Indigenous Values
For millennia, Indigenous Peoples have called the Great Bend of the Gila home
Vibrant communities flourished here, thanks to the Gila’s life-sustaining waters. The imprints people left behind are still visible—dwellings, canals, pottery, trail systems, geoglyphs, petroglyphs—and they can still be experienced today.
The descendants of these people include members of the Ak-Chin Indian Community, Cocopah Indian Tribe, Colorado River Indian Tribes, Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, Fort Mojave Indian Tribe, Fort Yuma-Quechan Indian Tribe, Gila River Indian Community, Hopi Tribe, Pueblo of Zuni, Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, Tohono O’odham Nation, Yavapai-Apache Nation, and Yavapai-Prescott Indian Tribe. These sovereign Tribal Nations maintain spiritual and cultural connections to this living landscape.
Federally recognized tribes culturally and historically associated with the Great Bend of the Gila. Map: Catherine Gilman
STATEMENTS OF SUPPORT
“The Gila River Indian Community recognizes the Great Bend of the Gila's value as both a natural and cultural landscape steeped in history and as a place with deep cultural significance to our collective heritage. We are in full support of the introduction of legislation to designate the Great Bend of the Gila as a National Conservation Area.”
— Barnaby V. Lewis, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, Gila River Indian Community
“The traditional lands of the Akimel O’Odham and Piipaash citizens of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community extend from the lower Gila River into the Salt River Valley. The portion of those lands that fall within the proposed Great Bend of the Gila National Conservation Area are considered an important cultural landscape to our community. We strongly support the opportunity to expand protection of this area through a new National Conservation Area.”
— Shane Anton, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community
“The Hopisinom that comprise our mesa villages have deep histories across and beyond Hopituskwa (our ancestral lands), including the Lower Colorado and Gila River regions. Guided by mandates to remember and honor our forebears’ footprints and to care for their homes and resting places, Hopi strongly supports the creation of the proposed Great Bend of the Gila National Conservation Area. We look forward to collaborations with our friends and relatives in the O’odham tribes and nearby to establish a management plan that balances site and landscape protection with the access needed to perpetuate our cultures and languages.”
— Stewart B. Koyiyumptewa, Program Manager/THPO, Hopi Cultural Preservation Office
Banner image: Dawn Kish