Local tribes regard the Confluence, where the Little Colorado’s blue waters merge with the Colorado, as sacred. (Photo Pete McBride, courtesy National Geographic.)
It’s like winning the lottery for Save the Confluence.
All 110 Navajo Nation Chapters endorsed a proposal to designate the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers a sacred site. The area, popularly called “The Confluence,” describes the point where the Colorado River and Little Colorado River meet. That area abuts Grand Canyon National Park, on the western Navajo Nation.
The chapters, through five agency councils, asked Navajo leaders and the nation’s lawmakers to “approve Tooahidiliih, Confluence of the Little Colorado River and the Little Colorado River Gorge, other related Cultural/Spiritual Sites, as Sacred sites,” according to Eastern Agency Council, which gave a green light to STC’s legislation in December.
The five are officially known as Eastern Navajo Council, Western Navajo Agency Council, Northern Agency Council, Central (Chinle) Navajo Agency Council and Fort Defiance Agency Council. Each council has up to 20 chapters within it. Each agency is a political voice that makes recommendations to the Navajo Nation Council.
In this case, the agency’s action bolsters the STC’s bill. The bill may appear on the agenda of the Navajo Nation Council’s Spring session for an up-or-down vote in April.
STC members said they believe the designation is important for traditional religious worship. The site is “where spiritual practices, including praying with our corn pollen, are performed, and it is revered as a place of worship,” wrote Delores Wilson-Aguirre, who wrote a letter as chair of Save the Confluence to Navajo lawmakers.
The letter and five agency resolutions were part of a packet handed to the Navajo Nation Council members for their review during the winter council session last Tuesday. “The Little Colorado is referred to as Bi’tiis Al’tsozi, meaning The River With the Tiny Soul, and Bi’tiis Ni’Nez, which means The River with the Long Soul,” Wilson-Aguirre continued. “We continue to offer prayers with our corn pollen at this site, seeking to communicate with the mighty rivers, wind, sky, and sacred-banded rock canyons, and petitioning for prosperity, from harm and optimal health.”
For years, STC has advocated the area be designated a protected sacred site.
Save the Confluence has been trying to put the bill before the Navajo Nation Council since 2020, when members agreed to make it a priority. A grant from San Francisco-based Kataly Foundation helped finance the group’s efforts to get the bill off the ground.
The energy behind the sacred site legislation sparked after the Navajo Nation Council rejected the proposed Grand Canyon Escalade in 2017. The proposed tourist site included a gondola that would have carried thousands of tourists down to the where the rivers meet. Tourist centers would have been built both on top of the Grand Canyon rim, where Navajos go to pray, and at the bottom of the river, near the water.
Bodaway/Gap Chapter residents voted in 2018 to block such developments and recommended labeling the area as sacred.
But the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2021 tribal elections resulted in key supporters losing re-election, and delayed the effort. Newly-elected delegates put up roadblocks creating tensions at meetings over the bill.
Larry Foster, advisor to Save the Confluence families, suggested the group follow a similar roadmap to the Escalade’s demise.
He recommended STC members approach local chapters to gain resolutions of support. The next step was the agency councils which approved their recommendations in 2024.
“When we defeated the Escalade, that is how we got overwhelming support.” Foster said.
He also recommends STC collect support letters from tribal departments and groups such as the association representing Navajo medicine men, known as Diné Hataałii Association, Inc.
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