Evaluating Hualapai Cultural Resources Along the Colorado River, May and August 2012

1. What they did

The Hualapai Tribe’s traditional lands run along the Colorado River through the whole Grand Canyon. Each year the Hualapai Department of Cultural Resources (HDCR) runs a monitoring river trip for the Bureau of Reclamation, to see how the river and its visitors are affecting places of cultural importance to the Hualapai, called Traditional Cultural Properties (TCPs). These include plant and paint gathering areas, springs, sacred sites, archaeological sites, historic travel routes and rock art.

In May and August 2012, a team of 17 participants, including Hualapai consultants, Hualapai youth, an ethnobotanist and a consulting botanist, with eight boat crew, visited 24 TCPs. At each site they:

• Scored impacts. Natural impacts (erosion, deposition, flooding, drought, plant competition, turbation) and human impacts (trailing by visitors, camping, vandalism, collection piles, picking, vegetation clearing, Glen Canyon Dam flows, noise and visual intrusion), each rated from 0 (absent) to 4 (severe) and compared with the previous year’s ratings and photographs.
• Matched photographs with those from earlier years.
• Read plant transects for culturally important plants at National Canyon and Granite Park, and set up new monitoring at Mohawk Canyon.
• Interviewed participants with questions built on Hualapai Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), covering the cultural significance of fauna, cultural affiliation, ethnobotany, early material culture, ancestral cremations and burials, and recreation and tourism.

The report opens with a long account of Hualapai beliefs: the river and everything in the corridor (water, rocks, plants, insects, fish and wildlife) is seen as a conscious living being, and the river is the Ha’yi’ đađa, the “Backbone of the River”.

2. What they found

Impacts across 2008 to 2012

• Over 88 site visits from 2008 to 2012, the TCPs as a whole were impacted more than the ethnobotanical and archaeological resources. The 2012 counts are inflated because 24 sites were visited instead of the usual 15 to 18.
• For culturally important plants, erosion, flooding and drought were the main natural impacts. Drought seemed to ease after the high flows of 2011 and to increase again in 2012.
• Trailing by visitors was the main human impact on plant areas, followed by vegetation clearing.

The 2012 sites

• Total ratings were 36 for natural impacts and 52 for human impacts.
• Granite Park and Pumpkin Springs had the highest human impact rating (4, severe). At Granite Park, all the artifacts noted in the rock shelter in 2008 were gone and new graffiti covered its walls. At Pumpkin Springs, people standing on and jumping off the “Pumpkin” had left scuff marks on this sacred spring.
• At Three Springs Canyon, artifacts near the grinding stones had been moved, removed or replaced.
• A flash flood on 16 July 2012 scoured National Canyon and Mohawk Canyon.
• Sites that were hard to reach or had restricted access showed few impacts. Sites with heavy visitor access showed high human impacts.
• Visitor numbers and activities kept the Hualapai from completing traditional ceremonies at several sites.

Plants

• The National Canyon flash flood removed nearly all vegetation from two transects: cover fell to about 5% on one and to zero on the other. Unlike after the 1996 flood, whole plants were removed, so recovery will depend on new plants arriving.
• At Mohawk Canyon, a new transect will follow what replaces a saltcedar stand being killed by tamarisk beetles, and repeat photography will follow a slope of Anderson wolfberry, a traditional food plant, likely grown from seeds discarded by people in the past.
• The Granite Park transects were fairly stable, with dense vegetation; one transect dipped slightly for the first time in a decade.

3. What they concluded

• Human impacts, mainly trailing, collection piles and vandalism, are doing the most to reduce the integrity of several culturally significant areas. River flow changes affect the sites nearest the river, sometimes for the better (high flows flushed algae from Pumpkin Springs) and sometimes for the worse.
• The monitoring program aims to bring Hualapai TEK into its methods and to give the Bureau of Reclamation a fuller picture of how Glen Canyon Dam affects cultural and biological resources. This lets Elders, the keepers of TEK, pass their knowledge of the river to the next generation of Hualapai monitors.
• The authors suggest a future “Needs and Condition” assessment, joined with TEK, to set priorities for management and catch damage early, while also asking whether intervention is socially wanted.
• For 2013 they recommend annual or two-yearly monitoring and photo matching at each TCP, trail work or closures (with the National Park Service taking the lead), public education about sacred sites and archaeology, botanical surveys where none exist, continued plant transects and more interviews with Elders.

6. Other technologies, skills or innovations

• The Hualapai Colorado River Corridor TCP Evaluation Database, linked to in-field evaluation forms, holds ratings and comments for comparison across years.
• Repeat photography from fixed photo points, used in place of transects on a steep, unstable slope at Mohawk Canyon to avoid causing erosion.
• Line-intercept plant transects, relocated after the flood from rocks along the old line and earlier photos.
• Video-recorded reflections from monitors on the river.
• A proposal to use Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) software to code interview text and turn it into measurable patterns.

7. Implications for conservation (from the paper)

• Visitor trails, vandalism and the moving or taking of artifacts are among the greatest threats to Hualapai cultural sites in the Grand Canyon; public education and trail management could reduce them.
• Dam operations shape the river corridor, and flows can help or harm plant communities and sacred springs.
• Protecting these places does not mean leaving them “in a sterile environment”: the Hualapai seek long-term sustainable use, including gathering plants and minerals, hunting and fishing rights, and continuing their cultural practices.