A TRIBE'S TRIUMPH

      We were restless. 

      After two years as Peace Corps volunteers in Africa, my wife Lois and I had taken jobs in Washington, D.C., but both of us wanted to get back to work in public service -- and this time on U.S. soil.

      The chance we were looking for came unexpectedly in a call from an American woman who had served in the Peace Corps with us in Liberia. 

      “Here’s a crazy job for you, and they need somebody," she said. "Would you be interested?” 

      As soon as she told us a little more ... YES, we're really interested.

      It was truly an unusual opportunity to assist the Havaupai Indians  living in the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The tribe wanted help in operating a "preschool" through the federal "Head Start" program, an arm of the Johnson administration's War on Poverty to provide free education for children 3-5 years old in low income families.

      So we headed out to the Grand Canyon for our first visit there and then went to apply for the job at Supai Village, eight miles down from the top. Soon, we were told that the tribal council would talk to us outside in front of the Supai Store, where all such meetings took place regardless of the weather so that everyone else in the community could see and hear what was happening.

      “Here, stand on this bench so people can see you. Tell ’em about yourself,” vice chairman Daniel Kaska said to start our session.

      Only later did we learn that much of the crowd didn’t understand us -- and also that the council had already hired someone else.

      No matter; members of the tribe apparently liked what they saw and notified the other jobseeker that they had a change of mind. 

      We had become the tribe’s Head Start teachers.

      By summer of 1967, we had settled into the back room of a small, 70-year-old sandstone dwelling that housed the Havasupai Head Start. It was the first step of what became a lifelong alliance with the Havasupai people -- living and working as their employees for 11 years and raising our daughter through primary school there.

      How those years would unfold for us drew in no small way from our Peace Corps service in Liberia. If we had not learned how to cope as strangers in rural Africa, we would have been bereft. We  would have had no idea what was required to thrive while living in a traditional Native American community -- almost completely isolated from the outside world by distance and geography, where English was only spoken as a second language.

      It helped that the Havasupai took it upon themselves to remake us in their own image once people decided we really meant to stick around.

      I started a community newsletter, largely because I had learned in Liberia that the local newspaper (which Lois started) had helped to build cohesion and kept community residents informed about issues affecting them. Before long, some Havasupai people were asking how soon they could expect to see the next issue of their newsletter, called Wi Gegaba. This was to affect our lives in ways bigger than we could imagine.

      A couple of years into Head Start, the council asked me to start helping out in the tribal office -- first as a bookkeeper and a letter writer, and eventually as tribal secretary. They couldn’t always pay me, but it didn’t matter. The tribe’s Head Start grant was paying Lois, and we lived in the school.

      Late in 1971, events in the outside world would impinge mightily on the Havasupai and turn our cozy world upside down.

      The reservation in 1967 was a postage-stamp of only 518 acres. It was surrounded by Grand Canyon National Park on the bottom of Havasu Canyon, a southern arm of the Grand Canyon.

      In 1971, the Havasupais found out the U.S. National Park Service planned to enlarge and consolidate its holdings in and around the Grand Canyon. So I started running regular articles in Wi Gegaba about it. Soon after, a couple of tribal elders asked Lois and I to haul feed for a round-up on the "rimlands" outside the reservation where the Havasupais were allowed to graze tribal livestock.

      When we arrived with a pickup load of hay after more than 100 miles on primitive two-track, we were led out to one dilapidated old cabin after another in the trees. Two mornings later, some of the elders sat us down at one of the cabins.

      “We didn’t bring you here to see cows,” they began. “We wanted you to see these houses. This is where we lived. We still use these places. We’re not allowed to, but we still do. The park has all this land now, and they’re going to take more."

      Then, they added: "You’ve been writing about it. This was all ours once, and we’ve been trying to get it back all our lives. No one understands us, and we need you to put our words down. We need you to look into it, show that we have a right to this land.”

      Gulp. Okay.

      So charged, the two of us launched a year-long investigation. It took us first to nearby libraries and museums -- and then led us to New York’s Museum of Natural History as well as Washington for the National Archives, the Smithsonian Anthropological Archives, and the Library of Congress. Curators at the Archives knew what we were trying to do,  took us into "the stacks" and even brought us boxes of materials to search. Today this would never happen.

      In the process, we uncovered scores of long-forgotten letters and documents and exquisite photographs that proved a Havasupai connection. But they showed more: The entire South Rim portion of Grand Canyon National Park once belonged to the Havasupai people. 

      Not only had members of the tribe been trying their entire lives to regain their ancestral territory; but their parents and grandparents before them also had been trying. As far back as the 1880s, they had appealed to Congress for restoration of their homeland, but they were rebuffed or ignored again and again.

      By this time, I was sending out our newsletter, Wi Gegaba, and its chronicle of the Havasupai struggle to reach Indian activists and advocacy groups all over the country. People began to notice.

      Armed with new information, the Havasupai again testified at the Capitol when members of Congress again began deliberations on legislation that could provide for enlargement of the park. They began accumulating allies — and enemies, formidable ones. 

      The idea of withdrawing land from a national park for an Indian reservation drew fierce nationwide opposition by environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth. At times it felt as though the Havasupai tribe took on the entire world.

      So tribal council members invited the bill’s Senate sponsor, Barry Goldwater, to confer with them before finalizing the measure. But they received no reply -- that is, not until Lois wrote to the Arizona Republican to say how disappointed she was that he didn’t even acknowledge the invitation. 

      Within a week, Goldwater was at the village to meet with the council. Apparently, an aide had failed to tell him earlier about the invitation, and Lois’s letter stirred things up on Capitol Hill.

      At one point, a small army of eight people including a 70-year-old woman was dispatched to Washington to put pressure on congressional legislators for months on end.

      In the end. against all odds. the Havasupai won -- and won big. 

      Congress restored their dedicated use or outright ownership of some 250,000 acres of federal land— to this day the most land Congress has ever returned to an Indian tribe.

      Upon their land victory, the Havasupai took over their government school and put Lois in charge of all education --  from pre-school through adult learning --- so their children could learn in their own language.

      Even then, it wasn’t over. The Park Service decided to remove a 160-acre settlement in the park -- an area which Havasupais had occupied since before the 1919 creation of the park. Their reason was that tribal needs were met; the settlement had to go. 

      The residents appealed to the tribal council to step in. Isolated in Havasu Canyon, the council felt helpless. In desperation, I started sending press releases to newspapers and wire services coast to coast in hopes someone, anyone, might intervene. And everyone waited.

      On the day set for removal of the property, Park Service forces showed up with trucks and equipment — only to be met by a crowd of news photographers and reporters. The government  backed down.

      Today the settlement is still there, and the park has made a long-term commitment for it to remain.

      Was our time in the Peace Corps a factor in this overall series of events?

      I think so. Our experience in the Third World motivated us to go to the Havasupai community and equipped us to become part of it. 

      We listened; we advocated; we went to battle.

      The Peace Corps taught us how.

Stephen Hirst has written books about his experiences with the Peace Corps and native Americans .