Native Voices Reframe History in New Grand Canyon Film

Coleen Kaska, former Havasupai Council member, says, "The water does not say that I belong to you. The water does not say, you know, I’m going to go this way for these people over here. The water has its own source, its own nature. It does not belong to anybody, it belongs to everybody." Photo Deidra Peaches, courtesy of Grand Canyon Trust

From left to right: Jim Enote (Zuni), Loretta Jackson-Kelly (Hualapai), Leigh Kuwanwisiwma (Hopi), Coleen Kaska, (Havasupai), and Nikki Cooley (Diné).  Kuwanwisiwma says in the film, "from the Grand Canyon, the spirits travel throughout the world as clouds." Credit: Deidra Peaches, courtesy of Grand Canyon Trust.

Native Voices Reframe History in New Grand Canyon Film

With an all-Native cast and production team, “Voices of the Grand Canyon” shifts the storytelling power to Native peoples who, for more than a century, have been excluded from the dominant narrative of Grand Canyon National Park. Their violent treatment and histories of forced removal from the Grand Canyon are mirrored in national parks across the country. The film has run the festival circuit over the last year, but is being released to the public online today for the first time. It won best documentary at the Indie Film Fest in Phoenix in February 2022, has been accepted into a dozen festivals around the world, and will be playing periodically at Grand Canyon National Park’s visitor center on the South Rim.

By Ashley Davidson
Communications Director
Grand Canyon Trust

FLAGSTAFF, Arizona —Deepen your understanding of the United States’ most iconic national park in the new short documentary “Voices of the Grand Canyon,” which launched online today in advance of Grand Canyon National Park’s 104th anniversary on Feb. 26, 2023.


Told by Native people, through the lens of Navajo (Diné) filmmaker Deidra Peaches, and alongside Native producers, composers, and artists, “Voices of the Grand Canyon” shares stories most tourists never hear — stories of deep cultural connection, movement and migration, hardship and struggle, origins, reverence, and awe.

Watch the 12-minute film at
https://www.grandcanyontrust.org/voicesfilm

On-screen, Jim Enote (Zuni), Nikki Cooley (Diné), Leigh Kuwanwisiwma (Hopi), Coleen Kaska, (Havasupai), and Loretta Jackson-Kelly (Hualapai) challenge viewers to look beyond the bucket list status of Grand Canyon National Park and see it as a homeland to Native peoples.

“The archaeological sites are our footprints. It is evidence that the Hopi clans traveled through there,” says Leigh Kuwanwisiwma, former director of the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office. “The Grand Canyon is very special to us. It’s our genesis.”

“Understandably, many people think of the Grand Canyon as a place for recreation…but it is definitely a cultural landscape,” says Jim Enote, Zuni tribal member, traditional farmer, and CEO of the Colorado Plateau Foundation. “The Zuni people came from the Grand Canyon.”

Jim Enote, Zuni tribal member, traditional farmer, and CEO of the Colorado Plateau Foundation, explains how rock art in the Pueblo of Zuni reveals a deep cultural connection. In the film, Enote says, "I was with my grandparents, and my grandfather took out a cornmeal bag, and walked to the rim of the canyon, away from where there were other tourists and people. And he stood and he prayed there. And he put cornmeal down. And I asked him, “Why is that?” He said “Lukya, Chimik’yana’kya dey’a,” which is Ribbon Falls. We came from there to greet the Sun Father. The Grand Canyon is the place where we emerged from. Chimik’yana’kya dey’a. That’s where the Zuni people came from, the Grand Canyon.

The film doesn’t shy away from sharing the darker history of Grand Canyon National Park either. Coleen Kaska explains how the Havasupai people were pushed off their ancestral lands on the South Rim to make way for hotels, trails, and tourists on the South Rim, and Nikki Cooley, the first Navajo woman to be a commercial river guide in the Grand Canyon, describes how her people fled to the Grand Canyon in the mid-1800s to hide from the U.S. Army.

That experience “taught us as Diné people of what it meant to be survivors,” Cooley says. “It’s just a very sacred place that we must treat very carefully, respectfully, and not think of it as a theme park.”

With an all-Native cast and production team, “Voices of the Grand Canyon” shifts the storytelling power to Native peoples who, for more than a century, have been excluded from the dominant narrative of Grand Canyon National Park. The park encompasses the traditional lands of at least 11 tribes — the Havasupai Tribe, Hopi Tribe, Hualapai Tribe, Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, Las Vegas Band of Paiute Indians, Moapa Band of Paiute Indians, Navajo Nation, Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe, Pueblo of Zuni, and Yavapai-Apache Nation. Their violent treatment and histories of forced removal from the Grand Canyon are mirrored in national parks across the country.

"Six hundred generations of Native peoples' experience in the Grand Canyon is alarmingly unrecognized by so many. The record is about to be set straight — right now,” Enote says.

“Voices of the Grand Canyon” won best documentary at the Indie Film Fest in Phoenix, Arizona in February 2022. It has been accepted into a dozen festivals around the world, including the Flagstaff Mountain Film Festival, American Indian Film Festival (San Francisco, CA), Red Nation Film Festival (Los Angeles, CA), Colorado Environmental Film Festival (Golden, CO), and Quetzalcoatl Indigenous International Film Festival (Quintana Roo, Mexico). You can also catch the film playing periodically at Grand Canyon National Park’s visitor center on the South Rim.

Deidra Peaches, filmmaker, deidra@deidrapeaches.com

Rebekah Chattin, executive assistant to Jim Enote, rchattin@coloradoplateaufoundation.org