27 min

A generational battle: How a tribe’s concern over mining contamination on ancestral homelands brought Biden to Arizona Tapped

    • News Commentary

For people who visit or call Grand Canyon National Park home, the water issues mainly come around moving water up to the rim where the homes, hotels, and other businesses sit. But, head downstream to one of the most remote tribal nations in America, and the water issues are very different. The Havasupai people's land sits in the canyon, surrounded on all sides by the park. They're not worried about pumping the water up. Their worries are about what trickles down. Upstream from them sits an area where uranium mining was once plentiful. And that atomic-age history is causing concerns about water quality.

For people who visit or call Grand Canyon National Park home, the water issues mainly come around moving water up to the rim where the homes, hotels, and other businesses sit. But, head downstream to one of the most remote tribal nations in America, and the water issues are very different. The Havasupai people's land sits in the canyon, surrounded on all sides by the park. They're not worried about pumping the water up. Their worries are about what trickles down. Upstream from them sits an area where uranium mining was once plentiful. And that atomic-age history is causing concerns about water quality.

27 min