A chapter divided

Ernest Peyketewa Sr. scooped up lambs and set them inside a pen. About 100 animals milled about the corral — white sheep, brown ones, black, about a dozen long-haired goats. His wife, Marie, fed a lamb with a baby bottle, set it down, moved on to the next.

When the lambs were separated, Ernest opened the gate and the flock scattered up a hill, with a few dogs tagging along. He started the pickup, drove a dirt road and parked not far from where the herd fed.

Throughout the day, Marie stepped out to drive the sheep, following the herd, in her mother’s footsteps, her grandmother’s. It’s a tradition that goes back centuries, and while it is fading, the region has remained relatively undeveloped, in part because of a decision that goes back to the 1960s.

The Peyketewas talk about tribal tradition, the region’s history. Ernest can point to a handful of prayer sites, walk down the hill not far from the herd to point out a pair of red handprints on a small overhang. Pueblo clans have lived in this region for thousands of years, painting and scratching the rock, walking an ancient trail to a salt cave, leaving prayers and offerings along the way. The Hopis believe humans emerged from a place near the confluence called the Sipapu.

The Navajos, too, have historic ties to the Grand Canyon. They have lived near its edge, dropped inside to hide from American soldiers during the Long Walk, when thousands of Navajos were marched to New Mexico. Hundreds died along the way.

The Navajos and Hopis have bonded often over the years through trade and even marriage, Peter Iverson writes in “Dine: A History of the Navajos.” Marie recalls Hopi ladies riding through the area on donkeys, with fruit and piki bread. But the two tribes have had their share of conflict, too, and decades ago, a series of land disputes escalated until 1966, when Commissioner of Indian Affairs Robert Bennett ordered a halt to economic development in the western Navajo Reservation.

The Bennett Freeze, as it came to be known, shut down businesses and home construction in the area, and the western Navajo Reservation slipped into an economic time warp that lasted four decades. The freeze made it illegal to fix a leaky roof, though people could probably get away with it if they didn’t tell anyone, Sloan said.

When the government lifted the freeze in 2009, the Navajos began to talk of rebuilding. Not long after that, the Escalade developers made their pitch.

A gondola into the Canyon

Lamar Whitmer said he first floated the Escalade project in the mid-1990s with former Navajo Nation President Albert Hale. His experience with the Hualapai Tribe and the Grand Canyon Skywalk on the Canyon’s West Rim gave him some expertise in tribal economic development, he said. But the Escalade never got off the ground, and it remained dormant until the freeze was lifted.

As plans simmered, and with jobs already scarce, two of the biggest employers in the region, a coal mine and the mine’s primary customer, the Navajo Generating Station near Page, announced they would close soon.

“I think the power plant shutting down really drives home the point that they need to diversify their economy and they need to develop tourism,” Whitmer said. “And there’s no way they can really develop tourism without capitalizing on the Grand Canyon market. Because that’s the big piece of tourism in Arizona. Seven million people. … A million at Grand Canyon West, and 6 million at the park. Right now, they’re driving by. There are a lot of Navajos that think we’ll just put something up on Highway 89, and they’ll stop. Well, for what?”

Whitmer said the Escalade project is the answer. Over the past five or six years, Confluence Partners, the company formed to back the project, has worked to gain support, presenting the idea over and over at chapter houses, at committee meetings and to anyone else who will listen. The pitch starts with one premise: The confluence is the right place. Now is the time.

Navajo land pushes up against the park’s eastern border, where the Colorado River loops north and south through Marble Canyon. The scenic view there is not enough of a draw, Whitmer said, despite the fact that 5 million to 6 million people visit the North Rim and South Rim each year for overlooks, hikes, cultural sites and ranger-led programs.

Without a tram, Whitmer said, “the economics don’t work. The tram’s the big economic engine. I mean, an overlook, it’s just not the same. When people get to the rim, the first thing they want to do is, ‘How do I get to the bottom? You mean I actually have to hike for three hours?’ ”

Whitmer doesn’t say much about the time he hiked into the Canyon, on a trip with the Boy Scouts when he was a teenager, other than to say it was hot.

“I think it was the end of June,” he said. “When you’re that age, you don’t know any better.”

The project, he said, will focus on Navajo culture, with storytellers sharing winter stories in the winter, for example, then changing it up each season. Whitmer said that may allow the Escalade to attract an untapped market of winter visitors. “We’re most committed to the Navajoland Discovery Center, so we can assist the Navajo people in telling their stories and preserving their culture,” he said.

Navajo tribal member Clyde Wilson said some people in the Bodaway-Gap chapter opposed the project immediately. Most people listened, but they had questions. Some of those questions were related to the developers. The chapter learned that Whitmer had been indicted on three counts of theft and one count of fraudulent schemes in 1992. Prosecutors claimed he paid himself $40,000 (some accounts say $45,000) while serving as chairman of the Maricopa County Sports Authority, though the position was supposed to be voluntary. He was later acquitted.

One of his partners in the project, Albert Hale, was once president of the Navajo Nation but left office under a cloud, facing potential criminal charges of misspending tribal funds and allegations of having an affair while in office, according to newspaper reports.

And then there was the deal itself, which looked to some like it was designed to do one thing: make the investors a lot of money.

To begin with, the tribe must put up the first $65 million; where that money would come from is not clear. A one-page letter, buried inside a bill before the Tribal Council, indicates that the money might come in through a deal with Sacred Mountain LLC, owned by Joe Bergen. Information about the company, which claims developments in New Guinea and the African country of Ghana, is hard to come by. On a LinkedIn page, Bergen lists Beacon Hill, near Kansas City, Missouri, as one of his projects, but a builder and architect with Beacon Hill had never heard of him. (Whitmer said he didn’t know much about Sacred Mountain and that someone in the tribe suggested the company.)

If the tribe failed to come up with $65 million, Confluence Partners could arrange for financing, but the tribe would be on the hook for the interest, plus a 10 percent fee, payable to Confluence Partners.

Meantime, the Navajo Nation would receive 8 to 18 percent of the profits. Outside investors would get the rest. Nobody would be allowed to build a business within 15 miles of the project. And the deal would obligate the tribe to a 25year commitment, which would be followed by two automatic renewals of 25 years.

In spite of these potential problems, some still support the project because of the jobs the developers have promised.

Opponents say the number of jobs has been inflated, and so has the pay.

According to a memo from the Navajo Office of the Attorney General, during initial negotiations, developers indicated Doppelmayr, an international firm that specializes in gondolas and similar projects, would design the tram. Later, the developer distributed materials that named Sundt Construction and other firms as “project team members,” even though Navajo law requires that Navajo firms be given preference. (In another part of the bill, the partners say they are bound by Navajo hiring practices.)

Those against the development have formed a group called Save the Confluence, which has gathered more than 31,500 online signatures opposing the Escalade and keeps tabs on the project.

The split has pitted neighbor against neighbor in this rural community.

“We’re all related,” Frank Martin said. “We’re cousins. We’re brothers.”

Another investment opportunity?

President Theodore Roosevelt once stood on the edge of the Canyon and told Americans to leave it alone, that man could only mar it. But that was easier said than done. When people visited the Canyon, with no garbage pickup, no restrooms, no rules, they trashed the place.

The National Park Service eventually took over management of the park. The agency is required by law to protect natural resources, but also to make those resources available to the public. Those goals frequently clash, but the balancing act has worked as a kind of check and balance over the years. Today, developed parts of the South Rim can get crowded and noisy, with the occasional traffic jam, but the rest of the park is quiet and uncrowded.

“The South Rim is a necessary evil,” said Rich Rudow, who has hiked thousands of miles in the Canyon. The Park Service, for all its faults and challenges, manages a variety of experiences — hikes, overlooks, river trips, mule rides — and plays a critical role in protecting the Canyon.

Without that context, the South Rim looks to many like a giant gathering of people with money to spend, a mall with a view, a place to make a buck. It’s easy to see how the Navajos might look at the Canyon and its tourism as just another outsider business, especially when seen through the filter of Confluence Partners LLC, with its charts and graphs and income projections, a circle of tourism, millions of dollars just driving by, and the promise: “If you build it, they will come.”

“These developers don’t have to adhere to the idea of conserving the place for the future, and that’s the problem,” Rudow said. Developers see millions of visitors not as a drain on park resources or an intrusion on natural quiet, but as an investment opportunity, and “their only responsibility is to their shareholders,” Rudow said.

American Indian tribes were frequently shoved aside to create many national parks, but the Hualapais, Navajos and Havasupais, who still live in and around Grand Canyon, have long memories, and “their story is intimately woven into the landscape itself,” said Kevin Fedarko, author of “The Emerald Mile,” a book that recounts a legendary 1983 boat trip through the Canyon.

“What’s happening right now is kind of justified, when you think about it,” he said. “We, as a society at large, we kicked these people out of their homes, we told them they had no business being inside these places, we wrote them out of the picture. And we didn’t lift a finger to help them.”

Historians have begun to insert tribal stories back into the narrative, and, moving forward, the tribes “need to be part of the conversation,” Fedarko said.

The Navajos have been slow to embrace tourism, but the evidence suggests they’re getting better at it. A Navajo-owned hotel at Monument Valley offers great views, and it’s easier to pick up a recreation permit on the west side than it was 10 years ago. Groups such as NavajoYES build trails and promote outdoorrecreation programs for tribal youths.

If the Navajos pass the bill, lawsuits will almost certainly follow. The Hopis have passed a resolution against the project. The Zunis and the All Pueblo Council of Governors have passed similar resolutions. The border between Park Service land and the Navajo Reservation is also in dispute. Groups such as Save the Confluence and the Grand Canyon Trust are not likely to back down, either.

If the council votes it down, it is likely to return someday, like the uranium mines outside the park that keep reopening, the ones that conservationists call zombie mines.

“If the developers lose this battle, they’re not going away,” Rudow said.

Leonard Sloan left the Canyon behind and headed back to town for a meeting, through a labyrinth of dirt and clay, the skinny roads that cover the western part of the reservation. Wild horses ran to water, and cattle grazed. To the south, it was about time for Ernest and Marie to turn the sheep out of the corral. This is Navajo land. It is covered in dirt roads, ancient trails, the footsteps of those who came before, prayer sites, red hands on stone, wild horses, sheep and long-haired goats.

“I hope we can work things out as a community,” Sloan said. “It’s going to be hard, but I hope we can get back to the way we were before the Escalade.” On the way out, he ran into Clyde Wilson, who was on his way out to his piece of land, located about 3 miles from the confluence. Wilson doesn’t like how the issue has divided the community, either, but he didn’t back down an inch. He’s against the Escalade.

“We live here,” he said. “This is our land. Now, they want to take it back.”