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

> Every year, Hualapai Elders, youth and specialists travel down the Colorado River to check on the places in the Grand Canyon that matter most to their people. In 2012 they visited 24 sacred and cultural sites and found that visitors’ trails, graffiti and moved artifacts were doing more damage than floods or dam releases. Their report shows how Traditional Ecological Knowledge can sit alongside photo records and plant transects in caring for a landscape.

Summary by Kersey Lawrence, Original Wisdom. Updated 9 November 2026. Page: https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2013-jackson-kelly-hubbs-evaluating-hualapai-cultural-resources/

## Citation and access

- **Authors:** Loretta Jackson-Kelly, Dawn Hubbs, Carrie Cannon and Arthur M. Phillips III
- **Year published:** 2013
- **Journal or source:** Report by the Hualapai Tribe Department of Cultural Resources, submitted to the Bureau of Reclamation, Upper Colorado Regional Office
- **Full citation:** Jackson-Kelly, L., Hubbs, D., Cannon, C. and Phillips, A. M., III. 2013. Evaluating Hualapai cultural resources along the Colorado River, May and August 2012. Report submitted to the Bureau of Reclamation, Upper Colorado Regional Office, Salt Lake City, Utah. Hualapai Department of Cultural Resources, Peach Springs, Arizona. 103 pp.
- **Access status:** Publisher link only
- **Where to find it:** https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Evaluating+Hualapai+Cultural+Resources+Along+the+Colorado+River%2C+May+and+August+2012+Jackson-Kelly

## Tags

- **Region:** North America > United States
- **Methods and technology:** Interviews; Survey instruments
- **Data type:** Existing data; New field data
- **Observer qualification:** Not needed
- **Discipline:** Anthropology; Human dimensions; Indigenous knowledge; Just interesting
- **Year published:** 2013

## Detailed keywords

- **Species:** No animals were studied. Animals mentioned in passing: a beaver chewing the Goodding willow at Granite Park (which the Principal Investigator says helped the tree sprout new growth; the report says beaver damage is now virtually non-existent because of beaver management controls); tamarisk beetles killing a saltcedar stand at Mohawk Canyon; migratory and nesting birds at Cardenas Marsh (not visited in 2012); “faunal turbation” as an impact category. Culturally important plants monitored or named include Goodding willow, mesquite, arrowweed, desert-broom (Baccharis sarothroides), seepwillow (Baccharis salicifolia), Emory seepwillow (Baccharis emoryi), coyote willow (Salix exigua), saltcedar (Tamarix ramosissima), Anderson wolfberry (Lycium andersonii), Fremont wolfberry, Arizona cotton, gray-thorn, Indian tobacco, bear-grass, prickly-pear, globemallow, cat-tails, giant reed, horsetails, Bermuda grass, camelthorn and Isocoma acradenius.
- **Location and habitat:** Colorado River Corridor through the Grand Canyon, Arizona, United States, from Lee’s Ferry (River Mile 0) to Pierce Ferry (River Mile 280.5); the Hualapai Reservation covers River Mile 165 to 273. Riparian beaches, deltas, side canyons, springs, terraces and benches. Twenty-four Traditional Cultural Properties visited in 2012, among them National Canyon, Mohawk Canyon, Vulcan’s Anvil, Whitmore Canyon, Hematite Mine, Granite Park, Pumpkin Springs, Three Springs Canyon, the Little Colorado River, Deer Creek, Havasu Creek, Shinumo Canyon, Salt Mine and Elves Chasm.
- **Topics:** Hualapai Traditional Cultural Properties (TCPs); Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK); cultural resource monitoring; archaeology (roasting features, rock shelters, rock writing, artifacts); ethnobotany; sacred springs and mineral sites; historic travel routes; effects of Glen Canyon Dam flows (high flows, fluctuating flows, lack of recharge); flash floods; drought; visitor impacts (“trailing” here means foot trails worn by visitors, not following tracks), vandalism and graffiti, collection piles and moved artifacts, visitor-built pools; public education; trail closure; Elders’ oral histories; passing knowledge to youth.
- **Statistics or models:** Impact attributes scored in the field on a 5-point scale, 0 (absent) to 4 (severe), checked against the previous year’s ratings and photos; counts of impact attributes per year, 2008 to 2012 (88 site visits); line-intercept plant transects reported as percent cover; repeat photography. Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) of interview text is proposed for future seasons, not used. Inconsistency in the report: the management summary names Whitmore Helipad (TCP 025), Granite Park, Pumpkin Springs and Three Springs Canyon as the four heavily impacted TCPs, but Table 5 rates Three Springs Canyon 2 (moderate) for both natural and human impacts and rates eight other TCPs 3 (heavy) for human impacts; the conclusions list Whitmore Canyon (TCP 007) instead of Whitmore Helipad.
- **Data type:** New field data: river trips 17 to 29 May and 3 to 10 August 2012 (the 20th such trip), with interviews of participants. Existing data: monitoring results from 2008 to 2011, earlier photos, plant transects set up in 1996, and recorded reflections from the 2010 trip.

## Synopsis

### 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.

### 8. Implications for tracking (Original Wisdom's observations)

_These are Original Wisdom's observations, not the authors'._

- The report contains no animal tracking, but its monitors read human sign on the land year after year: trails growing deeper and wider, new side trails, artifacts moved between visits, and scuff marks on a sacred spring. Comparing each site with photographs from earlier years is a simple way to see change that a single visit would miss.

## Cite this summary

Lawrence, K. 2026. Summary of: Evaluating Hualapai Cultural Resources Along the Colorado River, May and August 2012 (Jackson-Kelly and Hubbs et al., 2013). Original Wisdom, Tracking Literature. https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2013-jackson-kelly-hubbs-evaluating-hualapai-cultural-resources/