Word: havasupai
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...reason for the outcry is the innocuous-seeming amendment. It would give the 430-member Havasupai Indian tribe trust title to 185,000 acres of their homelands on the southern rim of Grand Canyon. Now confined to 500 acres on the canyon floor, more than 300 of the Indians are cut off from civilization during the winter, when the eight-mile trail that leads down to their village ices over. With their land back, the Indians say, they could again live on the mesa in winter and graze their cattle there...
...environmentalists cite two major reasons for opposing the return of the Havasupai to the rim. The granting of national-park land to the Indians, they argue, would be a signal for many other tribes to file similar claims. They also fear commercial exploitation of the area that the Havasupai want. "The proposal," says Evans, "turns loose a large part of our most famous national park for private development in the guise of giving it to an Indian tribe...
Sequential Marriage. The Havasupai family structure is almost nonexistent. In a society without privacy, children imitate their elders and begin sexual activity early. Illegitimacy is rampant, birth control ignored. Havasupai men, notes...
Social Anthropologist John Martin, practice "sequential marriages," taking one wife after another. Matches between first cousins are routine; mental retardation is common. Disease, poor diet and high infant mortality combine to give the Havasupai a life expectancy of only 44 years (U.S. average: 70). They also have a suicide rate 15% above the national average...
Until now, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has invested only limited funds and manpower to ease the tribe's plight. Little in the way of imaginative social work has been attempted. Putting shingled rooftops over each Havasupai's head is a questionable response to his needs, and even this will be done only gradually. According to Government plans, five houses will be lowered into the canyon each year, which means that the project will not be completed until...