Walking in the Footsteps of Our Ancestors

Young Indigenous leaders and knowledge holders raft the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.

BY AMBER BENALLY

The sky is glistening a golden orange and the sounds of the Colorado River are roaring, a steady echo in the background. The day is coming to a close, and I’m about to spend my final night within the walls of the Grand Canyon. As we sit at Pumpkin Springs, there is magic in the air. We’ve just completed a historic trip. The seasoned river guides who have accompanied us on this journey say the power of this trip is unlike any other they’ve led. Where is that power coming from? It’s exuding from the 14 young Indigenous leaders who sit in a circle around me.

The author with RIISE river trip participants during a stop to cool off in the water. AMBER BENALLY

The Rising Leaders Program at the Grand Canyon Trust mobilizes young people to act on environmental and social issues within their communities. In 2019, I sat at the table with five other women as we dreamed up a river trip through the Grand Canyon that has long been needed. In a collaboration with Grand Canyon Youth, we organized an eight-day motor trip through the Grand Canyon. Our goal was to connect young Indigenous leaders from the 11 associated tribes of the Grand Canyon region with their elders. We called the trip Grand Canyon RIISE, short for Regional Intertribal Intergenerational Stewardship Expedition. It would be only the third-ever all-Indigenous youth river trip through the Grand Canyon.

The comfort of being with other Native American people in our home built confidence in myself and motivated me to be great through my culture and traditions. It was really coming together through the art of bringing Native youth together.

—Tryston Wakayuta, Hualapai/Hopi

The creation myth of the National Park Service is that it cordoned off wild, pristine, uninhabited natural spaces and gave everyone the opportunity to interact with them. However, in reality, Indigenous people were often forced from their homelands to make room for national parks. The establishment of Grand Canyon National Park removed Indigenous people from the landscape and from their ancestral spaces. The truth is Indigenous people have been excluded from the Grand Canyon since the park’s creation in 1919, excluded from a landscape they were originally part of and that they stewarded.

An afternoon on the river. AMBER BENALLY

Growing up a short one-hour drive from the Grand Canyon in Tuba City, on the Navajo Nation, my interaction with the park was limited. Each fall season, my family would load up in my grandmother’s pickup truck and drive toward the Grand Canyon to collect firewood for the upcoming winter. After wood hauling, we would eat sandwiches and gaze out across the canyon while we dreamed about how our ancestors interacted with this place. 

RIISE is a part of my everyday thoughts. I still think about my friends from then, and I hope we always keep each other in mind. I think of the places we’ve seen, the stars we laughed under, the stories we shared, and the love we gave to the canyon. I’m thankful every day that we all endured a July in the Grand Canyon and I still take the chance to think and talk about it.

—Alexiana Mitchell, Diné

Later I moved away and attended my tribal college, Diné College in Tsaile, Arizona, where I met my new friends. It was then, when I organized a camping trip, that I learned a majority of my friends had never even seen the Grand Canyon. This fact astonished me because living in Tuba City, thousands of tourists traveled through my hometown each summer as they made their way to the Grand Canyon from across the United States and around the world. Whereas my friends, who lived mere hours away, had never made the journey. When I asked why, they all shared similar answers. 

RIISE river trip participants during a stop at Stone Creek, in the Grand Canyon. AMBER BENALLY

“There’s no reason,” they said. Or, “I don’t belong there.” 

This narrative weighed heavily on my mind, and helped direct me on my path to increasing Indigenous access to different spaces. It is the moment that led me to the Grand Canyon Trust. Three years after I started at the Trust, we came up with the idea for the intertribal, intergenerational Grand Canyon river trip to bring young Native leaders back to their ancestral lands to learn from their elder tribal relatives the histories and stories of the region.

Shaileen Gonzalez (Hualapai), Phoebe John (Diné), Samuel Toledo (Diné), Autumn Gillard (Cedar Band of Paiutes), and Sequoyah Wakayuta (Hualapai and Hopi) converse during a stop at Stone Creek. AMBER BENALLY

After three years of planning and navigating a worldwide pandemic, the need to get young Indigenous people together was even more urgent. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Navajo Nation was disproportionately affected and lost countless community members. What was even more disheartening was realizing that we were losing knowledge holders who held our traditional stories and sacred teachings. The time to learn from our elders was becoming much more finite than I had previously imagined. 

The RIISE trip was like a rebirth or a cleanse of sorts. I went in with negative thoughts and bad emotions and came back out a new man. My confidence was better than ever, and I saw the world differently.

 —Darren Castillo, Diné

So, we put out the call for young Indigenous leaders from the Grand Canyon region to float down the Colorado River with Indigenous knowledge holders. We received over 150 applications from across Native America, from relatives in the Southwest to those near the Great Lakes. The selection process was challenging as we could bring only a fraction of these young leaders downriver. In the end, we selected participants based on essays they wrote sharing what made them good representatives for their tribes and communities.

Sequoyah Wakayuta (Hualapai and Hopi) sketches during art night when participants shared their favorite scenes from the canyon. AMBER BENALLY

On July 11, 2022, I unloaded my bags at the Grand Canyon Youth office and met the 14 young people who would be joining me downriver. Additionally, I met the other three knowledge holders: Autumn Gillard (Cedar Band of Paiutes), Bennett Wakayuta (Hualapai and Hopi), and Sarana Riggs (Chishi Diné). The room was filled with emotions, ranging from nervousness and shyness to excitement. Folks fiddled with their bags or made sure they had the right number of carabiners. That night at the Lees Ferry Campground, the air remained hot even after sunset while participants slowly began to chat amongst themselves. 

My favorite memory from RIISE was when we hit the Hualapai boundary and camped. It was a cold and stormy night and I had two tents up where all the women on the trip got to talk while the boys all talked in the structure they built.

—Shaileen Gonzalez, Hualapai

The following day, we all gathered on the shores of the Colorado River. This trip was designed to connect young Indigenous leaders with the land, the river, each other, and the histories and knowledge of the canyon. But before even stepping foot in the river, myself and the three knowledge holders shared a prayer with the young people, asking each of our own deities to protect us, to nourish us, to help us understand and be brave, and to guide us as we made our way down the Colorado River.

Relaxing at camp for the evening. AMBER BENALLY

Each day on the river was full of new stories to tell and new teachings to learn. Out of the 14 young people, only two had been down the river before. Our first day was filled with adrenaline and maybe some feelings of homesickness. Exhausted, we trekked up the side of a sandy hill and eased into the silence of the canyon. It had been a hard first day. It was the middle of July and temperatures stayed around 105 degrees, even as the sun set. That first night everyone heaved their tents up the hill, but no one bothered to put one up. Just after sunset, the thunder crackled above us, and a huge rainstorm poured down on our campsite. Everyone scrambled through the pounding rain to fit tent poles together and battle the raging wind to get rain flies on or secure tents with anything they could find. In my 10 years of working with young people, that frantic and drenching tent-assembly was the best teambuilding exercise I have ever been a part of.

The confluence of the Little Colorado and Colorado rivers in the Grand Canyon. RICK GOLDWASSER

The next few days were filled with emotion and rawness as we journeyed through sacred places like the confluence, where the Colorado River meets the Little Colorado River, or heard about the injustices that Diné (Navajo) people faced at the site of the proposed Escalade project, where outside developers wanted to build a resort and tramway to ferry up to 10,000 tourists a day to the sacred confluence. But on the fourth day, as we journeyed up the steep cliffs to Nankoweap, the feeling of spiritual connection was at its peak.

Building a shelter out of driftwood in the rain on one of the last days in the canyon (they slept in it that night). AMBER BENALLY

That night, we joined each other in our nightly talking circle, and one of our young seasoned river runners, Tryston Wakayuta, spoke. The day quickly turned to night, until the stars were the only thing that lit up our talking circle. Tryston expressed the power of the day by saying, “We are walking in the footsteps of our ancestors.” He shared that he had been down the river multiple times, but that this was the first time, with his peers, that he’d really felt the power at Nankoweap. We all took that moment in, and reflected about how the power of the canyon was not only bringing us together, but healing some parts within each of us.

My favorite memory is hearing stories from my peers. Whether it was a cultural story or a life story, some of the conversations with others I will never forget. The river trip, I think, has really opened up my eyes to how I view life, such that I view it in a new light, learning from how far our people have come.

—Wenona Tonegates, Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians

There were many stops on this river trip that will live in my heart as among the most transformative moments that I’ve experienced. I’m sure those stories, teachings, and lessons will stay with these young Native leaders too. But the one I will always hold onto is that final evening sitting at Pumpkin Springs. As the sky glimmered golden, knowledge holder Bennett Wakayuta sang two melodic songs in his native Hualapai language. As a group, we had heard the songs at least twice each day, and they were the kind of melodies that stay in your brain, even later, when you’re falling asleep. 

Sam Toledo (right) snaps a selfie with new friends Phoebe John (center) and Alexiana Mitchell (left). SAM TOLEDO

That final evening Bennett invited everyone — the young people, the guides, and his fellow knowledge holders — to sing his songs with him. He said that he had heard the young people humming his songs or singing them while they set up camp every evening. He began singing, deep and low, and progressively louder, and all around him we hummed, or sang the words that we knew. As he continued to sing, he raised his hand higher in the air, encouraging everyone to sing louder. In that moment, the group’s voices reverberated off the canyon walls, and as the sun set, it was the most beautiful closing to a time spent together. A time that was focused on healing, sharing, hard truths, reflecting on trauma that might not have been brought up in any other setting, and wholly being there for each other. 

As I sit at my screen and reflect on that journey, I am excited to know that the future is bright for the inclusion of Indigenous peoples of all ages within the Grand Canyon. Advocacy efforts like the Save the Confluence grassroots movement to protect the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers, the education of river guides within the canyon, the education of visitors above the rim, and the overall push for Indigenous presence and truth-telling at Grand Canyon National Park are what young people should be learning and one day leading.

Amber Benally (Diné/Hopi/Zuni) manages the Rising Leaders Program at the Grand Canyon Trust.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The views expressed by Advocate contributors are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Grand Canyon Trust.