Coleen Kaska, a former Havasupai tribal council member, shares her ancestral connections to the Grand Canyon and surrounding lands. Watch the video ›
Videography by Deidra Peaches, Paper Rocket Productions
View the other videos in the series: Leigh Kuwanwisiwma (Hopi), Loretta Jackson-Kelly (Hualapai), Nikki Cooley (Navajo), and Jim Enote (Zuni) ›
COLEEN KASKA: My name is Coleen Kaska. I am a member of the Havasupai Tribe. My people, Havasu ‘Baaja, which means "people of the blue-green waters."
My parents have always told me about this area when I was growing up in the village of Supai.
Right now, the National Park Service is celebrating their centennial year of 100 years of being a national park, but for my people, and other tribes around in this area, it’s really not a celebration. Once it became a national park, my people were restricted from this area.
An area about south of here called the Red Butte area, Wii'i Gdwiisa — it is our place of emergence where when the world was flooded with so much water, they put this little girl in a canoe, or a boat, where she floated for days. But that’s where she landed at. At Red Butte, the top of Red Butte. So that is our place of emergence. And Red Butte area, for my people, is a traditional cultural property. To this day, anybody, any president, whoever’s in charge, can easily change that with the stroke of a pen.