From High Country News’ Peter Friederici, via the Adventure Journal Website:
Artist’s depiction of the gondola tram that would descend to the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers.
For more than 50 years, residents of Gap, Arizona, a western sliver of the Navajo Nation, have watched tourist traffic zoom by on Highway 89, headed for the Grand Canyon, Lake Powell, and southern Utah’s national parks. Except for a single gas station and a few ramshackle jewelry stands, there’s little here to attract vacationers’ dollars. And so, few locals objected in July when the Navajo-Hopi Observer began running full-page ads that blared: “It’s time that the Navajo People enjoy a fair share of Grand Canyon Tourism!”
But they weren’t prepared for the scale of those tourism plans — a mega-development with hotels, stores and even a tram. The ambitious proposal raises questions about who has the authority to make land-use decisions here, where an impoverished Indian nation borders federal land that most Americans believe should remain protected forever. It also threatens relations with the neighboring Hopi Tribe and Grand Canyon National Park, highlighting divisions between tribal, local and national decision-making as well as competing visions of the best way forward for a community stuck in neutral.
“We know that we can make money without destroying the place,” says Navajo rancher Franklin Martin. “But we have to learn to do things ourselves. I think we’d be gullible to take this offer.”
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