For years, shy and soft-spoken teenager Maya Tilousi-Lyttle has been protesting uranium mining on the border of Grand Canyon National Park with her mother, Havasupai advocate Carletta Tilousi. On Aug. 8, 2023, she spoke powerfully from a podium moments before President Joe Biden signed the proclamation declaring Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument. The monument represented a form of long-sought permanent protection for a region that holds irreplaceable significance to the Indigenous peoples who have called it home for millennia. But in January 2025, the Arizona legislature and others filed lawsuits attempting to overturn the monument designation and attacking the Antiquities Act as unlawful. The fight continues, and it is up to Maya’s generation to make their voices heard.

Havasupai Tribal members perform traditional dances and songs in protest of the Canyon Uranium Mine on the south rim of Grand Canyon. “We are on the fronts lines of contamination if this mine leaks. It will contaminate our water and kill our people,” says Carletta Tulusi, a former tribal council member attending the gathering below Red Butte, the Havasupai sacred peak.