down (like a rapid's tongue?) to, well, to all the people standing out there enjoying themselves. No intimacy there; it and the Amphitheater bookend the upgrade's pretentiousness.

Between this overlook and the shuttle stop, there is a billboard, replacing that irritating one they had in the 1970's, and did not take down for ever so long. The old one was a big map, with the Canyon shown as "217 Miles Long". Well, thats gone, although I did not much like this line in the new one's description:

"The Canyon is bounded by two great dams and the lakes they contain"! The f-ck you say.

I close with what epitomizes the aspect I found most problematic:

If there had been a more public process for planning this upgrade, would it have been different?

On the Edge IV: The 1990's, From the Inside

2011-10-26T12:02:00.000-07:00

In "On the Edge III: The 1990's" (12 Sep 2011), I presented maps from the 1995 General Master Plan (GMP) for GCNP showing several alternative levels of development for Mather Point. I have very little personal documentation or archival material for that period, one in which I was distracted from Grand Canyon affairs. On the other hand, that period is so recent that I thought it might be worthwhile to see which participants might be willing to talk about the goals of the 1990's and what prevented them from being realized.

I did recall having a talk, maybe in 2000, with Brad Traver, whom I remembered as the chief operational officer for the GMP's ambitions, particularly with respect to the vexed matter of visitor transportation. "Vexed" of course because of the difficulties caused by over 60 years of cultivating the private automobile as the primary mode for 2, 3, 4 & up million visitors each year to come to and get around in Grand Canyon National Park. "Vexed" for me because in the 1970's, during an earlier round of transportation planning for the Park, I tried hard to convince the planners that cars and the "Spanish experience" did not mix, while they remained tied to the idea that cars did and would rule.

When I speak of the Spanish experience, I am thinking primarily of those -- the great majority of visitors -- who come for a day or other short period, and are coming for the first (and maybe only) time to the Canyon. I think that they should not have to battle traffic or commercial and other distractions, much less elbow through crowds, in order to get situated near the rim, to which they then should be able to walk, along a natural path, through the pinyon-juniper, to that defining moment of the first look.*

Brad Traver is now Superintendent of the (newly expanded) Petrified Forest National Park, the northern section of which constitutes the Painted Desert Wilderness, one of my favorite places for a little hike or weekend backpack -- it is not large, and the lack of potable water means we must carry our own. When I found that Brad was willing to talk me through the events of the 1990's, it was a doubled benefit that I could spend the morning walking in the Painted Desert. Our hour-and-a-half conversation that afternoon provided me with a story whose arc is too familiar in Grand Canyon affairs: Great dreams, goals, and plans that find support, are pushed toward fruition, even past substantial obstacles, achieving in the end however at best only partial realization due to systemic resistances -- bureaucratic, commercial, political, even personal. If this were my story, I might call it "Hijacking The Train", but instead I will do my best here to present what Brad told me. He has his own, complete, book-length version; I hope it becomes available. The Park Service and what it administers are too crucial to America for there to be so few in-depth studies.

Traver came to GCNP in 1988 as the Park Engineer when Richard Marks was Superintendent. There were then four (incl Acting) Superintendents in 5½ years, when Robert Arnberger came in 1994, to stay until 2000. Because I have been making these entries about Mather Point backwards, I have yet to deal with the 1970's, when a San Francisco planning firm called ROMA did much detailed work, supposedly prefatory to a Master Plan implementation that would have upgraded much of the South Rim facilities. The 1980's, however, were a hard time for big Park plans, so it was not until the early 1990's when discussions were renewed among Park staff about updating the ROMA work. Superintendent R. Chandler (1991-3) launched the effort to produce a General Management Plan. Mather Point was one focus of the discussions, as it had been for ROMA, which saw it as a center of visitor activity on the canyon rim. Traver remembers that this idea of more intensive development on the rim was rejected.

Then vital pro-Canyon personnel changes took place. Bruce Babbitt, long a personal aficionado and user of the Canyon, became Secretary of the Interior in 1993, and in mid-1994, Arnberger became Sup't. The latter was a strong administrator; and if your project was favored, much would be accomplished. (There is more about him in my Hijacking A River.) In a dramatic little episode, Babbitt called Arnberger on a Saturday, and told him he wanted to talk with him in Washington immediately about Park upgrading. He took Traver, and they met with the Secretary, who told them he wanted a plan done to make the Park work better for the visitor. Politically astute, Babbitt told them it must be done while he was in office. He would be the encourager, but not the manager; that was up to the Park staff. He offered one idea, that had been discussed before, to build a by-pass road (which would have to use Kaibab Forest land, too) on the East Rim from Tusayan to Desert View to get through-traffic off the Park road. Whatever the merits of this project, the big needs had to do with the bulk of visitors, how to get them out of their cars (and where to park the beasts), and how to improve their often short-time experience. The GMP was to be done at speed; it took ten months, and was completed, with an EIS, in August 1995.

Babbitt showed his interest by calling Arnberger, and visiting 3-4 times a year. And, it showed by of the lack of involvement, which can often be a cause of major slow-down, of the Regional office (GCNP started out under San Francisco, then went under Denver); as well the Washington office played little role. The Park's implementation team had all of three members, with Traver as its head, working with Arnberger. Streamlining was the goal here, and seems to have been achieved. I dont know about overwork.

The major issue of the location for parking was closely examined: it could be inside the Park; the Secretary liked the idea of it being under Park control. However, there is no disturbed land at the appropriate location, so that alternative was never written up. The area south of Tusayan, at the airport, was considered since it would coincide with plans the railroad operators were promoting to run a spur off their line to serve the airport The chosen site, however, was in Tusayan, on the forest north of Imax. This area had the merit, it seems to me, of dumping the load of cars in what was already an industrial tourism site.

The Mather train station and orientation center was planned to be the major visitor target, with fuller interpretation and education being carried out in that fine old Village building that used to be the power plant. The conception started with visitors leaving their car in Tusayan, taking mass transit to the Mather station for orientation and a walk to the rim, then back on the transit and over to Maswik & the Village, finally returning to Tusayan if they were not staying. The train transit system was thus a Y, one horn at Mather station, the other at the Village. Any private cars having overnight reservations could go to parking near their destination, using a more southerly route.

The transit unit would come to the north side of the Mather station, where the visitor would see signs leading to the Canyon rim, along pedestrian approaches. These would, appealingly and because of the downward slope from the rim (well, all in line with the Kaibab's slant to the south), be slightly uphill so that the Canyon would not be fully revealed until the rim was reached -- that "my jaw dropped a mile" sensation. The walk from transit to rim would be about 5 minutes, although I found in my visit there in mid-October that I, along with lots of others, dawdled along, checking things out and quite slowly approaching the edge.

The planning team was to have until 1997 to figure out all the aspects of the transit system, and they came up with three likely alternatives; buses run on battery power (checked out, but not a serious contender), buses using fuel cells, or a light rail train run on diesel. Some possibilities were ruled out since they would require major power lines. The aim was to have a demonstration for Secretary Babbitt in January 1997. Arnberger himself favored rail, since he thought people would more readily get on it, trains having cachet buses never will. This was the choice by the Secretary, and he emphasized that the transit system had to be on an irreversible path by 2000, when he would be leaving.

Of course, money had to be found; individual Parks did not control their budgets, and a project like this was major in any sense. Then, as the organizational structure was being put together in 1997-8, the Park System concession law was re-vamped, causing a need for the lawyers to figure out a new set of regulations for letting contracts, including for such projects as this Park rail system, one of the first of its kind, and one of the first under the new concession law. The end result was four binders of material for potential concessionaires to deal with. All would-be bidders had to be pre-qualified; five companies -- e.g., Bombardier, Raytheon -- made it.

Another slow-down complication appeared when Congress ordered the Federal Transit Administration to report on the Park's transit plan, requiring that it include non-rail transit options. On top of that, Representative John Shadegg (from Phoenix) asked the state to report on the Park plans. But we need to pause here, and check out these actors in Congress, remembering that congressional politics is: 1: $$$$; and 2: "Its all local, my friend". Recall, also, that the Republicans took over Congress in 1995.

One important Representative was Ralph Regula from Ohio. I first dealt with him in 1973-4 when he was on the Interior Committee. I kept hoping he might support positive changes to the Park during the Enlargement legislation struggle. He did not. And 25 years later, a power on the Appropriations Committee (including as chairman of the Interior Subcommittee), he was still no help. (He brought fuel cell technology money to Ohio; and had a wide-ranging concern for energy uses and who made money from them. Diesel trains? I wonder.) When I contacted his office in 2000, I was told the Park Service could not handle such a large project. Sometimes the problem with politics being local is that it makes the minds small.

Then there was Senator Jon Kyl. As anyone who has read Hijacking A River knows, Kyl (along with his father) was one of the motorboaters' major allies, once their attorney. Nuf said on the possibility of his helping the Park. Bob Stump represented the district, although that hardly mattered; nor did he. Shadegg, also out on the right, was on a House subcommittee concerned with energy matters. There was no Raul Grijalva, much less a Mo Udall, to support Secretary Babbitt in leading an environmental, pro-Park effort. In short, this was not a great period for finding Grand Canyon advocates in Congress.

If these concerned congressional watch-dogs (or were they attack pups?) were hoping for the outside studies to do the dirty to the Park plan, they must have been disappointed. The FTA report included a "bus rapid transit" option it preferred (as no doubt did Regula), but was still favorable for rail as a reasonable alternative. The state report was also favorable. However, the Park planners' intimate involvement in helping pull the reports together could only absorb crucial time in the 1997-9 period. Perhaps that was their only purpose--slow down the process.

So it was that work on the contract for the rail system was still going on in 2000, and had only reached the stage of providing a demonstration for the congressional Gang of Three. That event, Traver recalls, took place on 30 November, right during the 2000 election count-off period. Therefore, all knew there would not only not be Bruce Babbitt in office, but quite possibly not even a Democratic administration. Everyone was polite, as at a wake, but with only Republican skeptics involved, the result was not in doubt. The Park was allowed to do a quick study that Congress could ignore.

Meanwhile, however, the train station -- or visitor center as it now is -- had been built, since Arnberger had somehow convinced Regula that it was needed and would be useful even without the train. It was dedicated at the end of 2000 as the Superintendent went to a new job.

Traver too did not stay, leaving two years later. It had become clear that J. Alston, the new sup't, was letting the project sit, and that cars would likely still rule, with new parking lots surrounding the train station, oops, strike that, visitor center -- possibly a form of irony. Steve Martin took over from Alston, and though as a young GCNP river ranger had better instincts, he used entrance fee funds to stamp the 1950's firmly on the revamped Mather Point Complex.

Which is where I went next, spending a couple of hours on the ground at the Complex the day after meeting with Traver. I will write about that next time. For now, I want to thank Brad, first, for being so generous with his time and his recollections of another Grand Canyon frustration. And more important, for trying with such determination to bring about what would have been a better future for the Grand Canyon visitor by using new technology to reach back way into the past to re-create a more natural First View.

*Any sensitive, sensible, law-abiding planner will of course put out maximum effort to approximate the Spanish experience for those not able to walk a path through the trees.

GCNP-Hualapai Boundary, Addendum 2/3: What Might the Park Service Say?

2011-10-11T12:52:00.001-07:00

If the National Park Service were to continue to assert that the boundary of Grand Canyon National Park adjacent to the Hualapai Reservation goes up the left bank from the river to the high water line, how might that position be justified? And, which high water line would be used?

First, you would say that you interpret the 1883 executive order for the Reservation, with the words "to" and "along" the river, to mean that coming from landward, the line went to the high water line.

The second step is to say that the 1975 Enlargement Act placing the Park boundary "on south bank" reinforced the high-water-line interpretation. You might add that there were no actions taken between 1883 and 1975 that affected the legal status of the boundary. Given the weaknesses in the departmental solicitor opinions, you would not refer to them, nor get entangled in any of the legal arguments.

Third, you would say that the question of Hualapai concurrence is moot, as is the matter of section 5 of the 1975 Act -- requiring Hualapai consent if any of their Reservation is taken--, since their Reservation boundary always only went to the high water line. You could acknowledge that the Hualapai claim to the middle of the river, but their claim has always been just that --a claim-- and nothing more.

As to which high water line to use, since you are going back to the 1883 order as the basic document, you would acknowledge that no official action determined the high water line at the time or in the official surveys. You could then assert that the only feasible line is one that could be determined by evidences left on the shore.

There would then follow choices: You could compile photographs and descriptive evidence in support of the historic high water levels. You could then state your belief in that line, and take appropriate administrative actions. However, you could acknowledge that for practical purposes, the most feasible administrative line is that reached by the river during usual operations of the Glen Canyon Dam. You could then select a high flow or an average high flow, and state that the level reached constitutes the line to which you will exercise jurisdiction. A more expansive, hard-nosed stance would be to use the high flows reached during the maximum release possible under the current dam operational regime.

Postscript: Bruce Shaw, GCNP Deputy Superintendent in the 1970's, reminds me that at that time the Coast Guard, seeing the Colorado as a navigable river, made a play to regulate river traffic through the Park. However, apparently after taking a look at what was involved, the Coast Guard backed off. Even had the Coast Guard insisted on having a presence, the Park Service, responsible for the conservation of the Canyon's environment, would have been active in attacking the degradation of the rivershore. It may be, then, that any federal agency that dealt in river matters considered the Colorado a navigable river; thus limiting Hualapai jurisdiction to the high water line.

Hualapai Reservation north boundary; addendum 1

2011-10-06T10:07:00.001-07:00

Conceptually & emotionally, the Hualapai have often referred to haitat when discussing the question of the Reservation's northern boundary that goes "to" and "along" the Colorado River adjacent to the part of the Grand Canyon National Park boundary that is set "on the south bank" of the Colorado.

Translated, this Hualapai term refers to the "spine" of the river, the middle of the river. As used, it refers to the Hualapai idea that before whitefolk interfered, the river marked the northern limit of their territory, and the southern limit of Southern Paiute territory. In this division, the line was the middle of the river, its spine, haitat. In other terms, from time immemorial, the Hualapai exclusively used and occupied the land from haitat south, the Southern Paiute from that line on north.

In trying to understand usage of this term, I wonder if it is like a bodily spine, or is it just a linear site of zero width? Does it truly refer to a spine for the river, or have a wider implication of a spine for the Hualapai territory? When Hualapai use(d) the term, what image resonated for them?

The term, so far as I know, does not show up in discourse over the boundary as recorded until the Bridge Canyon dam + Indian Claims Commission (iCC) period of 1949 - early 1950's. It might be in the papers making up the Santa Fe RR. case, but the northern boundary itself was not in contention, so it might not. If it was used 1) before 1880 and/or 2) between 1880 and 1949, I would be anxious to find references.

What does seem reasonable to me, given the testimony and evidence of trans-river activity by both Hualapai and Southern Paiute, is that the river, haitat, was not seen as a barrier, a demarcation of tabu and hostility. Instead, the river was the normal limit of Hualapai lives, and now and again someone would cross it in either direction for any one of a number of activities: trade, a partner, escape, etc. This is important, since it implies that the river as a place, rather than just a line, was mutually used, not exclusively.

This brings up the ICC, which took testimony and evidence, and heard argument about the northern boundary. Its 1960's finding that the boundary did not go to the middle of the river, but was on its southern shoreline was contested, then argued and affirmed. (see below for another detail about this decision). That is, the river itself was found not to be in the aboriginal territory of exclusive use and occupancy by the Hualapai. The weight to be given to the ICC is an open question, but it is the only explicit consideration/adjudication given the northern boundary until 1972-5, the GCNP Enlargement Act.

Before the ICC, of course, came the army delineation of a reservation. We can look at the description, "to" and "along" the Colorado River, from two angles: 1) What did Palfrey & Price, the army officers, think and do? 2) How do disputants over the years interpret what they did? I have already covered these points at length; I only want to reinforce here my notion that the officers used the river as a convenient limit, and were not conceiving of a specific legal line with a meaning under prevailing law. Certainly Palfrey's 1882 map does not attempt to be specific about the northern boundary. Of course, the officers might not have known about haitat or perhaps no Hualapai in their discussions brought it up; maybe it came up, and the officers rejected it. In any case, the Order establishing the Reservation does not enshrine haitat as a concept or line for the Reservation.

The point of this long "methinks the lady doth protest too much" argument is that haitat makes sense considered as Hualapai lore, and is repeated often as part of their claim to a northern boundary that includes to the middle of the river. Nevertheless, in the political-legal system we live under, and which served the Hualapai well, if not quickly, in the Santa Fe case, haitat has, over the past 131 years, been ignored or considered irrelevant or rejected in delineating the Reservation boundary.

Which leaves us with the National Park Service claim that GCNP's boundary goes to some high water mark to deal with. Two points here: It would be useful to learn more about how Superintendent Stitt decided to make that claim in 1975, and we need to see what the current consideration of GCNP's boundary settles on and how that decision is justified.

Additional nit on the ICC:

In considering their decisions on boundaries of aboriginal territory and consequent compensation, the ICC had a decision grid:

Was the river to the middle decided to be part of Hualapai aboriginal territory?

If not, then no compensation would be paid, whether it was in the Reservation or not.

If it was aboriginal territory but not in the Reservation, then compensation would be paid.

But if aboriginal and in the Reservation, there would be no compensation since the Hualapai own it.

ICC only decided about it not being aboriginal territory; it did not decide whether river to its middle was in the Reservation. That is, ICC said it did not accept the Hualapai claim of having to its middle from time immemorial for exclusive use. However, ICC did not have any say about the Hualapai claim of having to its middle arising from the Presidential Order granting it to them.

GCNP-Hualapai Boundary: Reflections on the Swamp

2011-10-03T23:31:00.001-07:00

River Middle Muddle And The Water Line That Got High--With A Big Downer After

So where is the boundary? Lets check off the points:

1883 Executive Order says "to" and "along" Colorado River.

19th & 20th century surveys: stayed away from river boundary.

1910-20's: U.S. withdrawals of river + ¼-mile or more for hydropower, including reservation land.

1930's: Lake Mead covers variable amounts of reservation land as the reservoir fills and drops, etc.

1939: Hualapai interested in getting something from proposed Bridge Canyon Dam(BCD).

1930-40's: Supreme Court settles Hualapai title, but nothing defined for river boundary.

1949-50: Arizona federal legislators accommodate Hualapai demands for compensation if BCD built as part of Central Arizona Project; no statement on boundary.

This starts the period, still continuing, of Hualapai claim to middle of river; haitat.

1950's-60's: Indian Claims Commission process: Hualapai claim to middle of the river. ICC rejects claim and defines northern river boundary as on southern shoreline, but is not more definite. During testimony, evidence is given that Hualapai & Southern Paiute both used rivershore and crossed river.

Scanty archeological evidence from that period and since adds nothing definite about use and occupancy.

1960's-70's+: Hualapai pursue participation in BCD authorization, but boundary not further defined since no need given the amount of land used.

1964: LMNRA Act sets NRA boundary well south of river; Hualapai reject including any of their land in the NRA.

1960's: USGS quads show boundary in middle of river and reservation land in NRA.

1972-5: Legislative history of Park enlargement Act shows one goal is unified administration of river. Language of Act places boundary "on south bank" with supporting statements saying entire water surface was in Park. Intent was to end ambiguity.

1975 on: GCNP Sup't tells people boundary is at high water mark; view maintained by NPS since.

1975-8: Hualapai & allies, including attorney and Goldwater aide, realizing too late what the Enlargement Act did, led an attack on NPS view of boundary, but the language of all sides ends up as saying, in effect, "where ever the Hualapai boundary was, it still is; none of their land was taken", without explicitly refuting that river water surface is in Park, or offering any evidence that it is in middle, only repeating that Hualapai claim to the middle. Hualapai attorney documents indicate his uncertainty as to whether their claim to the middle would prevail.

1976: Interior Field Solicitor writes opinion that high water line is boundary, but opinion has errors and puts boundary at high water mark only by assertion; no documentation.

Focus of analysis is on bed of river, not river surface and its traffic, and secondarily that river is a navigable stream.

1988: Updated USGS quads show boundary exactly on water edge of south bank.

1997: Interior Solicitor opinion supports 1976 conclusion, but undercuts it, and itself offers no documentation or irrefutable legal analysis.

2000: Park and Hualapai entered into an agreement to disagree and met over several years to discuss interlocking river activities and problems.

2001: Majeske article attacked solicitor opinions as invalid, but his arguments also lack analysis and documentation, including his conclusion that river is non-navigable, made once again by assertion.

201?-on: The best answer is the "wet foot--dry foot" doctrine: GCNP has jurisdiction over the river's water surface, fluctuating as it does, and the Hualapai own the land to the water's edge, fluctuating as it does.

Hualapai, a summary history, to the dam

2011-10-02T16:20:00.000-07:00

Dobyns & Euler open their 1975 book on the Hualapai (Walapai) by marking and lamenting the centenary of the Hualapai’s forced entry into the U.S. economy as laborers. This fits my own impression gathered from archives, that the Hualapai see their reservation, only a piece of their original territory, as a place on which to establish a viable economy. If the story of the Havasupai asks, in part, what would their lives & society have been like had the government established an appropriate reservation in 1882, the Hualapai story asks, in part, what happened to a people when they tried to use a reservation that was set aside for them to be able to abide in their ancestral lands. The answers have emphasized different geographic zones of the reservation, not all oriented toward the Grand Canyon.

The transportation corridor, first dominated by the railroad, then by the highway US 66, was defined by its location away from the Canyon’s difficulties. Grazing, the source of much conflict with whitefolk to start, was again more defined and limited by the Canyon. Logging took place on the high lands of the plateaus the Canyon cut into. Mineral lures resulted in no success, unlike in some other Canyon edge locations. And then came the proposals for a dam & reservoir, with associated electric power and recreational activities. For nearly 40 years, this scheme seemed THE answer. But even as its promise faded into fantasy, the Canyon provided what today may well be the long-sought solution. Successful exploitation of the Canyon’s scenic and recreational qualities by the Hualapai and their business associates may center on the Canyon, but it is powered by the economic energy of the Las Vegas tourist industry, surely a safe bet if any enterprise is. Industrial tourism, dependent on energy-intensive transport and constructed facilities, is a hardy adjunct of the National Park, but it is having its more exuberant flowering in the Hualapai reservation. Future evaluations of the way humans choose to relate to the Grand Canyon will demand comparison and contrast between these two administrations with their very different incentives and constraints.

ETHNIC CLEANSING

Even as Hualapai took up residence along the railroad, and tried to find employment, the struggle over the primary matter of land possession had begun. Insofar as Hulapai families and groups would have wanted to return to the land north of the railroad, they were balked by the presence of whitefolk who had occupied their country, especially water sources, during their enforced absence.

Indeed, the reservation almost appeared to be another trap. The Hualapai were destitute, and expected to be fed. The whitefolk’s cattlegrazing was taking the grass and driving off game. Fire-driven hunts were discouraged. Though some Hualapai found jobs as unskilled labor in mining camps and ranches, others were left confused and restless. The army re-entered, ordered to hand out rations. One example, Charles Spencer, had established a ranch at Mata Widita as a base for running cattle, forming an equivocal relationship by encouraging the Hualapai and learning the language, even as he joined others in occupying and using, stealing, reservation land.. Other whitefolk were less charitable, accusing the Hualapai of rustling cattle and slandering Hualapai supporters. Treating them in the smallpox epidemic of 1883-4 got Dr Warren Day labeled a drunkard. He worried about the Chinese railroad workers selling opium and buying young girls.

Day thought the Hualapai should run stock. Instead they were starving and freezing. In 1883, there were no army funds, and no IA agent. The Indian Rights Association spoke up about the destitution. Pre-emption of the reservation meant they had to be fed. A Captain Pierce thought the reservation was useless and the Hualapai didn’t want it. In 1886, Spencer was murdered, and another army officer scorned the reservation and urged removal, even in the face of an order to get rid of the whitefolk and their cattle, an order attacked by the local newspapers, claiming the Hualapai benefitted from cattlemen, who had been there longer than the reservation (all of 15 years). A Colonel Mason said in the winter of 1887 that the Hualapai were in good shape, healthy and well-clothed. There were none on the reservation, nor ever had been; they would be upset if moved there.. Not even worth surveying, since ranchers have taken it up, and located all the waters. Hualapai should be moved west, or south, or somewhere. In 1888, the Mohave County powers called for abolition. Even an IA agent said he saw no Hualapai on the reservation; they stayed along the railroad. The chiefs were all dissatisfied, so best thing is to get rid of reservation and move the Hualapai away. The army offered another view in 1889, calling the whitefolk over-excited and inordinately avaricious. The stockmen and miners have grabbed all the land, and the Hualapai need to be protected. Restriction of land has led to loss of plants, water and game. Disease provided an even scarier tipping point, taking a toll in the 1880’s from measles, smallpox, gonorrhea. With all this stress, there could hardly be a surprise when the Ghost Dance was brought over from the Southern Paiute in 1889. It was seen as a way to get the land back.

This chaos was not particularly eased in the 1890’s even by having an IA agent, Ewing. He was in favor of keeping the reservation, but leaving the thousands of cattle since the whitefolk’s improvements disproved the land’s worthlessness. Indeed, the Fairleys’ toll road and tourist hotel in the Canyon (Diamond Creek) from 1881 until 1899 was also good for the Hualapai. Still, he recommended that the most valuable part of the reservation be restored to the public domain. Then a school and sawmill could be provided for the Hualapai who can practice farming and ranching. However, Ewing urged, if they are to stay, there should be a survey to back up Hualapai in disputes; it is now the haven of lawlessness. In 1897-8, money for the survey was provided. The local cattlemen tried to discredit it, displeased at the notion of having to lease what they already had free.

The 1899 and 1901 survey notes tip the hat to the Grand Canyon. The scenery “baffles exaggeration”. The river was inaccessible. Going north from Tinnaka spring, the surveyor spent two days getting as near the river as practicable, and had to use trigonometry to find the distance from the bluff to a sharp rock point near the water’s edge. The examiner checking the work concluded most points were spurious, and the country so rough the surveyor should not even have tried. Nevertheless, the surveyor’s map was deemed approximately correct, so whitefolk had no excuse for thinking they could locate there, though the examiner found no Hualapai on the reservation. This ought to have settled possessory rights. However, the reservation establishment was simultaneous with the Atlantic & Pacific RR laying its tracks, and setting up Peach Springs as a railroad town. The water there was used by the railroad and the local band lost another water source. Escalating its threat, the renamed Santa Fe claimed title to all the odd sections granted it by the act of July 27 1866, i.e., it owned half the Hualapai Reservation.

Ewing both argued over the survey’s accuracy and maintained the effort to regulate whitefolk use. He estimated in 1900 there were over 3000 cattle and 7000 sheep run by about 20 whitefolk,. With the survey done, in 1902 a permit system was approved by the Secretary, and a number of the ranchers did pay up.

Boostering continued: in 1900, Hualapai wage benefits were available from the supposedly rich Grand Canyon Copper Company mine at Pine Springs, since its 1880 claim was validated. Fifteen tons of bat fertilizer were removed from area caves. Another schemer talked up a railway down to the river, though it may have been only a way to cheat the government over control of Diamond Creek. A 1907 report gave a favorable report on 140 million bd ft of commercial timber, and praised stockraising as the only industry, claiming there could be even more than the five ranches with 3500 head. The government started talking of setting up a tribal herd.

The idea that the herd would be run by an outsider only emphasizes the disjunction between the Hualapai and their reservation, obviously seen in this era as federal land to be exploited by whitefolk. Reports still found no Hualapai use or residence, and although around and surely trying to make their way, they do not figure in any large way as either the main actors or central concern. The railroad, the cattlemen, a few miners and other schemers; the whitefolk, are the concern. The Hualapai are called degraded and not living on the reservation, a view expressed on into the 1920’s.

With cattle leasing in place, the Santa Fe asked for a survey in 1917 to back up its claim for the fees on half the reservation. In 1919, the IA disputed the railroad’s title, but the Secretary backed the Santa Fe, arguing that the Hualapai reservation was just an executive order, while the railroad had full, complete, and incontestable title to odd sections. The stage is set for a two-decade epic battle fought, of course, on whitefolk legal and legislative turfs. Stated this way, it would seem a matter of we propose and we dispose. But in truth, the battle was powered and fought to the Supreme Court and after by the determination of the Hualapai themselves, as recounted in McMillan.

However, the Grand Canyon is of no weight in this story; its qualities contributed nothing to determining this fundamental question of land rights in the American system. That of course is exactly opposite the case for the fight that opened after the reservation rights were settled, whether on part of this land now indisputably the Hualapai’s, a dam would be built. It was fortuitous that as the American political system affirmed uncontestable Hualapai rights, the issue of compensation for the land taken should take shape. The Indian Claims Commission, authorized in 194?, was to end the hither-thither dealing with claims by Indians who had been dispossessed of their lands. Evidence was to be taken to show pre-whitefolk occupancy and use, to determine how many acres had been taken, and to set a dollar figure for compensation to be approved by Congress through an appropriation. Since this 25-year process excluded the reservation, once again the Grand Canyon was irrelevant. With one exception: their claim to half the Colorado River. And this question of the Hualapai Reservation’s northern boundary continues to be important enough that I recount its history in Chapter __

IT IS OURS

This starts talk of exchange of sections and consolidation of the reservation. Legislation to rectify the situation would take too long, and anyway, in 1923 Representative Hayden speaks against an exchange, wanting a split in half. Britton & Gray, the railroad’s lawyers, complain that the reservation messes them up, leading to removal of timber and grazing use that deprives them of revenue. Peach Spring is also theirs. A re-survey being done, there is talk of legislation to consolidate the railroad’s lands. In 1925-6 Hayden launches a consolidation bill, S. 877, and it passes. In spite of Hayden’s continuing pressure, the SFRR moves slowly.

In 1928, Snyje on record talking of Hualapai at various springs, back in 1870’s, as part of Light report, with affidavits, supporting Hualapai use and ownership, ironic given Light’s earlier hostility to Hualapai claims. Report supports story that miners influenced their removal to inappropriate reservation, and that they came right back. Nevertheless, the conclusion favors a “reasonable” settlement over a court fight. There was talk of compromise over the water at Peach Springs in 1929. However, 1930, brought Hagerman as a special representative to work for resolution. He knows the Hualapai will object to a consolidations, but after the agreement favoring the SFRR by it and Interior, Hagerman tried to convince the Hualapai by hectoring and lecturing, mistakenly chiding them for not doing more for themselves. Brosius of IRA attacks government for bartering away most valuable portion of the reservation. But government view is still that SFRR has title. Debate continued over this division into 1931. Hualapai object to getting worse half, and that they were forced to move away. Hagerman scoffs, says they wont use reservation anyway. IA officials are in favor of the exchange, but subordinates don’t agree, saying Hualapai are doing well on grazing.

A Solicitor’s opinion that twists and turns to support SFRR does admit that in 1919 IA backed prior occupancy, and that Hualapai were forced off land.

The 1932 hearing presented Hualapai evidence on occupancy; many spoke of personal experiences on land. CIA Rhoads toes railroad line, discounting Hualapai testimony as weak, and urging exchange. May 1932, Collier attack argues for going to court, since SFRR seized land. Denounces Hagerman and IA management, and Hagerman sneers at his “befogging literary style”. Monahan report another effort to trash Hualapai claims, suggesting they had left land.

Collier, of AIDA, in May position paper poses this as a major American Indian issue, so there should be no deal, but adjudication; calls for Senate action to direct government to start suit. Reprises history, saying railroad grant required a voluntary cession, and there was war instead, not Hualapai leaving land. When SFRR filed in 1872, Hualapai still in possession, and even the 1874-5 round-up by army was half-hearted, not comprehensive, and only temporary. The reservation proclamations did not mention the railroad claim. Point is, go to court for final adjudication. There should be no deal based on error-ridden reports contrary to 1928 Light report based on Hualapai statements. Also, Solicitor’s report misconstrues 1925 act; it did not recognize SFRR rights. The whole business of appointing Hagerman was pro-railroad, and he should be brushed off as he brushed off Hualapai desires. And so, when Collier takes over BIA in 1933, policy becomes that land is and will be Hualapai’s. He summarizes hopes that stock and timber can support reservation life; now largely wage labor along railroad. For instance, there is now a fine herd of 4000 head.

In 1934, Fred Mahone developed a far-sighted plan to move away from cattle raising. The plan includes a toll road down Peach Springs canyon to reach Lake Mead. Incidentally, the Bureau of Reclamation had found that no usable land would be reach by the reservoir, so no damage was being done by the rising waters. Mahone called it a “Desert Playground in the Ancient Old Indian Country”. Power boats could provide access to the reservoir. There could be gas stations, cabins, horse trips for tourists, and perhaps villages near the Peach Springs and Diamond Creek. Roads could run out to Diamond Creek rim, to Mudwhitica, the Hualapai ancestral home, and to “our cousins” the Havasupai. Tourists could hear from the old scouts, buy baskets and beadwork, and watch tribal ceremonies. Mahone’s conclusion about such development to attract tourists (over a half century before it finally is happening): “We can become self-supporting.” The BIA comment called Mahone ambitious and overzealous, but a failure as a leader. The roads would cost $100,000, and would only be used by sightseers, not helping the grazing business.

After this visionary proposal, the BIA talked of having big plans. However, nothing happened, and in 1936, there was only a fuss over the Havasupai gathering pinon nuts and hunting at Pine Springs. The BIA continued to complain about how the cattle were managed. And when there was an NPS-BIA plan for reservoir development, the Hualapai were treated as passive observers to agency activities. So in 1936-7, when there was a suggestion for a rest at Quartermaster Canyon, the BIA discouraged it; the Hualapai do not have the management skills. A 1938 evaluation was more positive, though saying Hualapai only wanted to lease the land; in the event, there was silting-in. That year also continued talk of possible logging. The land case evidence was being compiled, showing bands at Peach, Pine, Milkweed and Muttawittaka, with gardens and ditches. In Spencer’s time, there were 215 around his place, but they moved off to railroad.

The Bridge Canyon damsite was brought up in 1939, the Hualapai wanting to know how a dam would benefit them. The forming of a tribal council brought a more continued recording of economic concerns from now on. Prospecting was suggested and discounted. Non-Hualapai hunting was barred, as were peddlers and archeological requests.

In 1941 the Supreme Court finally ruled that a tribal claim can exist even without formal government action. There had been no voluntary cession here inside reservation. Following the decision, in 1942 the CIA interpreted it as saying that the Hualapai existed as a tribe even without formal recognition. Forcible removal didn’t forfeit their original rights. The SFRR had quitclaimed, so it should account for acts on land. The disputes over lands outside res, and in strip on west side continue; the trouble is with military description & early survey. Hualapai were said not to understand technicalities of surveying, but they never abandoned the land. Thus even though the Hualapai had driven the fight to keep their land and won, the whitefolk were trying to present the scenario only in their political and legal terms. It was in this spirit that in spite of the Supreme Court decision, the SFRR continued to try to confuse the issues for several years, even after it had been bought off by legislation that exchanged a quitclaim for relief from rate control.

The years of World War II brought the Bureau of Reclamation surveying crews, pestering by prospectors, a timber sale, and drought. War’s end introduced a new actor, as the tribal council, overcoming many doubts due to previous experiences, decided in September 1946 to hire Phoenix law firm Marks & Marks, to represent the tribe and also to prepare their case before the recently activated Indian Claims Commission. And as the year turned, the final issues with the SFRR were brought to settlement through the work of Felix Cohen, called by the BIA the Hualapai’s proven friend, who had made the difficult and complex legal questions clear.

BUT CAN IT PAY?

With a reservation base secure, the Hualapai search for economic prosperity became the continuing and paramount concern. Coincidentally –the SFRR out of the way, the war followed by renewed development in the West – the first great push by the federal government and Arizona for a dam actually in the Grand Canyon began, an effort that consumed Hualapai attention, and that of attorney Royal Marks for three decades. [page 9 of notes] The story of the Hualapai and the dam – originally identified as the Bridge Canyon site, for a nearby side canyon, then later renamed for the Hualapai – has three episodes: Arizona’s first effort in early 1950’s, the big push in 1963-8, and a sideshow during the legislative effort for an appropriate Grand Canyon National Park in the 1970’s.

GCNP/Hualapai Boundary documents

2011-10-02T16:15:00.001-07:00

6 Feb 1976 Interior Field Solicitor, San Francisco

Hualapai asserts they own half the bed of the river.

Therefore, they are entitled to a portion of river traffic revenues.

10 Oct 1975, in reply to Goldwater inquiry, this office said PL93-620 did not resolve boundary disagreement.

Conclusion in this reply is that 1883 EO established Reservation boundary at high water level. Title to the bed was in US until 1912, when it passed to Arizona.

After moving about, in 1881, majority of tribe proposed a tract of no great use to whites, w/ no mineral deposits, little arable land, water in small quantities, and void of grass for stock raising.

8 Jul 1881, military reservation established; followed by EO 8 Jul 1883.

Colorado River is navigable by Az v. Cal (he says 1912, but it is 1931).

Did US convey title to river bed? No evidence of any intent to do so. Goes through several irrelevant cases, without attempting to connect to Hualapai situation.

Doubt should be resolved in favor of Indians, but no doubt in this case that EO did not include the bed, as the language "clearly" sets forth (quotes text).

Language of "along" = border the river, and this is supported by description of land without any resources. Therefore the Hualapai did not consider any portion of the river to be within their boundaries; no evidence they considered land under river to be of utility to them.

Ownership in bed lies with State, but ownership and use subservient to the Federal navigation and other paramount Federal laws.

In footnote says that control of river implied by PL93-620 language that GCNP shall "comprise all those lands, waters, and interest therein", but more research needed.

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25 Nov 1997, Interior Solicitor to Chairman, Hualapai Nation, who had requested review of above opinion.

Conclusion of 1976 opinion is correct that EO of 1883 did not include the bed of the river.

Question is one of the intent of the parties.

1976 opinion relied on language of EO, construing "along" to mean "bordering". Also, 1883 tribal proposal for reservation made no reference to use of the river, only to land & its characteristics.

Though usually doubt should be resolved in Indians' favor, he looked at other boundary descriptions of Colorado River in vicinity at that time: Havasupai says "middle of" creek. Navajo addition 1880 uses "middle channel of", as does 1884 Navajo addition.

Navajo again: 1900 "west to (river); thence up that stream", 1905 "south to (river); thence down"; Have not been interpreted.

These differences show drafters knew how to be explicit if they wanted boundary in middle. Since not explicit, shows drafter intended to go to high water mark.

So based on EO language, differences in language with other contemporaneous withdrawals, language in tribal request for reservation, US did not intend to include river bed.

Since language controls, no need to decide on navigability. Then says 1976 opinion used Az v Calif 1931,283US423. But this was not on title, which is tied to navigable at statehood, although navigability for commerce may later arise. Moreover, decision did not get up to Hualapai stretch of river. Since no cases found on navigability, therefore no opinion.

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Majeske, Andrew; "Parens Patria: Issues Relating to the Colorado River Boundary between Grand Canyon National Park, the Hualapai Reservation, and the Navajo Nation", Nov 2001.

Notes use by Solicitor of hydropower withdrawal power to exclude Navajo, but not applied to Hualapai lands.

Says Solicitor relied on language of EO, esp. "along", but cited no cases.

Hualapai required to call lands worthless. So could not go to the middle, since that would ascribe value. Attacks solicitor for using obviously coerced statement, which is not legally usable.

Gets to his primary point, that "along" IS defined in legal encyclopedia along with all the other words as carrying titie to center OF A NON-NAVIGABLE STREAM/RIVER.

Says 1976 opinion cited no support for saying navigable.

Moreover, 1997 opinion takes back 1976 opinion on navigability, leaving no legal basis at all for assertion of high-water mark.

In footnote 7 Balsom says Park means "historic", before Glen, high water. Majeske says there is case saying that grantee to high-water can use to low-water.

Says navigability for title would be determined at time of statehood, 1912, then cites def of navigability talking about the "ordinary condition" of the river permitting trade and travel "in the customary modes". So it was non-navigable. [But 10 trips had already shown that it was navigable in spite of requiring non-customary modes, which paved the way for becoming customary modes.]

He adds that even if the Colorado was navigable, Hualapai have right to access.

Then he says, the Reservation not subject to hydropower withdrawal should go to the middle since the river is non-navigable. Then what does it mean that the entire section was so withdrawn? He does not have the answer.

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Feb 1978, Forrest Gerard, Ass't Sec for Ind Affairs, memo on Grand Canyon Wilderness bill, sets forth Hualapai position on boundary:

Hualapai have always maintained boundary is middle of the river. Ambiguities and poor draftsmanship in EO, and notation on map of PL93-620. Then cites Emerson ploy that it was just there for negotiation. Somewhere, the notation was dropped; House felt sec. 5 was enough. Wilderness now uses high water mark. NPS "would see its area of control expanded to secure a monopoly on Colorado River traffic."

Assuming ambiguities in EO: tribe offers, first, it "has occupied and lived in the area of the present reservation." "Since their first contacts with the white man in the 1700's until the present, the tribe has lived on and utilized the Colorado." To the north the Paiutes "recognized the Colorado River as the boundary between their respective territories. the Colorado was a source of livelihood and a delineation of territory and political authority. So they use haitat to indicate significance, spine or backbone of the river. They believe that is their northern boundary. They aboriginally owned and occupied the area. Supreme Court. "Ludicrous to believe that the tribe ceded the narrow strip of land between the middle of the river and the northern boundary of the reservation, thereby cutting themselves off from continued use of the Colorado". So not ceded, and river continues to be part of the res.

Second point: even if US conveyed res to Hualapai, it went to middle. Riparian owner bordering navigable owns to high water mark. However, if non-navigable, reservation goes to center of waterway. No adjudication of Colorado between Lees Ferry and Virgin River. But upstream, some portions were navigable, some not because of rapids.Then he goes through a long analysis of river: 3 most violent rapids--Lava Cliff, Lava Falls, Separation. Not fully explored and mapped until 1923. History of Separation Canyon. So obviously it was non-navigable.

He takes up "provision 9" allowing a reclamation project, "to provide them with some hope for future development of the Bridge Canyon Dam". Then he goes into desolation of place. "Repealing of reclamation provision would seal Hualapai's doom."