After a cruel past, time for repairs.
It is in this logic that the authorities of the Grand Canyon, in the United States, wanted to register, by operating a highly symbolic name change.
The Indian Garden, the well-known site and stopping point of the Bright Angel Trail (one of the most famous trails in the national park), will now be called the Havasupai Gardens.
A gesture far from trivial, as underlined by an official press release unveiled on November 21.
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Because this new name refers to members of the Havasupai tribe.
The latter, present on the site for several generations, were driven out in 1926 by the authorities of the National Park Service, the federal agency responsible for managing national parks.
The area, which the Havasupai called Ha'a Gyoh, then became the Indian Garden.
Despite this violent eviction, these Amerindian people remained linked to these lands.
Indeed, the Havasupai consider themselves, by their beliefs, as the guardians of the Grand Canyon, in charge of its preservation.
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"Right This Wrong"
"The expulsion of the Havasupai from Ha'a Gyoh, [land] associated with the offensive name of Indian Garden, had detrimental and lasting effects on the Havasupai families who lived there and their descendants
," said Thomas Siyuja, honorary president of the tribe, in the press release.
“Each year, approximately 100,000 people visit the area to hike the Bright Angel Trail, largely unaware of this history.
Renaming this sacred place to Havasupai Gardens will finally right that wrong.”
Already, the administration of the park is reporting this change on its website, but also in the documentation related to the Grand Canyon.
Signs and other information points are also being modified to reflect the new name.
A ceremony is also planned for the spring of 2023 to celebrate this new page in history.
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On the field of semantics, the Grand Canyon is not the only one to want to make amends.
In 2021, a ski resort in California, then known as Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows, changed its name to Palisades Tahoe.
The management has in fact judged that the term "squaw" (a word with racist and sexist connotations supposed to designate a woman of indigenous origin) was not appropriate.
At the time, the governing bodies wanted to include members of the Washoes, a tribe present in California and Nevada, in their thinking.
A symbolic gesture.
