Fighting Colonialism with Hegemonic Culture: Native American Appropriation of Indian Stereotypes

Chapter 6 Land, Stewardship, and Healthy Food

Chapter 6 Land, Stewardship, and Healthy Food The tribe has repeatedly brought tacky, gross commercial ventures into the canyon, and it’s inappropriate. . . . It’s one of the seven wonders of the world, and they’re making it into Disneyland —Kieran Suckling (Clark 2007 “A Cloud Looms Over the Grand Canyon Skywalk,” USA Today) On Wednesday, March 7, 2007 the last few feet of the 2 million-pound engineering marvel—a steel and glass horseshoe-shaped skywalk, which juts 70 feet out over the Grand Canyon rim to dangle 4,000 feet above the canyon floor—was gently maneuvered into place amidst reporters and dignitaries from around the world. The 2,300-member Hualapai Nation had the structure built in hopes that it would boost tourism in their remote ancestral land and provide the impoverished tribe with a desperately needed economic boost. With sage burning and tribal members playing gourds, spiritual leader Emmett Bender blessed the Skywalk at what is known as Grand Canyon West. He called the structure “the white man’s idea.” Continuing, “Like the car and buses. The white man made it, and it came out strong,” the 84-year-old tribal elder said of the Skywalk. “We’ve got to give it a chance.”1 Kieran Suckling, policy director for the Tucson-based Centre for Biological Diversity, was aghast at learning what the Hualapai were building in the Grand Canyon. Others were equally forthcoming with 157 158 Fighting Colonialism with Hegemonic Culture disconcertion. The controversy stirred by this project on the Hualapai Reservation focuses on two key issues. First environmentalists and other purists who have criticized the Grand Canyon Skywalk project since its inception see the Skywalk as an unacceptable desecration of the Grand Canyon’s natural beauty, which, prior to construction of the Skywalk, was a pristine section of the canyon.2 They believe that, because it is the one of the seven natural wonders of the world, the Grand Canyon should be left alone. Second, they maintain that the Hualapai are not acting appropriately for Ecological Indians. The latter is made evident by the fact that the Hualapai are being held to a different standard than the National Park Service (NPS) and area businesses surrounding its Park Headquarters and Visitors’ Center along the southern rim. As Andrew Gumbel of The Independent noted, “Any development in a place like the Grand Canyon is bound to be controversial, of course. The much-visited southern rim of the national park is hardly a thing of beauty either—a cluster of overpriced motels, coach car parks and family restaurants whose only real virtue is to concentrate the tourist eyesores in one relatively contained geographic area.”3 The fact that outsiders expect the Hualapai to act like Ecological Indians provides an unusual opportunity to explore how members of a Native American group alternately choose to consume or produce such a timeworn stereotype. The Grand Canyon National Park encompasses more than 1 million acres of land. The canyon itself is up to one mile deep and from 600 to 1,800 feet in width. Three Native American reservations border the park—Navajo, Havasupai, and Hualapai. Installing a tourist attraction such as the Skywalk directly into the walls of the Grand Canyon is a very bold move given that this natural wonder, considered by most Americans to be “absolutely unparalleled” throughout the rest of the world, essentially constitutes a sacrosanct icon of America as a nation. It was none other than President Theodore Roosevelt who, upon seeing it in 1903, told his fellow citizens that it should never be blemished by the hands of humans for in his opinion “You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it”4 As discussed here, however, the Hualapai are not the first to attempt to alter this great canyon. In commentary about the Grand Canyon Skywalk, the section of the canyon in question is described as an indigenous place in the manner defined by Muehlebach, insofar as it is made up of recogniz- 159 Land, Stewardship, and Healthy Food able, fundamental tenets based on generic concepts of the environment and nature, with special emphasis on the relationship the Hualapai have to it. Importantly, these allusions are made by non-natives as well as Natives because it is non-natives who wish the Hualapai to act as they think Ecological Indians should. Discourse...