Dams Part 2: Damming a Sacred Space

Behind the Scenery

“A big dam like that is holding back all the rain from coming in, because all that was supposed to go down to the ocean where our ancestors come back as moisture, as rain, any kind of precipitation. That’s our ancestors feeding us with the gift of life, which is water.”

-Ronnie Cachini, Head Rain Priest, A:Shiwi (Pueblo of Zuni)

This episode is dedicated to the memory of Ronnie Cachini. We are deeply grateful for all he taught us during his many years of close partnership with Grand Canyon National Park.

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Ceili: This episode is dedicated to the memory of Ronnie Cachini. We are deeply grateful for all he taught us during his many years of close partnership with Grand Canyon National Park.

Jan: Every year we would have these big floods that would just cover everything over and make a new flood plain. It's only when you stop the sediment supply did those things start becoming available to see, and that’s the legacy that we're looking at, is all of those things, all of those thousands of years. People living around along the river and every year they would come back. There would be a flood they’d come back, they’d plant, do whatever, whatever you know next year it would flood again, they come back there's a new flat surface because everything was buried in sand again. Everything was an annual cycle and it just kept happening for thousands of years until 1963 and then that stopped.

Kate: What stopped at the Colorado River in 1963 that was so important? Like rivers and bodies of water around the world people congregate around this river. For thousands of years it has been home to multiple native tribes. They watched the river, sat on the bank and listened to the water flowing. For over 100 years Grand Canyon has been protected as a National Park. The mission statement of the Park Service is to preserve and protect this place for future generations, but in the process some people's voices have been excluded. The people who have lived here for thousands of years. Hello I'm Kate, and this is the second episode in our two-part series on dams in Grand Canyon. In today's episode of Behind the Scenery we'll explore how the installation of the Glen Canyon Dam impacted Grand Canyon’s traditionally associated tribes and the sacred and ancestral grounds in the river corridor. One of the reasons I found this story is because in my job I'm a Ranger who lives at the bottom of the Canyon. I work several river miles below the dam. Every day I go on a walking patrol and I say hello to the Colorado River. One of my favorite spots by the beach is an archaeological site of Ancestral Puebloans. I like to imagine the families who used to have the Colorado River as their backyard. They took stones from the heart of the Canyon and beautifully crafted them into pink and black walls. Now we can only see the foundations of the plaza, living spaces, a ceremonial kiva. When the Pueblo was complete people would have been lounging on the roof. From there they would have been able to watch their kids playing on the beach. In today's world there are plenty of people still playing on the beach, but there are also river trips and blue, yellow, or orange rafts, sometimes even a small wooden boat, and they pull into what is now called Boat Beach. Once the dam was put in beaches like Boat Beach started eroding away. The Canyon was not only losing its beaches, but also the archaeological sites along the river became in danger of being lost forever. Jan Balsom was the park’s archaeologist from 1984 through 1995. She was in the field documenting how cultural sites by the river were being impacted. She has since filed several leadership positions in the park, including senior adviser to the Superintendent, and Jan is a lead advisor on cultural resources at Grand Canyon.

Jan: Recreational boaters on the Colorado River in Grand Canyon were sitting on beaches watching the water come up and down because they operated the dam in a way they call a cash register dam. When people turned on their lights they would let more water out and when people turned off their lights they would stop the water flows, so we had wide fluctuations that would be in the neighborhood of 20 to 30,000 cubic feet per second changes in a day. That would result in 10 or 15 feet downstream of stage change.

Kate: 10 to 15 feet is a huge change within 24 hours, especially if you're a boater and it's below where you made your home for the night. If you're new to the Canyon, think about narrow granite walls rising above you. On your side, sandy beaches line parts of the Canyon. You dock your boat and set up camp to sleep. What you didn't realize was the damn caused the river level to rise the height of a one to two-story building while you were sleeping.

Jan: As archaeologist for the park, I was most concerned about looking at the archaeological resources and how the dam flows were affecting the integrity of those properties.

Kate: Unfortunately, the dam was created before or key environmental legislation was in place. The National Environmental Policy Act wouldn't come about until three years later, and it requires federal agencies to complete an environmental review to assess potential impacts of a project. The dam was excluded from this environmental assessment until the Bureau of Reclamation had the need to replace the eight generators that powered the dam in 1982. Scientists, river runners, members of the public, and environmental groups began to push for scientific studies that could measure the adverse impacts of the dam. In 1989 a grassroots project pushed for an environmental impact statement.

Jan: So as the parks archaeologists, I then became a member of the EIS writing team for the Glen Canyon Dam environmental impact statement that was done. In combination with that we had to begin doing the archaeological inventory survey then of the Colorado River corridor. We spent the better part of nine months with the crews working under a cooperative agreement with Northern Arizona University to do the 100% inventory the river corridor that resulted in documenting 475 properties in the near shore environment from the dam down to the lake.

Kate: 475 remnants of homes, agricultural structures, religious sites, and petroglyphs of the people who had lived by the Colorado River. Jan was curious about who these places were important to, the people who felt that these places were in the family. Jan did something unusual for the Park Service and archaeology at the time. She looked at these places and realized that their descendants still live near Grand Canyon. She invited them into the conversation.

Jan: And a piece of that was bringing our tribal colleagues down onto the Colorado River so that they could help us design the research module, how we're going to do this, so that they understood what we are looking for and that we could understand from them things that we may need to be looking for. It was the first time, and I didn't realize this at the time, but it was the first time that we anybody had done a river trip where we had invited the traditionally associated people back into the Canyon and that led to a whole other legacy of the tribes’ involvement. We were doing a project to build a parking lot up on the East Rim and we had an archaeological site there. I knew enough from my studies and working at the state historic preservation office that we needed to contact the tribes. We sent out letters to the five tribes that we worked with, and the entire Havasupai Tribal Council showed up to the superintendent's office. And the Superintendent at the time was a fellow named Jack Davis. He looked at me and he said I think we need to have somebody who does tribal liaison, I guess that will be you. And so I added that to my portfolio of responsibilities. So we started working along the river and we knew that the archaeology was pretty extraordinary, even the limited amount that we knew about. We contacted tribes early on to let them know we're going to be doing this, got them engaged with at least that portion of the project, and also as we began moving towards the environmental impact statement (Luhan identified in 1989 we're going to do the EIS) we started having an EIS writing team. And upon the insistence of a couple of us we convinced Bureau of Reclamation that they needed to include the tribes as part of the cooperating agencies, part of the writing team, because these are resources of concern to the tribes not just to us as the National Park Service, or to the American public who we are all responsible to. But even at that time we knew the Hopi, for example, have significant histories in the Canyon. The Navajo border the river for 60 plus miles. The Havasupai and Hualapai to the West, we knew that they have ancestral areas. The Southern Paiute to the north. So, you know, we worked with Reclamation. It wasn't something they had ever done, and it challenged them a little bit to think about a different way of inclusion.

Kate: Jan found that the best way to assess the cultural impacts of the dam was to consult the direct ancestors of the people who had histories extending back sometimes thousands of years in the Canyon. Archaeologists learned more by listening to the tribes.

Jan: And certainly from a tribal perspective, only you as a tribal member can know if the traditional resource that you are concerned about is doing OK. Does it need help, is it still as functional as it was, are the spring sources that you rely on for traditional purposes still functioning the way they have or have there been changed? And only you would know that. So it's important for the traditional people to be able to come down and evaluate within their expertise how well specific resource is adjusting to this changed environment. When you think about some of the political discord between the agencies, the federal approach to Indian law and policy, the differences amongst the tribes in terms of land base and resources, and a lot of those things. But for whatever reason when you talk about the Grand Canyon everyone comes together because they all have common histories here. There's a recognition that everyone has a vested interest in ensuring that this place continues. So I think that because of the place, and the way in which we included the tribes from the very beginning with the archaeological survey, saying “we understand that this is your history we want you to help us preserve these things,” that it was a general opening to all of them to participate with us, and that followed through into the formal NEPA process as them being part of the writing team.

Kate: Six Native American tribes contributed to the environmental impact statement that was finalized in 1995. That didn't happen without hard work from certain tribal leaders. While Jan pushed or inclusion of tribal voices at a Park Service level, it was a greater challenge for tribes to become involved in projects that involved multiple federal agencies. We have an incredible opportunity to hear from Leigh Kuwanwisiwma. He is a leader in the Hopi tribe and director of the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office. For 30 years he's been involved with adaptive management in Grand Canyon. Since around 1989 Leigh successfully led his tribe in playing a major part in the environmental impact statement. His success helping to manage the river had a challenging start.

Leigh: Well, to be frank, nobody came to the Hopi or to any tribe that is currently engaged with the oral history of the dam. I just happen to, I believe back around early 1990, I read in the Flagstaff Daily Sun there was a meeting on the Glen Canyon Dam by the Bureau of Reclamation. I was reading the newspaper and just out of curiosity, I didn't know really what it was about except the picture of the dam up there, but I never realized that it was dealing with the whole Canyon. but that was how I got a whiff of something happening, so I went to that meeting. It was an evening meeting. I sat there listening to it and there was a whole series of presentations on jump starting the EIS. As the initial introductions came around, all the federal agencies of course introduce themselves, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs was introduced from Phoenix. And I learned later that they were representing all 19 tribes in the state of Arizona. An I sat there, and naturally at that meeting I was probably the only Native person there, and I was kind of bewildered. That's when I began to say we've got to learn more about what's going on, this EIS, and so I've got a lot of handouts and some background information. I took home a whole bunch of that and began to read it. And it was indeed about the grand Glen Canyon Dam but what was interesting to me was that the whole issue was, again, the water releases and the effects on the ecosystem. And I said “this has to be of interest to the tribe,” I mean it is an interest to the tribe. And then the next meeting again was in Phoenix, so I went to that one. And by that time I had reasonable assurance that the tribe, meaning the Tribal Council, wanted to actively participate, so I finally had the floor give it to me and I introduced myself. At that that time I was still the only tribal representative, and I said the Hopi Tribe will engage in this whole EIS, but independent from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and their representation of other tribes. We’re, I believe, quite capable of representing ourselves. I went before the tribal council and got a resolution declaring that we could be a cooperating agency. We would have that status. So I remember at the next meeting I introduced that resolution, gave it to them, and they gave me a seat. The chairman wrote to them that I would be the Hopi Tribe’s voting member. So I became the first tribal voting member.

Kate: Leigh had established the Hopi tribe as a stakeholder in the Glen Canyon Adaptive Management Program. Different stakeholders submitted scientific projects that would work on collecting data, monitoring resources, and restoring the ecosystem. One of the solutions was starting river monitoring trips beginning in the 1990s. River monitoring trips were initially funded by the Bureau of reclamation to mitigate the damage that the dam had caused. Imagine that you've created as scientific proposal to study the Colorado River, and now it's your job to float down the river for days or weeks so you can do studies and collect data downstream of the dam. Maybe your study is about how sediments are eroding beaches or impacting cultural sites, or maybe you're studying how the changed ecosystem impacted wildlife populations.

Leigh: In the 90s I was trying to figure out what we're gonna do and then I finally said “well, looks like this EIS is going to require a lot of science, a lot of research, and by golly I gotta determine what are what our focus is gonna be.” And it was the whole gamut of all three sciences, you know, biological, natural, and cultural. Of course, our forte, even though I was just beginning the office at that time, was gonna be culture. Even though I kind of was already thinking they're all interconnected. I believe we have the most extensive scientific reports based on our research design and then later how we identify certain research areas as we traveled from the first time that we started going down there.

Kate: Tribal monitoring trips began to happen every year, and in order to monitor what happened on the river time had to be spent on the water.

Leigh: So by ‘91 I believe around that time we got our funding and we got our first river trip down there. That's about the time I began to know Jan Balsom, too. I think she was just getting started, as well, about the same time. I think she started with the Grand Canyon about ‘88 too, or there about. She went with one of our efforts was to investigate as many archaeological sites down there. Alright, so that was our first attention down there. And from Lees Ferry all the way to Phantom Ranch there's 300 plus archaeological sites. All the way from there. A lot of it clearly ancestral Hopi because the Hopi polychrome and yellow ware down there. It matches our traditions in there because the Hopi, they say they traded with other clans down the Grand Canyon from here, you know. And they say the Wupatki people from Flagstaff, they traded with the Grand Canyon people, you know. Things like that are traditions so when you go down there and begin to learn about archaeology, the archaeologists will tell us “Well, there's evidence of Hopi yellow ware here.” Could be trade items, could be actually visitations by people, probably both.

Kate: The Hopi helped archaeologists gain a bigger picture of the rich relationships that tribes had across Arizona, and the vast trading networks that were connected to the bottom of Grand Canyon.

Leigh: So over time our reputation grew that we knew so much about the history of the Grand Canyon - culturally, the archaeological sites, the petroglyphs we were interpreting left and right down there. Our values in terms of the erosion effects on burials, that causes us to have to now rebury only a partial of a remain, right? That was very emotional. For the old men, of course, we're learning and the Hopi trip just grew. Everybody wanted to be on the trips. After they go through the river trips and learning about what we do down there, and the science we're doing, the cultural resources down there. You know, coming out we have a better perspective on how those are being affected by the dam operations. But they're pretty consistent, and so I think that's an indication that the Hopi culture is this unwavering. You know, our villages are a thousand years old. The Hopi still have a full 12 month ceremonial cycle. Today we're going into the woman's ceremonies right now. So it never ends for us. It never ends, we're always in the Kiva. So, I think it's it reflects the vibrancy of the Hopi culture, and we're fortunate to be able to say that.

Kate: The Hopi people and other Grand Canyon tribes continue to go on monitoring trips on the Colorado River to this day, and this has helped the Park Service and tribes listen to each other's interest and concerns.

Ronnie: First of all my name is Ronnie Cachini. I am 54 years old, and I am the Head Rain Priest for the Zuni Tribe. We are federally recognized as the Zuni Tribe, but we call ourselves A:Shiwi, and I am the traditional leader for the A:Shiwi people. I'm also the head medicine man for my society. I’ve been a medicine man since I was seven years old. I was initiated back in 1972, and growing up with the elders in my society, staying in the medicine house, I learned a lot. I obtained a lot of knowledge that I hold to this day. I hold these prayers. They’re not written in a book. We're not taught with electrical devices like tape recorders and such. All the prayers are taught orally, and if you have the heart, you’ll pick up all the prayers word for word. And it’s really hard for some people because the language is in the old ancient language which our people were speaking in the time when they emerge from the Grand Canyon. Ribbon Falls, Grand Canyon. That’s the place of our emergence. Chimik'yana'kya Deya' referring to the Grand Canyon as the emergence place.

Kate: Although the Zuni People consider the Grand Canyon their emergence place, at that time federal agencies did not realize how central the Canyon was to the Zuni history. Ronnie: And back in the day like in the 50s, 60s at Grand Canyon Park, you know, “why are Zunis interested in this place? They live far away, they live in New Mexico.” No one told them until they started going on these monitoring trips. That's when it opened up the eyes of the park. Kate: At that time many archaeologists had the hypothesis that these people had abandoned the area maybe because of war or a drought.

Ronnie: These people that have left all these sites, their homes, they did not abandon them. They were used time and time again. Archaeologists believe that these were a group of people that came and built these homes and they left and a whole different group of people came and occupied these places and left. Actually, these were the same people on their great migration. All the pueblo tribes were on a vast migration searching for their destinations on mother earth. It was a very spiritual world back then. Spirits showed them things that we hold today as our religion, or our traditions. These places were never abandoned. We’re trying to veer away from using the word “ruins” and “Anasazi.” We’re veering away from those terms because that’s not the pueblo way. We call them “the first people who lived in these homes.”

Kate: The Zuni people started going down to view and monitor these sacred spaces, especially the religious leaders of the tribe. This first fell on Ronnie's grandfather, and when he passed away that leadership passed to Ronnie.

Ronnie: I had never seen the Grand Canyon until 1998, when I took my first monitoring trip down the river. It was the most humbling experience I've ever had in my life.

Kate: On one special site visit, Ronnie was able to look at the rock art and interpret what that history meant to his tribe.

Ronnie: At Tanner there’s 3 larger boulders there. There’s lines going around, zig-zags and squares leading out to places. I was looking at it and I thought “I think this is a map of the Canyon. See this is the river and these are ways to get to certain places, maybe a collecting area or a village.” As I was looking at it, it just came out as a map of the river. Three huge boulders with a constant line going across the boulders, and then there’s other petroglyphs on there that have the 2 individuals with their tails connected together. And in our prayers at the very end, no matter if you’re a Rain Priest, a Medicine Man, a Kiva Leader, all these societies, even the commoners, in our prayers at the very end we say to hold on to each other tight with a bond that will never be broken. Always hold on to each other. And these 2 individuals with their tails connected, that’s that part of our prayer. It’s talking about our prayer. And when we read history, we read it in a book, but our ancestors left it on boulders, on cliff walls, all over the Southwest, all over the United States. It’s not just the Zuni people, it’s other tribes that left their mark.

Kate: Ronnie talked about another rock art panel that is named the Whitmore panel. This panel tells the story of his people's origin in the Grand Canyon. This panel is a popular stop for river trips river runners would hike and narrow path from the river to the cliffs where there was a smooth rock face painted with red figures.

Ronnie: Those petroglyphs are telling us how our people came up from the 4th underworld, and we’re trying to change the name from the Whitmore Panel to the Zuni Emergence Panel. As you know, that takes a lot of time. It has to go through all these channels to make that change.

Kate: Zuni elders noticed that the trail was too close to the panel and people were causing erosion at the site. Visitors were also touching the paintings and the oils smeared from their hands were damaging the paintings. Over time Zunis communicated that this place needed more protection.

Ronnie: We asked the Park Service to move the trail. With the help of the Conservancy group, the Grand Canyon Conservancy group, they found an individual that donated a large portion of money to move that trail. So we were asked to be a part of working on the trail. We were there for, I believe, 5 or 6 days working on that trail, removing all the trail, placing rock along the old trail, then creating the new one down below, then having the stairway go up to a platform area where you could view the petroglyphs. We were there working and they had us planting rocks cactuses (laughter)…

Ceili: That’ll deter people from getting too close!

Ronnie: We were moving rock and we had to dig a trench and place a real big rock and bury it halfway so they couldn’t move it. And then put the cacti in certain areas. It came out really good. It came out really good. People weren’t going up and touching the petroglyphs no more. Park Service did an excellent job with all that – moving the real big old heavy rocks and making the stair steps that go up to the platform viewing area. It really was a great experience for me. I’ve never worked down in the Canyon like that before.

Kate: The story of the Zuni panel is just one example of how monitoring trips helped protect cultural sites along the river.

Ronnie: When you’re venturing into these archaeological sites, have respect. Treat it like you’re in a church. Don’t pick up pot shards and leave them, or pile them up on rocks. If you pick it up, put it back where you got it, or just leave it alone. Take a picture. Treat the place as if you’re in your church, your place of worship.

Kate: How did the Zuni people feel when the dam was put in?

Ronnie: I’m pretty sure that our tribe didn’t even know about it. There was no consultation at that time and once it was built it was built. And now, they come and ask us how we feel about it. I feel a lot of things about it, but what can we do? It’s already there, we can’t tell them to tear it down. And maybe one day they’ll take it back (chuckling).

Kate: Yeah! (laughter)

Ronnie: Yeah, we just need to adapt to what is displaced. It really messed up the whole cycle of the river. The Colorado River don’t reach the Sea of Cortez no more, not a lot. The Gila and the Salt River, they don’t reach the Sea of Cortez no more because of the dams that are built. Electricity is good. Electricity is good, but it has its pros and cons and we do not block our water ways from the headwaters all the way down to the oceans. We can’t, it’s not allowed. It’s like impeding the rains to come, you’re blocking out the rain when you do that. A big dam like that is holding back all the rain from coming in, because all that was supposed to go down to the ocean where our ancestors come back as moisture, as rain, any kind of precipitation that’s our ancestors feeding us with the gift of life, which is water. Building all these dams along the Colorado River is a “no-no,” we frown upon that. But at that time, like I said there were no consultations with tribes. They all just wanted to do whatever they wanted to do. Mother Earth was theirs for the taking, which we don’t see that way. A tribal Native American has never said that “this is my land.” We don’t own it we’re just taking care of it. When we pass away we’re not going to take it with us. We’re not gonna pack you in with your land and send you off to the spirit world. No. And like I said, they didn’t have any consultations with any of the tribes and they were places and now we have to deal with it. We’re helping the Park Service; we’re helping them to make right what they did.

Jan: Each group, each government, each cultural identity is represented somewhere different, but there's a shared understanding of the importance of Grand Canyon as part of all of the traditional landscapes for the native peoples of the area. I mean, Glen Canyon Dam was finished in 1963 so you've got 50 some years now of an experiment essentially, and many of our tribal colleagues will remind me that they’re patient people. They're just gonna wait. Every damn that's ever gone on the Colorado River has been eroded around, we just haven't taken a long enough perspective. But we also as federal agencies have responsibility to preserve in perpetuity. I mean, the National Park Service in particular we’re the, you know, we’re the forever people. You know, these resources are our responsibility forever. As long as the Park Service exists we will see ourselves as stewards for these lands and we’re stewards not for our own selves but for the American people and the tribal groups who have called this, again, this Canyon home for thousands of years. We take their responsibility really seriously.

Ed: When Grand Canyon was designated a National Monument in 1908 and a National Park in 1919, it was done without the support or consent of the people for whom the Canyon was home for time immemorial.

Ceili: Grand Canyon Superintendent Ed Keable.

Ed: Echoes of this painful and inequitable history still resonate throughout our park. We must acknowledge these injustices and face them head on. Today there is much we need to do to heal historic wounds, and we are committed to this work because it is both necessary and right. I know we can achieve these goals as Grand Canyon and the nation grapple with our past and progress ever forward towards building a more perfect union.

Ronnie: The most memorable experience I had down the river is uh, all the time! Everyday stands out. The wind may be blowing. you know. you may have sand in your breakfast, but you're down in the Canyon where our ancestors live, you know? You're happy, you know, having a great time!

Kate: My name is Kate, and thank you for joining us on another episode of Behind the Scenery. We gratefully acknowledge the native peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather, as well as the diverse and vibrant native communities who make their home here today.