Free Republic

On the rim of the Grand Canyon, there is an area that is not part of Grand Canyon National Park. This land does not belong to the federal government. It belongs to the Navaho people. The Navaho tribe, as such, has the right to develop its tribal land to bring tourism, money, and jobs to its population. But this kind of thing gives out-of-town environmentalists and the government employees who run the park a sad. The New York Times article on a proposed $1 billion development actually features quite a few viewpoints, mostly fairly, but it frames the whole...

EAST RIM OF THE GRAND CANYON, Ariz. — Renae Yellowhorse stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon, 26 bumpy miles across the Painted Desert from the nearest paved road, not a glint of civilization in sight. Ms. Yellowhorse, 52, who has lived her whole life on this Navajo land, cast an arm over the gulf sweeping out to the horizon, pointing to where the Colorado River and the Little Colorado meet in a dazzling burst of deep blue 3,000 feet below. “This is where the tram would go,” she said. “This is the heart of our Mother Earth. This...

'The Los Angeles Times's Julie Cart reported on Sunday of plans to build "restaurants, hotels and shops" on Navajo Indian land adjacent to the eastern portion of the Grand Canyon. The 420-acre Grand Canyon Escalade proposal would also feature an eight-person gondola that would take tourists on a 10-minute ride to the canyon floor, she writes, "where they would stroll along an elevated riverside walkway to a restaurant at the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers". Continue reading the main story “ Start Quote The average person can't ride a mule to the bottom of the canyon” End...

I find the Catholic Church one of the most uplifting organizations to have risen from the human family because of the extraordinary art it has inspired and the majesty it has stylized in its ritual. I will never forget how my brother used to love to go into the neighborhood cathedral because he said that it was so calm and so beautiful and was a refuge from the heat or the cold of the outside world. But in a time as vulgar as ours, when we have trouble finding things to believe in that are beyond our bodies or beyond...