Grand Canyon Times

The Havasupai Tribe and Grand Canyon National Park have announced the park's famed Indian Garden will be renamed Havasupai Gardens, honoring the tribe forcibly removed to make way for the park.

“This renaming is long overdue,” Grand Canyon Superintendent Ed Keable said in a story by The Associated Press (AP). “It is a measure of respect for the undue hardship imposed by the park on the Havasupai people.”

The U.S. Board on Geographic Names gave its unanimous approval last month to a request by the National Park Service on behalf of the Havasupai tribe. The previous "Indian Garden" name was deemed offensive, officials said.

“The eviction of Havasupai residents from Ha’a Gyoh coupled with the offensive name, Indian Garden, has had detrimental and lasting impacts on the Havasupai families that lived there and their descendants,” Tribal Chair Thomas Siyuja Sr. said in a statement. “The renaming of this sacred place to Havasupai Gardens will finally right that wrong.”

The area is located about 4½ miles down the popular Bright Angel Trail on the South Rim. It was originally called Ha’a Gyoh by the tribe, and the area was known internationally for the towering blue-green waterfalls on the Havasupai reservation.

By 1928, the Park Service had forcibly removed the last of the Havasupai from the inner canyon where the tribe had farmed for generations to make way for trails and a ranger station, the AP reported. The Park Service later built a handful of cabins for tribal members on the South Rim. The Havasupai land lies deep in a gorge off the Grand Canyon and is accessible only by horse or mule, foot or helicopter.