In the Grand Canyon, the Havasupai Tribe prepares to build better connections to the world

Debra Utacia Krol
Arizona Republic

SUPAI — The red rock walls of Havasu Canyon reverberated with the rapid thump of helicopter blades as a Bell LongRanger set down on the grassy helipad in the flattest spot in the town. The blades barely slowed as passengers and cargo were quickly offloaded, and people headed out of the canyon were as swiftly brought onboard. The scene was repeated throughout a November day as load after load arrived.

Nearby, the famed U.S. Postal Service mule train delivered more packages and letters to the isolated community.

With no road into town, the helicopters will soon haul some more precious cargo: equipment to bring high-speed internet to Supai's 102 homes, several government agencies and a tribal business. The wireless internet equipment will bring the Havasupai Tribe closer to the world — and the world closer to the only tribal nation that still inhabits ancestral lands within the Grand Canyon.

Soon, routers, microwave equipment, fiber-optic cable and other necessary technology will be delivered and installed to serve the 400 residents of the small town nestled within Havasu Canyon, whose eponymous creek creates the waterfalls and refreshing turquoise pools beloved to visitors.

The Havasupai Tribe, considered the most isolated tribal community in the continental U.S., received a $7 million grant for the broadband internet project on Nov. 17 from the Biden administration. The wireless system will provide broadband internet for education, health care and emergency communications to 102 families, 33 agencies and a tribal business in and around Supai. The service will enable homes and businesses to have wifi and will upgrade the tribe’s service from soon-to-be obsolete 3G service to 5G, which will also enable better communications.

With the update, the tribe — known as the People of the Blue-Green Water — will help resolve a longtime disparity in telecommunications and internet service in Indian Country. Its determination to secure the ability for tribal governments to obtain special broadcast licenses and microwave frequencies will connect the town to cyberspace and the world.

Being online is 'almost as important as land and water'

Havasupai and Hualapai tribal council members, U.S. Commerce Department representative Christopher Becenti and Ophelia Watahomigie-Corliss, the tribe's internet expert, gathered Nov. 17, 2022 to celebrate a new $7 million grant to improve internet and communications for Havasupai Tribe.

Ophelia Watahomigie-Corliss is a former tribal council member and the driving force behind the tribal internet project. Although her degrees are in public relations and museum studies, Watahomigie-Corliss took the time to educate herself about how to build an internet and telecommunications system from scratch. She wields terms to describe download and upload speeds, frequency spectrums, bandwidth, licensure and fiber-optic cable like a telecommunications engineer.

“Any disparities that we have in our telecommunications and internet capabilities are Indian Country disparities,” she said. “Being online, having meetings online and online education was the way of the future and was almost as important as land and water.”

Havasupai got some internet service in 2005 thanks to a grant. That network provided a bare minimum of service. In 2010, Flagstaff communications firm Niles Radio, the tribe’s wireless internet service provider, obtained more funding to build up the network. Watahomigie-Corliss said that service has slowly improved since then.

That system was a giant leap from the days when unreliable phone lines snaked down the canyon. Just one rotary phone, located off the helipad in the center of town, provided a lifeline for the town’s residents.

“We all relied on it,” said Havasupai Councilwoman Carrie Sinyella. “You’d hear the telephone ring, ring, inside the building. That was the only source of communication.”

Watahomigie-Corliss started in 2017 to bring the current service with partners Niles Radio and tribal internet consultant firm MuralNet, giving the small town more of a connection.

Although the tribe had secured a temporary license from the FCC in February 2018, there was yet another barrier to flipping on the internet switch immediately: It took five days for the equipment to be sent via mule train mail service, Watahomigie-Corliss said.

Although the newest tribal internet system was welcomed by the community, it still came up short. The entire community’s service totaled just 40 megabytes of capacity. The internet was also slow, and when more than eight or 10 users got on, the speed slowed significantly. But even slow internet was better than none, and it came in handy for the tribe’s Head Start employees when they needed certification training to keep their jobs.

Christopher Becenti, center at table, discusses the importance of the $7 million grant for enhanced internet service to the Havasupai Tribe on Nov. 17, 2022.

By contrast, most urban users consider 100-megabyte service as the minimum they need to run two laptops, two phones and a streaming service, all with the capability to rapidly download videos, documents or audio files, in one household.

Many tribal members purchase prepaid cell phones, which require wifi to work, said Watahomigie-Corliss.

Telemedicine equipment, hauled down the canyon on the mule train, sat on shelves gathering dust without any way to use it for 15 years. And some tribal members and agencies resorted to expensive satellite internet services that also limit users to a monthly data allowance.

Sinyella, who’s also the tribe’s payroll clerk, described times when the system failed as she was entering payroll.

“I felt like I was failing people,” she said.

Elders need reliable internet service to access Social Security and other government services, which have all gone online, Sinyella said.

The tribal council soon began seeing the possibilities, such as real-time GED online classes with teachers at Coconino Community College in Flagstaff for tribal members, enabling young people to get a high school education without leaving home. Emergency communications would ensure that elders and other tribal members could get to safety faster during floods or other natural disasters. The service could also allow the tribe to dust off the telemedicine equipment so tribal members could get better health care.

Tribe works toward a better solution for the internet

Members of the Havasupai and Hualapai Tribal Councils prepare to greet Guardians of the Grand Canyon as they celebrate a new grant from the Biden administration to upgrade internet and telecommunications service in Supai Village on Nov. 14, 2022.

Watahomigie-Corliss, who currently serves as the liaison for the tribe’s GED program, continued to work toward a better solution. She traveled to Washington, D.C., to testify before Congress about the need to provide free broadcast licenses to tribes in the 2.5 GHz educational broadband services band. The tribe finally got its permanent license in May 2019.

She also advocated that tribes get access to frequencies in the 2.5 GHz spectrum so they could build their own internet systems after learning that the Trump administration planned to auction off frequencies in that spectrum.

In the middle of the tribe’s efforts to secure the frequencies and equipment to expand their internet, COVID-19 hit. That brought the issue to the forefront, particularly for the tribe’s kids.

Havasupai Councilwoman Sybil Hanna said the elementary school, operated by the Bureau of Indian Education, resorted to distance learning like many other schools. But the school resorted to putting students in a tent. And when the temperature rose to 110 to 115 degrees, that solution proved impossible. Periodic power failures also hindered online learning.

“Once you fall behind, you lose interest,” she said. "Our kids were already behind, but now they're even further behind."

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Cell service failed as well when the power went down, severing needed lifelines for people to obtain emergency services or reach the tribal health clinic.

Home locations in the area create yet another challenge. The same red canyon walls that form part of the beautiful setting for Supai also interfere with broadcast services.

“They’re beautiful, but they get in the way,” Sinyella said.

The new system aims to correct that so that all 102 homes in the community will have service.

It will also eliminate the need for elders to perch on crates in the center of town trying to use their phones, Sinyella said.

The Guardians of the Grand Canyon celebrated the announcement of a $7 million grant for the Havasupai Tribe's broadband internet project on Nov. 17, 2022 . The wireless system will provide internet for education, health care and emergency communications to 102 families, 33 agencies and a tribal business.

The Guardians of the Grand Canyon, a traditional dance group, celebrated the grant announcement at the Supai basketball court with a round of traditional dances.

“This is definitely historic,” said Christopher Becenti, a program officer with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which administers tribal broadband programs.

"It gets a little emotional because you get to see technology evolve from a cell phone and from a rotary phone,” he said. “Then they had the foresight to start thinking about internet.”

Becenti, a Navajo, said Havasupai’s grant was one of 18 such awards to tribes totaling more than $224 million across the U.S., all funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act.

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A historic moment, a model for the world

The grant includes funding for about 140 kilometers of fiber-optic cable, which will be installed along existing telephone lines up Indian Highway 18 to Long Mesa, where a new tower will be built to handle the load. Microwave equipment will broadcast the signal down to the community. Wireless equipment will send wifi signals to homes, agencies and a tribal business. The entire system will provide about 400 megabytes of bandwidth for the community and download speeds of up to 100 megabytes, Watahomigie-Corliss said.

The new internet service will also provide emergency communications capability, Watahomigie-Corliss said. “The tribe will operate solar-powered wifi platforms on the path to Beaver Falls, where the rangers won't have to run to look for a signal when somebody accidentally breaks their leg.”

Campers will have the option to purchase wifi at the campgrounds as well, she said. The revenues will support the tribal internet operations.

The small tribe’s determination to own and manage its own communications system has served as an example for other tribes, said MuralNet CEO Mariel Triggs. The nonprofit has helped more than 100 tribes build their own internet and communications capacity.

“COVID really revealed that in order to engage and operate effectively, and in this day and age, we need broadband for distance learning and telehealth and telecommuting,” she said.

Young people frequently must choose between social and economic mobility and being able to stay in their remote communities, Triggs said.

How tribes run their own internet and communications systems could also serve as a model for the rest of the world, she said. The world can learn about tribes’ new and novel economic models, such as running the internet successfully, effectively and cheaply in remote areas.

“I have a feeling that it’s something we can look at and maybe get some inspiration about the way we run things like water, electric and broadband,” Triggs said. Harnessing the internet’s power and putting it under tribes’ sovereign control gives them the ability to engage with the world how they want.

“Ophelia has shown that you can build internet systems out yourself and you can run it in such a way that you have very low overhead, and you can connect your people fairly,” she said.

Havasupai elder Roland Manakaja, who offered a prayer to open the formal grant presentation, said he remembered when he got his first cell phone and how it buzzed in his pocket. Some people were concerned that bringing the world into people’s homes would affect Havasupai culture.

But, Manakaja said, “We will just keep bringing our culture with us.”

Debra Krol reports on Indigenous communities at the confluence of climate, culture and commerce in Arizona and the Intermountain West. Reach Krol at debra.krol@azcentral.com. Follow her on Twitter at @debkrol

Coverage of Indigenous issues at the intersection of climate, culture and commerce is supported by the Catena Foundation.

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