True Crime in the Great Outdoors

The most shocking crimes from national parks, camping trips, backpacker murders, and hiking incidents

StrangeOutdoors.com 11/30/24 StrangeOutdoors.com 11/30/24

The disturbing murder of Tomomi Hanamure on the Havasupai Trail

Tomomi Hanamure on the Havasupai Trail Arizona

On May 8, 2006, Japanese tourist Tomomi Hanamure solo headed off to hike to the beautiful Havasu Falls on the Havasupai Indian Reservation in Arizona—it was her 34th birthday—but she never arrived.

After a lodge employee found Tomomi’s bed untouched on May 9, she was reported missing. Her remains were discovered on May 13, along the creek in an eddy above the falls, with 29 stab wounds. This murder was the first recorded homicide of a non—tribal member in Supai.

After six months of investigations by the FBI, a local Havasupai man, 18-year-old Randy Redtail Wescogame, was arrested and charged with Tomomi Hanamure’s brutal murder. He admitted to second-degree murder as part of a plea deal.

In the book written by Annette McGivney, Pure Land, she tells the story of Tomomi and the most brutal murder in the history of the Grand Canyon. The town of Supai, the capital of the reservation, where Tomomi stayed in its lodge, is described as poverty-stricken, crime-ridden, and covered in trash and graffiti. McGivney described the conditions as downright dangerous for visitors.

Physician Tom Myers, coauthor with Michael P. Ghiglieri of “Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon”, a book published in May 2001 covering accounts of all known fatal mishaps in the Grand Canyon, said, “This person was in a frenzy. The killer must have been so psychotic or incoherent. He couldn’t appreciate that he was still stabbing her even though she was unresponsive, basically dead. The coroner noted that the stab wounds came from many different angles. “He was moving. She was moving. It was an all-out fight for her life. This is the most brutal killing in the Grand Canyon in modern times.”

Tribal members from the Havasupai Indian Reservation remain critical of these views from McGivney and other negative perspectives of Supai and the meth use and criminality within it. They counter that drug and alcohol use is common in many deprived areas, not just on Indian reservations; serious crime is low in Supai, and tourists need to avoid solo hiking, especially lone female travelers.

The Havasupai Reservation

The Havasupai Indian Reservation is a Native American reservation for the Havasupai people in Coconino County, Arizona. It borders Grand Canyon National Park, and its capital is Supai, situated at the bottom of Cataract Canyon, one of the tributary canyons. It is considered one of America's most remote Indian reservations, and the tribe still speaks Yuman, one of about 200 indigenous languages in North America.

Havasupai is a combination of the words Havasu, meaning "blue-green water," and pai, meaning "people," and therefore means "people of the blue-green waters."

The Havasupai lived, farmed, and hunted throughout their traditional territory, comprising the canyons and plateaus in and around Havasu Canyon, for centuries before the arrival of Europeans. They farmed in the canyons in spring and summer and moved to the plateau lands for fall and winter. In the 1870s, when European miners, ranchers, and settlers arrived in the Arizona Territory in large numbers, pressure increased to confine the Havasupai and other tribes to small and demarcated reservations. In 1882, President Chester Arthur established the Havasupai Indian Reservation by Executive Order and restricted the tribe to 518 acres in Havasu Canyon. The federal government took the rest of their ancestral lands for public use. According to reports, the Havasupai were unaware of the Executive Order for several years, and the reduction of their lands led to a disruption of the tribe's way of life and constant tension between the tribe and the U.S. government.

In 1908, Theodore Roosevelt designated 832,000 acres of Arizona Territory as the Grand Canyon National Monument. That designation essentially evicted the Havasupai tribe from its vast homeland with the creation of Grand Canyon National Park in 1919 as it surrounded the reservation lands. By agreement with the federal government, the reservation and the trails leading down to it remained sovereign to the Havasupai tribe. The tribe continually lobbied the United States to restore more of their ancestral land to them, although to no avail. In the 1950s, a superintendent of the Grand Canyon, John McLaughlin, proposed to take over the reservation, but the tribe rebuffed him.

Although the Havasupai reservation was established in 1880, the tribe wasn’t confined there until its members were perceived as trespassing in the national park. Havasupai, who lived within the park's boundaries at traditional summer homesites like Indian Garden and Santa Maria Springs, were told to move to the reservation. The Forest Service also evicted the Havasupai from their plateau hunting camps.

By 1920, the area that the Havasupai were allowed to roam was around 518 acres inside Havasu Canyon. The Havasupai attempted to farm year-round, but homes soon appeared rather than fields. Without access to winter hunting grounds, the tribe nearly became extinct several times in the period after 1920. The waterfalls that were part of the reservation had restricted access to the Havasupai, as a 19th-century law allowed miners to live in cabins between Havasu and Mooney Falls. In this sacred area, the tribe had cremated and buried its dead. In 1957, the National Park Service bought out the mining claims, fenced off 62 acres, and established a campground between the falls.

By the 1960s, Supai had only 150 people living there. A 1971 GCNP Master Plan didn’t even acknowledge the existence of the reservation, as Federal officials thought the tribe would die out within a decade or two and that the reservation would become part of the park. The tribe’s struggle to survive caused a deep resentment toward the federal government (especially the NPS) and white people (especially tourists camping on burial sites).

To the Havasupai, the Grand Canyon is a reference point that defines their view of the world. “In addition to the four cardinal directions, the Havasupai have two ways of orienting themselves: in the canyon and away from the canyon. In Havasupai culture, there are two realities: Down There or Up There.

Eventually, the persistence of the tribe began to pay off. In 1968, the tribe won a case against the government through the Indian Claims Commission. The ruling stated that the lands had been taken illegally from the tribe in 1882 and that the tribe had the right to recover the lands by paying the government fair market value. At 55 cents an acre, the land's value was slightly more than one million dollars. However, the tribe still fought to have the lands returned to them without having to pay for them. The tribe found support from the Nixon administration and began to lobby for passage of congressional bill S. 1296, which would return the lands to the tribe.

Finally, in 1975, the U.S. Congress passed the Grand Canyon National Park Enlargement Act, which was signed into law by President Gerald Ford on January 4, 1975. The Act returned 188,077 acres (76,112 ha) of national forest on the Kaibab Plateau to it and returned the falls area. The act stipulated that the tribe manage the campground and leave it open to the public. Native American advocates for the law argued that revenue generated by camping and entrance fees would save the Havasupai from extinction. Soon after the law passed and the tribe agreed to build its tourism enterprise, federal grants funded the construction of public utilities in Supai. The tribe manages a $2.5 million tourism business which supports 500 tribal members. The tribe also receives several million dollars a year of Arizona Indian gaming revenue given to reservations that don’t operate casinos. Unlike other tribes, which usually contract with outside corporations to run their commercial enterprises, the Havasupai insist on operating their own businesses.

The main population centre of the reservation is Cataract Canyon (also known as Havasu Canyon), where the capital of the reservation, Supai, is located. The U.S. Department of Agriculture refers to Supai as "the most remote community" in the contiguous United States, as it is accessible only by helicopter, foot, or horseback and has no paved roads or cell service. Supai has no vehicles and is 8 miles (13 km) from the nearest road.

Notable geographic features include The Great Thumb, Long Mesa, and Tenderfoot Mesa. The main attraction is Havasu Creek, with its aquamarine water due to the presence of travertine; the stream is one of the longest tributaries on the south side of the Colorado River and falls 1,400 feet (430 m) over its course. The stream is renowned for its waterfalls, which include Havasu Falls, Mooney Falls, and Beaver Falls. A fourth well-known fall, Navajo Falls, no longer exists following a devastating flood in 2008. While Navajo Falls has disappeared, the re-routing of the stream created two new falls, Fifty Foot Falls and Little Navajo Falls.

Havasu Falls Trail

The Havasupai Trail is the main trail to Supai, Arizona, and Havasu Falls. Other trails, such as the Topocoba, Moqui, and Kirby trails, are also available. However, these trails are not maintained.

The parking lot at the trailhead is stunning. It is 1000 feet above the valley floor and provides one of the best views of the area.

It begins at Indian Road 18, 80 miles from the closest gas station. It cuts steeply down a series of switchbacks, descending some 3,000 feet through colorful layers of rock. Once you reach the valley floor, the trail bends north and follows the wash for 8 miles into the town of Supai. Along the way, the canyon walls draw closer, and the surroundings become more spectacular, with canyon walls hundreds of feet straight up as you make your way down to Havasu Canyon, where the blue-green waters of Havasu Creek. Approaching mules have the right-of-way and won't stop.

After eight miles, the trail reaches Supai on the Havasupai Reservation. It follows the main road through the town and then continues to Havasu Falls after about two miles, where water drops 100 feet over travertine ledges into turquoise pools surrounded by fern-decked grottos. Beyond this, there Mooney Falls, then Beaver Falls. Some adventurous hikers may choose to go all the way to the confluence with the Colorado River.

This route is part of a multi-day backpacking trip through Havasu Creek Canyon. To hike this area, hikers must get permits from the Havasupai Indian Reservation. There are no day hikes, so if you enter the canyon, you must stay overnight.

Several variations exist, but most hikers stay at the Havasupai Lodge in Supai or the Havasupai Campground near Havasu Falls.

Supai and the Grand Canyon National Park

Pure Land: A True Story of Three Lives, Three Cultures and the Search for Heaven on Earth : Annette McGivney

According to the author of Pure Land, which covers the story behind the murder of Tomomi Hanamure, Annette McGivney, “Like many small, economically impoverished countries still reeling from the effects of colonization, it is a third world, and it lacks the basic safety and public services taken for granted in much of the United States.”

Hiking the path to Havasu Falls means entering the sovereign nation of the Havasupai, where there is a great natural beauty, but life can be brutal for both humans and animals.

She wrote,:

“I was visiting in the off-season, but the residential paths and yards seemed eerily empty. Windows were blown out everywhere and covered with plastic or plywood. This combined with a whirlwind of trash to create the sense that a tornado had touched down just minutes ago and I was following the path of its destruction. Lining the main dirt road and plastered against barbed wire fences were empty cartons of Pampers, U.S. mail crates, old saddles, Backpacker’s Pantry packages, Clif Bar wrappers, CDs, horse tack, abandoned furniture, and lots of plastic Gatorade bottles. Ravens as big as turkeys picked through overflowing bins of garbage. The pungent smell of sewage wafted from an open ditch.

As I walked farther into the village, the canyon became crowded with homes. A maze of dirt paths branching off from the main road led to closely spaced small structures that appeared to be slapped together with whatever wood was available. And attached to nearly every roof was a satellite TV dish. There were also trampolines; in tiny backyards everywhere, children silently bobbed up and down like fish hitting the surface of a lake.”

As we neared the center of town, villagers passed us without eye contact or saying hello. I knew this was normal; it’s just a cultural difference. What wasn’t normal were the decidedly unfriendly glares from young men, some of whom came out of their homes or backyards to check us out.

It was a Tuesday afternoon, a time when school was in session in Arizona; the leering teenagers were most likely high-school dropouts. Because Supai has no high school, kids are sent to government-funded boarding schools in places like Oregon and California.

According to BIA police in Supai, most drop out by them 11th grade and return to the village, bringing the drug and gang culture they picked up with them. Sometimes they help with their families’ packing business, transporting cargo up and down the canyon, but I was told these dropouts mainly just hang around town, drinking whiskey and smoking marijuana and meth.”

Drug use related to violent crime is an issue all over, but the effects of narcotics in a small community like Supai are magnified,” says BIA assistant special agent Jason Thompson, who oversees law enforcement in the agency’s Arizona district. “Three kids on meth is an outbreak down there.” The village delinquents have a reputation for preying on tourists to fund their next hit. “We have four to five people in the tribe right now who are opportunists looking to steal,” BIA officer Kendrick Rocha told me on that January visit.”

Tomomi Hanamure and the hike to Havasu Falls

An independent, adventurous woman who lived near Tokyo in Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan, Tomomi Hanamure enjoyed traveling alone to outdoor destinations worldwide. On several recent birthdays, she had spent time hiking to Phantom Ranch, a lodge on the floor of the Grand Canyon.

This time, she thought she’d head to the town of Supai for her 34th birthday with its lodge, restaurant, and store.

Early on May 8, 2006, she parked her rental car at the Supai trailhead parking lot, which had burned-out cars, dirty toilets, and litter. She locked most of her belongings in the car and loaded a backpack with essentials for the hike to the village and a stay at the lodge. Then, she began descending the steep switchbacks on the well-maintained trail.

Tomomi reached Supai’s main street around noon, busy with hundreds of visitors. She stopped at the café for a drink and then checked into her room at the lodge, which was fully booked during peak season. It's a 25-room hotel run by the tribe at the edge of the village, protected by a high wall and an iron gate that is locked at night. She loaded her daypack for the 2-mile hike to Havasu Falls. She walked out the iron gate of the lodge grounds, past the Havasupai Bible Church and a Falls Trail sign.

The next day, a lodge employee came to clean Tomomi’s room and saw her belongings and a bed no one had slept in. Concerned, the employee contacted the Coconino County sheriff later that day.

The search for Tomomi Hanamure

The search began the next day, May 10, with 40 law enforcement officers and search-and-rescue volunteers participating with the help of the Arizona Department of Public Safety helicopter. Given the 100°F daytime highs and difficult canyon terrain, the search and rescue team knew they had to find Tomomi quickly if she had fallen or been injured.

In addition to checking her car, searchers interviewed tourists along the Falls Trail, at the lodge, and in the campground and checked out places Tomomi might have hiked. No one reported seeing her in the area, but someone reported seeing her on May 9, walking with a tall man who appeared to be Asian and visiting the café with a red-haired, heavily tattooed man with an Irish accent.

On the fourth day of searching, a tribal member swimming near Fifty Foot Falls saw a female body submerged in the water and reported the location to the authorities. Officials couldn’t legally identify the body until an autopsy was performed, but it was clear it was Tomomi, and it was covered in stab wounds.

Officers pronounced the woman dead at the scene at 2:45 p.m. on May 13, 2006. The SAR crew was flown down to help with the extraction, and an FBI dive team searched the pool for evidence.

Autopsy

On May 15, 2006, Coconino County Medical Examiner Lawrence Czarnecki performed an autopsy on the remains. He made a positive identification for Tomomi Hanamure upon finding a small tattoo of a Japanese symbol on her left foot as well as a heart on her lower abdomen. The foot symbol, which comes from a character in her last name, means “flower.”

The coroner’s report said Hanamure had short black hair, was a little over 5 feet tall, fit and muscular, and weighed 130 pounds. She had a green belly button ring and wore a blue short-sleeved shirt, green shorts, and brown hiking boots.

The report stated that she had been stabbed 29 times, and although the autopsy did not reveal physical trauma that might suggest sexual assault, rape was not ruled out. Of the 29 stab wounds, 22 were to the head and neck, a number of them severe enough to be fatal. A single blade that was about 3 inches long and 1 inch wide had sliced the carotid artery on the left side of her neck and punctured her lung. Her skull was chipped from blunt force. The apparent manic nature of the homicide struck pathology experts who evaluated the report for this story.

Catching the killer

Japanese media almost always showed pictures of the Grand Canyon National Park without mentioning the crime happening on the Havasupai Indian Reservation. Law enforcement urged the tribal council to close the trail to Supai to the public until Tomomi’s killer was caught, but instead, they banned all media from the reservation in response, infuriating journalists.

After the body was found, FBI special agent Doug Lintner took over the case and interviewed dozens of Supai residents to pursue leads, and he found people kept changing their stories. BIA officers saw violence in Supai pick-up during the investigation. Henry Kaulaity, the officer in charge, said, “There was retaliation against tribal members who talked to law enforcement; some were verbally harassed, but others were beaten up. Around that time, older tribal members were beat up on the trail for no reason.”

Some said that the murder was caused by a “dark spirit” haunting the village. Others said the murder was an NPS plot to destroy the tribe, and yet more said that a white man had to be the killer.

Tribal members were sure that Neal, the Irishman, was involved.

Neal had been living in Supai for about a month before the murder, sleeping in bushes along the creek or at tribal members homes where he would tell stories that he worshipped goddesses and how Native Americans must fight to get their land back. He had been seen in the café on May 8 talking to Tomomi, and villagers said Neal invited himself to a sweat lodge ceremony the next night and made sexual advances on a Havasupai woman, so he was ejected, and women men assaulted him. Suffering from severe head injuries, Neal was evacuated by helicopter on May 10. Neal, an early person of interest, was interviewed and dismissed as a suspect.

After the murder, Lintner was contacted by local women who’d been assaulted but hadn’t reported the attacks, “These all happened within a few months before or after the murder. They wanted me to know because they thought it might help us find the killer.” Most cases involved young male tribal members making sexually threatening comments to women on the trail or in the campground. In two cases, a woman hiking alone had been grabbed from behind by a man who tried to pull her off the trail, but she had fought him off.

Randy Redtail Wescogame arrested and charged with Tomomi Hanamure murder

In December 2007, the FBI announced that an 18-year-old Havasupai tribal member named Randy Redtail Wescogame was charged with the murder of Tomomi Hanamure, after a six-month-long investigation that was conducted mostly in secret.

Wescogame spent much of his childhood in Arizona’s juvenile corrections system. Law enforcement officials said that in the months before Tomomi’s murder, when Randy was living in Supai and getting into trouble, he was using drugs and had become addicted to meth.

According to the two Bureau of Indian Affairs police officers stationed in Supai, “Randy was a special case. His whole life, he was the black sheep of the tribe. He was a loner.”

Before the U.S. District Judge Mark Aspey in Flagstaff, he was charged with murder, kidnapping and robbery, the theft of cash, credit cards, camera, cell phone and other things of value.

At a detention hearing, the prosecution said he had grown up in Supai and was living there when the murder occurred; he’d spent most of the past six years in juvenile—detention and drug—rehab programs. He had a history of assaults on staff and residents of these facilities. It was also reported he was addicted to “alcohol, marijuana, methamphetamine and other inhalants.”

Wescogame had been in federal custody since late May 2006, when he was arrested for an assault on a local in Supai. Prosecutors said the apparent motive in the murder was robbery.

Randy Wescogame’s parents divorced when he was five, then spent years in tribal court fighting over custody of Randy and his two siblings. When Randy was six, his father, who was the village policeman at the time, was imprisoned for 2 1/2 years for sexual assault. He started misbehaving at school, and by 3rd grade, he was being sent home for attacking teachers and students. His father, Billy, would beat him or wash his mouth out with soap, and his mother had a restraining order placed on Billy to prevent him from seeing his son because she believed he was abusive. By 6th grade, Randy was drinking whiskey and smoking pot and getting sent to tribal court for stealing. From age 13 to 18, he was in and out of juvenile detention for assault, robbery, and substance abuse.

It is believed that Wescogame either lured Tomomi or dragged her off the main trail. Even though the trail to the falls would have been busy in May, the dense vegetation along the creek would have made the struggle hard to see from the main path. The water and screaming swimmers at the falls would also have covered the commotion. That is assuming she had a chance to fight if she was quickly knocked unconscious by a blow to the head.

Tribal Chairman Thomas Siyuja, Sr. wrote that Hanamure’s death remained “a great shock to members of the Havasupai tribe.” The tribe “continues to pray for her family and friends,” he added. After the indictment was announced, the council declared a mourning period through December 17.

Billy Wescogame, Randy’s father, said, “I want the world to know what is going on here, and I want to speak out against the bootleggers and drug dealers who are destroying our tribe. I am not speaking up because of Randy—whatever he did is on him. Bill said he wanted to protect his other children from the village juvenile delinquents. “They’re trying to beat up my daughter and my other kids. They go to parties and come home all bloody. One boy recently chopped up another boy with a machete.” He blamed the violence on alcohol, which is illegal on the reservation, police who don’t enforce the law, parents who don’t discipline their children, and an entrenched bootlegging business. Wescogame said Supai was like a “concentration camp” for tribal members. He said people live in fear of the thugs and drug dealers. “Nobody has rights down here.”

Court finds Wescogame guilty of second degree murder

On September 18, 2006, Randy Redtail Wescogame pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court, Phoenix, AZ, to one count of second-degree murder. He admitted he stabbed Tomomi Hanamure after he was charged with first-degree murder, robbery and kidnapping. The murder charge was reduced to second-degree murder, and the other charges were dropped under a plea agreement.

The plea agreement stipulates that Wescogame spends the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of release and that he waives all rights to a trial or appeal.

Response by tribal members

Tribal Councilwoman, Havasupai Tribe : PARADISE ALWAYS By Carletta Tilousi

Our waterfalls will always be one of Mother Earth’s most glorious places. Our stewardship of this Shangri-La is a challenge and charge. We open our lands to visitors so they too can renew their spirit or simply enjoy our slice of heaven.

In understandably highlighting last year’s unprecedented murder of a tourist, a tragedy that still haunts our people, this magazine’s reporter left an incomplete impression.

Our greatest sympathies and prayers go out to the family of the fallen. But we cannot agree with many of the generalizations about Havasupai in the article.

A troubled youth was arrested for the crime last year. He will be convicted or exonerated. Either way we are taking steps to make sure such a thing, a first at Havasupai, never happens again.

Contrary to the spirit of the article such incidents are not more typical at Supai. Over the years there have been many crimes at Yosemite, Shenandoah and numerous other hikes and attractions. There were 15 murders at national parks in 1995, for example. Despite welcoming 30,000 people a year for decades this is our first such incident.

Even one complaint and certainly one murder is far too many but what town of 30,000 can say such’

Not Laguna Beach, California. Last month the posh community’s signature resort, The Montage, was the scene of 2 fatal shootings. Should people not go there anymore? Of course not.

The journalist made other observations. But she failed to grasp a fundamental concept. Having 30,000 people per year move through our home places an extraordinary burden on our infrastructure. If 30,000 people went through your neighborhood what would happen? It is the responsibility of tourists as much as our people to be considerate and help with trash, disrepair and other things mentioned in the article.

Compounding our challenge is being at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, a further reminder of our collective responsibility.

The journalist also talked a lot about our youth. Like all communities we always look to help our youth, many of whom are wonderful young people dreaming big, working hard and committed to protecting this sacred place.

Our people have always overcome our unique challenges. New tribal councilmembers were recently elected on a platform of change. More public safety personnel have been added to better monitor our residents and tourists. Lodging, bathrooms and other facilities are being upgraded. New cultural tours are being offered. We are working with the Environmental Protection Agency.

And we are open to additional ideas from your readers. We all need to work together to take care of this magical place and to preserve the ways of an ancient people. By so doing Havasupai will continue to be Paradise Found. Paradise Always.

Havasupai Tribal Council : Edmond Tilousi, Bernadine Jones, Colleen Kaska, Carletta Tilousi, Joe Watahomigie, Leandra Wescogame, Supai, Arizona

John Dougherty’s article “Problems in Paradise” paints an unfair picture of the Havasupai people (HCN, 5/28/07). He and another writer, Annette McGivney in Backpacker magazine, make us sound like a lawless community, with gangs running amok. Supai Village is a community where all of us feel safer letting our children out of our sight to play or go to school than we would feel even in Flagstaff. This is a place where we and our visitors don’t have to worry about ourselves the way we would in Phoenix or Los Angeles.

One year ago, the terrible murder of Tomomi Hanamure took place on our reservation. It shocked and grieved us, and even more when we learned one of our people might have done it. Never once in more than 200 years of contact with non-Indians had any of us taken one of their lives, whatever the provocation. We were very proud of that fact.

We are a private people, and suddenly dozens of reporters were clamoring to see the “savages” and point cameras at us. They threatened to disturb the crime scene to the point that the FBI asked us to keep them out. None of us knew what to say or how to handle it. We were in shock. All we wanted was for people to leave us alone to come to terms with this horrible loss while the investigators did their job. We prayed for Tomomi Hanamure’s soul to send her home to her people.

We strive to make our lives the best that we can and to keep our home a place that we are proud to share with our visitors. Your readers need to understand that we would not want to live in an unsafe place. Maybe people think because we are Havasupai and we live on the bottom of a canyon that we are different. We are not. We love our families and our children the same as you, and we feel blessed to live where we do.

Terrible acts take place every day in the cities of the world. Here it happens one time and reporters are still coming after us a year later, trying to make us look as if we are all at fault. What are they after? Do they crave recognition whatever the cost to us? When do we say our own people can no longer swim at the falls, even on our own land, because reporters like Dougherty and McGivney make people afraid of us?

Anything that happens in the country and the world affects us. If the president should decide to divert money and manpower to the borders or to Iraq, it affects how many police we can have or whether we get better health care or support for our school. When American youth begin making and using amphetamines, before long they arrive here. When American television shows hour after hour of violence, it appears on our screens, too. Influences like this do not fit our culture and hurt our young people. These issues face many communities, including yours. We are well aware of them, and we have been working to deal with them. Last year, we approached the Bureau of Indian Affairs for more law enforcement officers, but met delays and excuses. While we are still hoping they will honor their obligations to help us keep our community a good place, we are also looking at whether we need to operate our own law enforcement program.

Law enforcement, however, only makes a partial solution for our young people in trouble. Even if they are a small number, we care about them. Substance abuse counseling, mental health services and conflict resolution all offer ways to recover these young people. Our school needs to reinforce our values. We are not a wealthy community, so it is not easy to put everything we want in place, but we are making every effort.

We feel blessed to be born Havasupai and see a bright future for our people. Visitors have always come to us for who we are. We welcome them, proud to share our canyon home with the world.

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