Soft-spoken, bespectacled Jim Smith makes an unlikely activist. The former Mobil Oil geophysicist retired to Sedona, Ariz., about 10 years ago, drawn by the spectacular red-rock scenery. In November 2009, Smith drove five miles of rough road to the Vultee Arch trailhead and backpacked in for a night. When he returned, he found the Forest […]
Daniel Kraker
Posted inJune 15, 2009: Let's Get Small
From Pickups to PV
Utility brings solar power to far-flung Navajos
Posted inNovember 26, 2007: Beetle Warfare
Growth unfettered
When 29-year-old Jon Regner bought a small house in Flagstaff’s oldest neighborhood last year, he already had plans for the property. He’d replace the 700 square-foot carriage house in the backyard with a two-story duplex. Then he’d live on one floor and rent out the other while he renovated the main house. He’d use the […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2006: Timberlands up for grabs
The end of an era on the Colorado Plateau
As the Mohave power plant closes its doors, two Arizona tribes wonder what’s next
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
Sacred claims
American Indian tribes win some, lose some, on federal land
Posted inAugust 22, 2005: A Military Town Fights for its Life
Congress and Indians spar over lost money
McCain proposes a settlement on trust accounts, but Cobell is wary
Posted inOctober 25, 2004: Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise
Dems stumble in Arizona race
One of the environment’s dirty dozen leads in congressional ‘fair fight’
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
Tribes turn out to vote
Indians could decide tight races in key Western states
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
The New Water Czars
A historic water deal could give an impoverished Indian community a path back to its roots — and turn it into one of the West’s next big power brokers
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
Tribe defeated a dam and won back its water
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The New Water Czars.“ Unlike the Pima Indians of the Gila River Indian Community, the Yavapai were not traditionally farmers. Instead, they migrated up and down the Verde River, hunting, fishing and gathering. But in 1903, the government settled them on Fort McDowell, a […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
The great Central Arizona Project funding switcheroo
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The New Water Czars.“ Spend enough time in Phoenix, and it’s easy to forget the city sits in a sweltering desert valley that receives less than eight inches of rain a year. Cool misters spray shoppers on the sidewalks of Scottsdale, the ritzy enclave […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2003: Pipe Dreams
Is the Southwest’s ‘last real stinker’on its last legs?
Closing down the Mohave power plant would be good for the air, but bad for tribal economies
Posted inMay 26, 2003: A losing battle
The tangled messages of a servicewoman killed incombat
I live among the remote mesas, canyons and scattered towns and villages of the Hopi and Navajo reservations in northeast Arizona. A desolate and foreboding place by conventional standards, it’s a quiet, starkly beautiful land to the people who have called it home for centuries. But it is, by anyone’s reckoning, far removed from the […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2002: Shadow Creatures
Jet Ski riders circle the wagons
Starting Nov. 6, watercraft will be banned from Lake Powell
Posted inMay 27, 2002: Wolf at the door
Indians play power game
One tribe cashes in on the energy boom
Posted inMarch 4, 2002: Seed in the ground
Is a coal mine pumping the Hopi dry?
Thirty-six years later, tribe rethinks a money-making agreement