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. 

That misunderstanding arose because of the boundary’s involvement in the aborted and long-irrelevant machinations to gain approval for a dam in the Marble Gorge reach of the Grand Canyon. It was compounded by the ignorance and laziness shown when the water-power withdrawals boundary was used in the 1969 Marble Canyon National Monument proclamation, since superseded. Any correct interpretation or judicial determination of the boundary must see the line as determined by the 1934 Act placing it on the rivers’ banks.

Further confusion was guaranteed because when in 1973 Senator Barry Goldwater sponsored his legislation to enlarge Grand Canyon National Park (GCNP), he had the entirely justified fear that someday some speculator would attempt to place motels or other tourist structures on Navajo land at the rim of Marble Gorge. Goldwater  and the National Park Service tried, 1969-72, to convince the Navajo that this threat would be best avoided by placing that rim inside the National Park. They failed; the Navajo refused to countenance any taking of their Reservation land into the Park for any reason.

Obdurately, Goldwater did draw the GCNP boundary up on the rim on the official map 113-20,021 B dated December 1974 with accompanying language: “MARBLE CANYON EAST Proposed Boundary on Canyon Rim”. However the position of the Navajo was recognized on the map with an adjoining “Note: Subject to Concurrence of the Navajo Nation”. Moreover, language was included in Sec. 5 of the resulting Grand Canyon National Park Enlargement Act as passed in 1975, reinforcing this prohibition:

“no land or interest in land, which is held in trust for any Indian tribe or nation, may be transferred to the United States under this Act … except after approval by the governing body of the respective Indian tribe or nation”(my underlining).

Strange legislative behavior: grabbing land that you have been told you cannot have, and then telling yourself you do not really want it. The very opposite of the fabled cake: Goldwater didn’t get to eat it or keep it.

It should be understood that Goldwater’s desire to protect Indian rights was as strong as his wish to expand the Park. The final law could not, of course, resolve these irresolvable goals. Yet many, including in official National Park Service positions, continue to maintain that the Park was extended up onto the Marble rim or even, more oddly, just to the never-activated, never-determined, water-power withdrawal lines.

Again, since the Navajo refused to give away land in the proposal stage, have never even considered an extension of the Park to their land, and act in every way as if it is their land*, this fantasy illegal placement of the Park boundary going east beyond the 1934 western Navajo boundary should be dismissed as irrelevant bureaucratic imperialism, and ignored. Particularly so, since users of the Marble Gorge stretch can be misled into thinking they are in the Park when they are really hiking on or using Navajo land. 

Moreover, the official GCNP map being incorrect and the Navajo intending to keep their land "even unto time immemorial", the Park is without a defined eastern boundary.

*(The Navajo Nation’s determination was strongly manifest when its legislature in 2017 voted down just the kind of proposal Goldwater feared, this one on the rim above the junction of the Colorado and Little Colorado. It was Navajo land, their call, and they killed the potential horror dead, dead, dead. We all stood and cheered, but it was a Navajo decision.)

Therefore, I propose a Presidential proclamation that would explicitly reaffirm the 1934 boundary along the river bank, recognize any effort by the United States to acquire Navajo land for the Park is null and void, especially the 1975 Act’s aim to take such land by placing the Park boundary up on the rim, and explicitly affirm that the official eastern boundary of GCNP, from the Paria to the Little Colorado, takes in the Colorado River going across the River to the Navajo boundary that runs along the river bank.

The Navajo proved they can protect the Canyon. They have never countenanced the imperialist thrust by the Park Service to take their land. It is time for the sovereign United States to re-recognize the boundary it itself set in 1934 for the Navajo Reservation, and that this boundary on the left shore of the Colorado is the legal boundary of the National Park.

There could be further reinforcement for the United States reaffirmation of the 1934 western boundary of the Navajo Reservation. The Navajo Nation government could formally refuse to concur in their Marble Canyon land being taken into the National Park, while formally recognizing the 1934 Reservation boundary along the “south bank” of the Colorado.

And further: In 1975, the Navajo renamed their Grand Canyon Navajo Tribal Park, (est. 1966) as Marble Canyon Navajo Tribal Park and proclaimed a set of regulations for its use. This Park lies north of the Little Colorado Navajo Tribal Park. It would be a step toward the kind of cooperation modeled by Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park up north were the rectification of the GCNP boundary to include a federal recognition of the Tribal Park. This is envisioned in Sec. 5 of the 1975 GCNP Enlargement Act “Cooperative Agreements for the Unified Interpretation of Grand Canyon”.