The people of the blue-green waters. His village is home to the most remote church in the US and is also interestingly the only place in the US with a mule delivery system.
Among the eleven native nations with historical connections to the territory surrounding Grand Canyon National Park, the Havasupai Today, they are the only tribe that still lives, a thousand years later, within the famous geological colossus of Arizona, USA.
Long before the arrival of European colonizers, the indigenous group was called Havasu’baaja (“people of the blue-green waters”), in honor of Havasu Creek, the watercourse that runs through the indigenous reserve and which forms waterfalls and pools with these colors.
Havasu Falls
Lifestyle
Originally semi-nomadic, the Havasupai followed a seasonal cycle. During the winter, the community moved to the high pine forest areas above the Canyon, where they hunted, collected wild plants, fruits and seeds and traded. In the summer, they went down into the valley to grow corn, beans, melons and pumpkins in irrigated fields, according to the tribe’s official.
The dwellings also varied depending on the season: in the Canyon they used simple structures made of branches and clay and in the higher areas they made lighter shelters.
The Havasupai language is part of the Yuman family, belonging to the Hokan linguistic group. In the spiritual realm, many inhabitants of Supai (the main village at the bottom of the valley, now inhabited by about 200 people) today follow the Havasupai Bible Church, considered the most remote church in the USA. But traditional beliefs were based on shamanism, dreams and spirits, with a strong belief in an afterlife world where the soul traveled to a celestial realm under a great dome.
Expelled and threatened by the mines
With the creation of Grand Canyon National Park in 1919, the Havasupai were confined to a small area at the bottom of the Canyon.
“My people were locked out of this area,” Coleen Kaska, a former member of the Havasupai tribal council.
They were no longer able to access the ancestral lands of the plateau that supported their annual cycle of survival. Only in the 1970s did the North American government return around 101,000 hectares to the tribe, recognizing part of their historical rights.
However, other threats emerged. In 2024, according to the magazine, the transport of ore began mined uranium from a contested mine south of the park. The Havasupai, with the support of other native nations, denounce the risk of desecration of sacred sites and fear that mining activity will jeopardize the very continuity of the community which, in the words of its tribal council, considers the Canyon its ancestral and spiritual home.
Difficult to access
Today it is possible to visit Supai, but to get there, you have to do it no roads: If you don’t have a helicopter, you need to walk about 13 kilometers.
All visitors require prior authorization and most choose to camp in an area more than 3 kilometers from the village. Even so, the village continues to be served by the US Post Office: correspondence arrives with the help of… mulesas you can see.
Tomás Guimarães, ZAP //
