Grand Canyon's West Exit Landmarks

draft--LANDMARKS FOR THE WEST EXIT OF THE GRAND CANYON--draft

There is general agreement to use River Mile 277 as the length of the Grand Canyon. The actual location for RM 277 has changed, and it is appropriate to determine landmarks near the Colorado River that make it easy, topographically and geologically, to recognize an end point, the exit from the Grand Canyon. 

(Note: The boundary of Grand Canyon National Park (GCNP) in this western end includes lands that are not in the Canyon’s drainage, but flow further west into Lake Mead.) 

Fortunately, such landmarks do exist, and can be tied into the landforms that delineate the divides on the north and south sides of the river for the final drainages into the Canyon.

HI and the Grand Canyon

 

COULD THE GRAND CANYON TRAIN HUMAN-HEALTHY AI?

My comments stimulated by J. Winterson’s essay (see down below) from 11/12/23 “Guardian” book section, essays on AI:

Should we not call this AI, not alternative, but inorganic-based or non-organic-based, intelligence: IBI, NOBI, …? The major point JW makes, with which I fully agree (and it is never more clear than during the present war horrors, is that our meat-based intelligence, grounded on our planet-wide male-dominance-developed world, is a failure. It is not a question of whether “we” will destroy ourselves, our world:— we DO, ARE, HAVE, destroy, destroying, destroyed. And even though we know what to do to avoid various complete destructions, we go on destroying it; making heating-up choices, for instance affecting the world’s weather systems, many of us glorying in our ability to sneer at predictions,, making up alternative fictions to allow us to continue doing just as we are, as we please. 

Exploring the Canyon's Far West: Photos of a Walk

WALKING THE WESTERNMOST HIGH POINT

WITH PHOTOS

Below is the piece of B.L.M.'s Arizona Strip map that shows the W.H.P. and surrounding territory -- what we walked through, and what we could see from the WHP, which has the red oval around it (it is in the Canyon and the Park). The red dot northwest of the WHP is Snap Point. It marks the Park boundary, but is not in the Canyon -- the green line marks the drainage divide for the local Canyon side canyons (Parashant, Whitmore, and east).

Exploring the Grand Canyon's West End

                                                         GREATER                 
                                            EXPLORING THE /\ GRAND CANYON’S WEST END

Finally, after a number of tries, I was enabled by friends and favorable circumstances to travel to the Grand Canyon’s far west end and visit its Westernmost High Point (WHP).

The WHP is a thin,well-shaped projection (point, peninsula) that is the last piece of the Canyon’s upper rim plateaus. It is on the right here, marked WHP. Its high point is at the southern-pointing end, with the red arrow running down, and marked vividly by the red Hermit Formation below. Due west, and sitting on the big bend of the Colorado, River Mile 277 marks the defined and topographic end of the Grand Canyon. Here is a striking view of the southern piece of the WHP vividly set amidst the Hermit shale:

[The boundary of the Grand Canyon National Park (GCNP) is another story, since at about R.M. 277 (see next map), it (pink) turns north to Pearce Canyon, and then goes east to Snap Point -- both of these features are north of the Grand Canyon.] 

BACK UP; GET CONTEXT!

The great plateaus around much of the 277-mile-long Canyon provide the viewing platforms for the overwhelming majority of visitors. Here is a regional view from the always-useful AAA Indian Country map. Our trip's starting point, Flagstaff, is off the map at the lower right. 

Driving north to go over upper Marble Gorge, then along the state line, then south from Utah on unpaved roads took us down across the Arizona Strip to the Canyon's Western High Point (X). It is about 3 miles south of Snap Point, which marks GCNP's legal boundary but is not itself in the Grand Canyon. 

 

As a point most remote to get to, the WHP is hardly one of the normal views. Seeing into the Canyon from it required, in addition to that day’s long drive, 2-3 miles of brushy, near-wild walk south from the road. This month, October 2023, the CIMR WHP exploration expedition achieved that goal, including the photos shown in part 2, the next blog entry.* 

*CIMR group comprised these I will be ever grateful to: Hazel Clark and Tom Martin, Missy Rigg.

WE HAVE COME FAR -- WE ARE ON THE WAY

 

THE GREATER GRAND CANYON’S POLITICAL HISTORY:

A PERSONAL REPRISE

With the proclamation by President Biden of Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni National Monument on August 8, 2023, our recognition of the Grand Canyon has widened once again, this time the resulting physical and human dimensons justify a new label: Greater Grand Canyon.

Greater in part because of its further reaching out to cover its watershed; greater because in the Monument name and its Associated Tribes, it recognizes its original and continuing peoples, its future in their, and our, hands.

This essay (in 4 more parts; this is the preface) is offered as a very personal, even idiosyncratic, historical guide to our efforts at an ever widening and deepening conceptual reach that seeks to comprehend the Grand Canyon as a place, a home for its peoples, and the knowledge and experience represented and embodied in its synthesis of topography, residents, and advocates.  

Our goal is shown in two maps (they appear in the fourth part) that embrace the designations and regard we all hold the Greater Grand Canyon in; how it encompasses its place and people.

FIRST PART: START-UPS AND MISFIRES

HERE COME NEW NEIGHBORS; SO GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD

In American political terms, the Greater Grand Canyon started in the early 1880’s, in 1881/3, when the Hualapai Reservation was created. Simultaneously, the strange creation known as the Havasupai Reservation was declared, beginning a 90-some-year drama of broken promises, inflicted difficulties, Havasupai perseverance, and political conflict.

Almost immediately, this birthing time also produced the 1884 introduction in the U. S. Senate of John Wesley Powell’s idea for a Grand Canyon National Park, which though large in excess plateau acreage actually encompassed but a fraction of the Canyon’s 277-mile length, ignoring the wonders of its beginning and central and western regions. The Powell version of the Park settled into another 90-year mis-recognition — facetiously put, he and most visitors epitomized the Grand Canyon, the one they saw, as The Big Gully. This is was to be a site of much future conflict.

SECOND PART: 1966: THE HINGE OF ALL HINGE YEARS

OUT OF A NIGHTMARE, NEW GROWTH

Fortunately for the Grand Canyon — the Greater Grand Canyon— fortunately I insist, the Hualapai’s next big effort, allied with Hayden (and a bunch of Western politicos) their next effort did not bring victory. This effort, did, however, act as a huge hinge in history: of the Canyon, its overall region, the American west, and society at large. That hinge was, of course, the monumental struggle over whether to authorize and build two hydroelectric dams in the Grand Canyon, a move that would have continued, ratified, indeed intensified, 20th-century over-development of the West, and turned the Greater Grand Canyon into the Grand Canyon National Industrial Park.

This is not the place to re-narrate that struggle; the dreamers of dams were defeated; the dams were not authorized. America chose instead to “Save Grand Canyon” and possibly itself as marked by the consequent burgeoning of our environmental consciousness. The outcome of this larger effort, comprehending and dealing with the consequences (e.g., negative climate alteration and weather unpredictability) of this Anthropocene age of ours, is yet to be known. The story of the Greater Grand Canyon is only one, if a singularly significant one, strand of the many that humans are weaving to make our future, for better and worse.

THIRD PART: AND NOW TO WORK: BUILD A PARK — AND A HAVASUPAI RESERVATION

 MAKING SAUSAGE IN CONGRESS' FACTORY

So in the 1966-72 period, we had struggled to trim and revise our Park conception to represent “complete” and not transgress against important interests. 

At this same time, there were a variety of other proposals, and after the 1968 elections, when Barry Goldwater (another Republican fond of the Grand Canyon) replaced the retired Hayden, he vowed to move legislation forward that would expand the Park, in part to protect it against dams. His leadership would be seconded, then almost taken over by Morris Udall, who became our chief ally. Ironically, as a southern Arizonan and would-be dam-builder in the ’60’s, he had been, like Goldwater, our opponent . 

FOURTH PART: THE 21ST CENTURY CREATES A NEW, GREATER CONCEPTION

NEW LEADERS, NEW INITIATIVES, A NEW MONUMENT

For the 21st Century, southern Arizona has produced another Grand Canyon champion In the environmental tradition of Morris Udall: Raul Grijalva. (One who was never a dreamer of dams.) He appeared on the Grand Canyon scene in 2009 as he chaired a Flagstaff hearing about the dangers from quickening uranium-mining activity in the area. There was mutual support with the residents, the Havasupai, Navajo, Hualapai, Hopi, Kaibab band of the Southern Paiute — indeed with the several peoples who make up the Grand Canyon’s Associated Tribes. Their concern arose from the many destructive human and natural impacts shown by earlier uranium exploitation, especially what uranium might do to the water supply. This concern, widened to protection of the WATERSHED, not just the drainage, shaped the concern of this alliance. 

Over the past 15 years, the advantage in this struggle has gone back and forth with national partisan changes in Washington. Monuments and moratoriums have been pursued and blocked. Lets skip, then, to August 8, 2023, and what is clearly a new, bright, moment; a re-setting of the Grand Canyon’s political framework, the Antiquities Act proclamation (Grand Canyon’s fifth) of new protection, bringing the public national recognition of the Greater Grand Canyon. 

President Biden, with Congressman Grijalva and the Associated Tribes in attendance and support, brought 150 years of history to a culmination point that is in truth another hinge to open a new door. The proclamation of Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni National Monument selects and designates three pieces of federal land, as outlined in red:

Even more, clear on the map below, this Greater Grand Canyon completes an embrace of the topographic Canyon using the Associated Tribes' hands from time immemorial to wrap about, raising a physical, topographic wonder into a global entity celebrating and defending the peoples and the place of the Greater Grand Canyon. 

Here is another view of the Associated Tribes of the Greater Grand Canyon that constitute a cloud of knowingness, experience, and concern encompassing the physical feature now enlarged not just beyond the Powell concept and a "complete" Park, but outward toward this world treasure's natural boundaries.

 

Some —the Hualapai, the Havasupai, the Navajo, the Southern Paiute, the Hopi — are physical protectors and even residents. What brings the Greater Grand Canyon into being, however, is the synergy and cooperation generated by the topographic Grand Canyon nestling within the protections offered by the American polity and the knowledge of the Associated Tribes: their long extension — their footprints — into the past; their possession in many forms of these lands they have roamed now and into the future.

For above all, the coming into existence of the Greater Grand Canyon, is the promise of bringing that future cooperatively into being, based on the past of the many peoples who revere the Canyon as the global environmental icon it is, the reminder and provoker for us to redouble, and again, our efforts to shape our future actions so as to protect our world, our environment, our earth, and our coming generations’ future.

Greater Grand Canyon:A Convergence

The Grand Canyon's pieces embraced.

Written out of the land and its peoples onto a map,

A map of human designations and times:

Baaj Nwaavjo I'tah Kukveni

where indigenous, the first, peoples roam;

their ancestral footprints:

Out of the past, gathering all the world's;

Into the Greater Grand Canyon,

So into the future.

IS THE SKY CRACKING OPEN?

ARE THE GRAND CANYON’S TWO WORLDS JOINING?

WILL THE CANYON’S OWNERS DO A GROUP HUG?

Hopi, Havasupai, Hualapai, Navajo, Kaibab & San Juan bands of the Southern Paiute, and Colorado River Tribes leaders spoke at a joint press conference April 11 2023 supporting the Presidential proclamation of Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni National Monument (bahj nuwavah Etahku’uvaini dulcemente).

U S Rep Raul Grijalva placed this revised proposal on the Washington agenda as the latest of his, the tribes’, and their allies, long-continuing effort to protect the Grand Canyon watershed and to ban and exclude any chance for more harm to the Canyon’s peoples from uranium and efforts to exploit it. Certainly, at a subsequent July 2023 hearing open to all comers, the overwhelming preponderance of people’s hopes and opinions supported Monument creation.

Grijalva's Monument: Protecting the Grand Canyon

March 28, 2009: Congressman Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz), chairs a hearing by the House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources in Flagstaff. The subject: the 2008 rash of uranium speculation leading to feverish “prospecting” on public lands north and south of the Grand Canyon and its National Park.

Grijalva was then head of the Subcommittee on Parks, Forests, and Public Lands. Representing southern Arizona (former base of Stewart & Morris Udall, also environmentally aware on a national scale). Grijalva immersed himself deeply in issues before the Natural Resources Committee, and so was a legitimate leader who could speak out about the Grand Canyon, located in northern Arizona as it is. (Though the parochialism of "not in your district" seems a dubious objection given a national treasure, the Grand Canyon, a national resource, uranium, and international corporations, the miners.)

The hearing opened with panels of official representatives from the Navajo, Kaibab Paiute, Havasupai, Hualapai, and Hopi, all opposed to the prospecting.

 The Navajo have a large, difficult, and tragic history with uranium, including from the Lost Orphan mine on the South Rim. They had outlawed uranium mining activity in April 2005.

 The other tribal leaders spoke of uranium as a resource bringing too much danger, as well as the endless episodic seduction efforts by outsider miner/speculators—a kind of harassment given that most efforts are just for publicity. The Hualapai although they too have a mining ban, had recently been approached by mining speculators. They  reaffirmed their ban in September 2009.

 The Havasupai had had their own face-off with miners in the early 1990's; now the threat had revived.

 The Southern Paiute were witness to attempts in the upper Kanab area at making uranium pay, attempts that closed down but remain as scarring reminders.

Now, in 2023, after a decade-and-a-half of agitation, continuing lobbying, partial success and reversal, Representative Grijalva is once again leading a united and widely acclaimed effort for national protection in the Grand Canyon region.

Tribal leaders joined state lawmakers Tuesday, April 11 2023, calling on President Joe Biden to join nine previous Presidents acting on Grand Canyon’s behalf. The attempt this time would use the Antiquities Act to set aside more than 1.1 million acres around the Grand Canyon. (The map is on the next page.)

Environmental groups and a dozen tribes in the region say the proposed Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Grand Canyon National Monument is needed to protect the area’s water, wildlife, sacred spaces and ancestral homelands from uranium mining and other projects.

In an associated post, I have excerpted some of the local news reports on the tremendously well-attended meeting in Flagstaff on July 18 held by involved agencies. Since then news reports continue to demonstrate that this time may have the needed momentum of an environmentally friendly President.

Efforts to demonstrate the Grand Canyon’s magic continue. All are invited to join. Go on line and ask President Biden to add his name to the illustrious list of Grand Canyon’s protectors.

Some media reports of July hearing on Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Grand Canyon National Monument

 The Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service have held a meeting on a proposed national monument near the Grand Canyon.

Among other things, the proposed 1.1 million-acre Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Grand Canyon National Monument would make permanent a 20-year moratorium on mining already in place for the area.

The name is made of Havasupai and Hopi phrases meaning, respectively, “where our ancestors roamed” and “our footsteps,” said Stuart L.T. Chavez, a former tribal council member for the Havasupai. The Havasupai is one of about a dozen tribes in a coalition pushing for the designation.

“It's not going to just be the Havasupai alone,” he said. “This is a protection for the environment for everyone to be conscientious about and understand that it's for their protection and the future generations’ protection.”

Chavez and others are especially concerned about uranium mining.

 

Secretary of the Interior Haaland appointed a committee to find and re-name inappropriate, or worse, names on features in national parks. I recently put out a post praising the change in Grand Canyon from the old Indian Gardens to Havasupai Gardens. Here is my suggestion for another deserving name change.
==============================================

Sent June 22,2023

To: Andrea DeKoter, Committee Manager

      Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names

Subject: Replacing an Inappropriate Name in Grand Canyon National Park

In the west end of the Park, there is a false, misleading name on a most significant, if little-known, feature. The existing name for this point -- Fort Garrett -- totally ignores the long history of the Southern Paiute in the Canyon and its vicinity. It needs to be removed and replaced by a name honoring the Southern Paiute.

There is not in the vicinity, nor ever has been, a fort or any military structure, or so far as I know, any military activity. The use of the word “fort” is a slur on those who lived here for centuries, and peacefully, and on the Grand Canyon as an environmental icon and world-wide attraction, itself with no military connections. “Garrett" is unidentified, possibly that of an itinerant cow hand. A ruin of a shack to the west down in Pearce Canyon also carries the false name.

The Point at issue, shown on the attached maps, reaches 6251’ at its southern end. With a distinctive outline as seen from above, it is the Westernmost High Point (WHP) of the main rim of the Grand Canyon. As such it should be recognized and publicized for its location and viewing platforms. Just as important, I believe, this WHP should be graced with an appropriate name from the Southern Paiute.

I have attached three maps to provide orientation and clarity for my suggestion. 

Tell Me, Grampa: Where's the Water?

 Tell me, grampa, why the people back when you were young were so dumb they thought there would always be water, and we would never have to worry about being thirsty.

But, you see, Dearly Beloved, they did know — way back in the 1960’s — they knew there would not be enough water!

Those law-makers, expert in water matters, the local and regional water gurus dedicated to protecting their shares, the reclamation and water establishment that decided how the shares would be sucked and plumbed to move from wild river to alfalfa and other crop fields, and to kitchen taps: they did know.

Havasupai Gardens

 I was moved by the story about the ceremony at Grand Canyon National Park to send a letter to the Superintendent. May there be further such occasions!

-------------------------------------------------------

 May 15, 2023  

Ed Keable, Superintendent                             

Grand Canyon National Park

Arizona

Dear Superintendent:

It was with great satisfaction and delight that I read of the recent return of the Havasupai to one of their gardens, Ha’a Gyoh.

A cherished aim of Senator Barry Goldwater’s when 50 years ago he sponsored and moved what we know as the Grand Canyon National Park Enlargement Act of 1975, was embodied in section 5:      “In the administration of the Grand Canyon National Park, as enlarged by this Act, the Secretary is authorized and encouraged to enter into cooperative agreements with other Federal, State and local public departments and agencies and with interested Indian tribes providing for the protection and interpretation of the Grand Canyon in its entirety….” (my emphasis, but his intent).

It may seem that rededicating the gardens is a stretch of section 5, but I firmly believe that Goldwater and the 1975 Act’s co-author, Representative Morris Udall, would have totally approved of this action, in line with their hopes that cooperation between the Park and non-Park landowners was possible and worthwhile. 

Those hopes are exactly in line with this sentiment (from the AP report):

“Tribal members are hopeful it means a new era of cooperation that will give them more access to sites in the canyon and to tell their story through their lens and language.”

I do wish, as Im sure other backers of the 1975 Act do, that the past 50 years had been full of such actions. Better, certainly, this late than to continue the stand-offish stance of the past. (Not to mention the outright hostility that section 5 was supposed to mark the end of.)

May I direct your attention to an area of the Park that could benefit from actions of this kind? The far northwest of the Canyon might seem remote and little-visited to National Park visitors, compared to Ha’a Gyoh. Yet it is a supremely interesting area where the Grand Canyon, after its magnificent near-300-mile course deep in the gorge and spreading up onto mighty plateaus, comes to an end at its Westernmost High Point (WHP), the very end of its upper rim expression, from where the Canyon tapers down to the river in the vicinity of the Grand Wash Cliffs.

This is, I assure you, a prime area where there could be fruitful  identification and naming and visitation of prominent features (such as the WHP) that would recognize and honor the long-time former residents, the Southern Paiute. We know already some of their words applied to Canyon landscapes — Kaibab, Uinkarets, for instance. Yet there is much more that could be done, from river to rim, in canyons and on the plateaus and Esplanade features. 

There is not, I believe, a great history of controversy here, but there has been massive neglect of a people who were massively badly treated when what is now called the Arizona Strip was entered, settled, and turned over to economic uses. I would urge you to gather those with knowledge and concern of the Southern Paiute and this area to confer with the Park staff and even the public in order to lay out a program that would enrich our knowledge and recognition of the Grand Canyon’s human history.

Cordially,

Jeffrey Ingram             

3956 E Camino de la Colina, Tucson

 HUMANISM IS SOMETHING TO LIVE BY,

AND FOR SAVING, AND ENJOYING, THE GRAND CANYON 

So lets start with the substance of what a humanist has as guides; what seems reasonable as ways to help make decisions, choose life paths, come out for and against on the issues of concern.

Walking On The Western Side

 INTRODUCING THE FAR WEST

HIKING THE GRAND CANYON'S NEGLECTED BOUNDARY

As previous posts described, rectifying the Grand Canyon’s eastern boundaries led us into the tangles of governmental and legal actions. Cutting through that thicket, however, we found the physical legal boundary between the Park and Navajo Reservation is easy to navigate: down the left/south bank of the Colorado from the Paria River junction to the Little Colorado, then up that one a bit. 

The Park boundary in the Canyon’s west end, an area much less known and visited, apparently offers no legal tangles since the land is all under NPS administration -- the Park or Lake Mead NRA. Sad to say, the current western boundary ignores the Canyon’s topography and geology, using straight lines that fail to emphasize the true significance of the Canyon’s western finale.

Therefore, if we are to adhere to the idea of using the Grand Canyon drainage to figure out what to protect and proclaim within a complete National Park while not infringing on Navajo, Havasupai, or Hualapai land, then for the western end, there are new questions to answer. Pleasant surprise, that challenge invites us to scout out a newly defined line, one we can follow on foot — a hikable, likable, line. 

Navajo and GCNP. The River Left Bank is their Boundary

  Boundary Rectification I. 

Between Grand Canyon National Park and Navajo Reservation,

from the Paria junction to the Little Colorado River.

It is long past time to re-assert officially the too often erroneously stated and misunderstood western boundary of the Navajo Reservation that was located by congressional action (P.L. 73-352 of 14 June 1934) as coming ”west along the boundary line between the States of Arizona and Utah to a point where said boundary line intersects the Colorado River; thence down the south bank of that stream to its confluence with the Little Colorado River; thence following the north bank of the Little Colorado River to a point opposite the east boundary of the Grand Canyon National Park; thence south along said east boundary”.

I emphasize that the boundary goes “DOWN THE SOUTH BANK” of the Colorado. As befits a law written in 1934, there is much additional verbiage, relevant 90 years ago, that is now all a dead letter, yet lingers on to confuse official and unofficial cognizance of the line set along the south, or left, bank of the Colorado. 

FIXIN’ WHAT’S BROKE:

TO STRENGTHEN THE BOUNDARY OF GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK

AND RELATED MATTERS

This project makes proposals that gather up a number of issues, some near-trivial, others of great moment at this time of Deb Haaland’s Interior Secretaryship, the resolution of which could bring greater public recognition and understanding of the universal values embodied in the United States’ designation of a Grand Canyon National Park — a project started with John Wesley Powell and Benjamin Harrison’s legislative launch in 1884 of the first Grand Canyon National Park bill, which in its short history also started to gather in its relationship with the Canyon's long-standing peoples, in this case the Havasupai.*

Future work on the boundary must include correcting, updating, and otherwise recognizing the historic and current use and occupancy of Grand Canyon lands by the Southern Paiute, Hopi, Hualapai, Havasupai, and Navajo peoples, and others long-resident who live within the Canyon's spiritual reach.

Main changes:

Much of the boundary distinguishing administration and jurisdiction of that part of the Grand Canyon north and northwest of the Colorado River (i.e., in the area generally known as the Arizona Strip) is a source of concern for the  Club of Grand Canyon Friends &  Advocates. Boundary misalignments matter since 

1. maps in general use ought to delineate and present to the public as closely as possible the lands, canyon and plateau, that comprise the Grand Canyon; 
2. Users need to have as accurate a legal representation as possible of who has jurisdiction over the Grand Canyon lands they visit.

THE WESTERN NAVAJO LINE (CONTINUED)

KEEPING THE NAVAJO BOUNDARY ON THE RIVER BANK

Let us start from this point: 

There has been no adjudication on the Navajo Reservation western boundary, nor on the eastern Park boundary as set by the Grand Canyon National Park Enlargement Act of 1975. 

Therefore there are only opinions, based on events, governmental acts, documents, and arguments drawn therefrom. So…

In a very long blog post and several shorter ones, I laid out what I found to be the history of the western Navajo Reservation  boundary. (To see these essays, click on the blog tab for “Navajo”.) I concluded the Navajo Reservation western boundary lies, in the words of its 1934 boundary Act, “west along the boundary line between the States of Arizona and Utah to a point where said boundary line intersects the Colorado River; thence down the south bank of that stream to the confluence with the Little Colorado River; thence following the north bank of the Little Colorado River to a point opposite the east boundary of the Grand Canyon National Park; thence south along said east boundary” …

This Act contains several more clauses, more or less pertinent. The Act itself was followed in the 40-some years after 1934 by actions and events, more or less pertinent. I conclude that the end result of all this later activity is that the words of the 1934 Act hold firm: the Reservation boundary is along the banks of the two rivers. I am strengthened in my view that this is the correct position by the November 25, 1997 statement of Interior Solicitor J D Leshy (dealing with the Hualapai boundary) that “the canon of construction that doubtful or ambiguous expressions in treaties, statutes or documents involving Indians should be resolved in favor of the Indians.”