Last year, the Verde Valley School community gathered at the campus flagpoles to raise a new flag up. This flag would join the others in the collection, which represents the states and countries that students and staff have come from. The flag had a bright blue background and a circular motif with depictions of the Havasu Falls, the Wii’Gliva rock formation, big horn sheep and agricultural produce.
It was the flag of the Havasupai Tribe and signified that Kambria Siyuja, a member of the tribe, had joined the VVS community. Kambria’s mother — who is also from Supai, the Havasupai village surrounded by the Grand Canyon that’s famous for its blue-green waterfall — attended VVS decades before her daughter.
Since VVS’ founding by Hamilton and Barbara Warren in 1947, the idea has been to bring people from all over the world to work and learn together. This includes students from different countries in Africa, Asia and Europe and states in the U.S. Along with members from the Havasupai and nearby Hualapai tribe, the school has also had members of the Hopi, Apache, Zuni and Navajo tribes attend. But Kambria may be the first to attend who is considered American Indian royalty.
After being crowned Miss Junior Havasupai at age 12, Kambria ran for the title of Miss Havasupai for the 2019-2020 year when she was 16.
“I signed up literally the deadline that it was supposed to be,” Kambria, now a 17-year-old senior at VVS, said. “I had to come up with a speech, I had to come up with a talent, I had to get a singer, or I would sing, and I had to find a contemporary dress.”
Luckily, having grown up her whole life on the reservation and knowing all 771 tribe members, Kambria knew exactly what would win the crowd and judges over.
“In my introduction, I said ‘hello’ in multiple different languages. So I did Navajo, Hopi, Yavapai-Apache, my language, Malawi [Chewa] and then I did French and Spanish, and Hawaiian,” she recalled.
After her introduction, Kambria gave a traditional speech and translated it to English.
“Then we did a contemporary challenge — like a prom dress type of thing — so I wore a dress I wore for prom [at VVS] last year, and I have these really nice sparkly Vans that I love, so I had to wear those, and sometimes people have a song [in the] background, but my tribe is very into reggae, [so a Bob Marley mix] played over the speaker while I did a walk,” she said.
Kambria said she knew she had won when “everyone was either singing, clapping or yelling my name.”
But the glamor is miniscule in the scope of Miss Havasupai’s duties. Kambria represents her whole tribe while on and off Havasupai land.
“I’m not going to lie, it was kind of stressful; you had to find times to leave and travel for different events and stuff and for different places for different tribes,” Kambria said of her reign as Miss Junior Havasupai.
The rules are strict for Miss Havasupai, but that doesn’t deter Kambria.
“I can’t date — I don’t plan on it anyway — and I can’t do drugs and alcohol, which I never planned on doing anyway, and I just have to maintain my education,” she said. “My platform is education and environmental issues and it’s the backbone of why I kind of did [this] almost. And it’s easy to maintain because it’s who I am anyway.”
One way that Kambria was able to help educate both the youth of her tribe and her VVS classmates was to connect the two. On a November VVS trip, nine students were given the rare opportunity to come stay in the Supai village. Kambria’s family hosted them for 10 days while they worked at the K-8 school there. But the planning process wasn’t an easy one for VVS’ Director of Experiential Learning Lauren Kelley and Native American Program Coordinator Leigh Carter.
“When Kambria came [to VVS], Leigh and I started dreaming about what could we do to get a program down to Supai, but it’s very remote — some people say it’s the most remote town in the United States,” Kelley said. “The only way you can get access to Supai is either on horseback — a 10-mile trail down into this town — or via helicopter. And they don’t allow people to just come and stay and be in the town. So it was a long journey of proposing this kind of trip and helping explain why it was valuable, how it could benefit Havasupai youth and coming back to understand what other kind of educational opportunities might exist for them as well as Verde Valley students.”
Carter added that while the Havasupai community has no shortage of people wanting to see their turquoise waterfall, the VVS trip was much more than just sightseeing.
“If we want to be not just like all the other tourists we have to be really careful about how we engage with people and how we engage in the community,” she said. “And so it was a priority for us to be able to give something to the community on their own terms, whether that meant cleaning up the community or doing service projects there, and that takes a lot of time to build a rapport within the community.”
Besides clearing off graffiti, throwing out trash and helping elders with yardwork, the VVS students worked in the classrooms, where they were crucially needed.
“It’s getting somewhat better,” Kambria said of the Bureau of Indian Affairs K-8 school she attended in Supai. “They are having actual teachers come in every two weeks now. When I was there the janitors substituted, our cook substituted, the secretary substituted — it was just really bad. And at one point they joined kindergarten to fourth grade, fifth grade to seventh grade and [taught] eighth grade on their own.”
Kambria recalled that while she was in seventh grade, they were teaching her and her classmates fourth-grade level math. Math and reading were the only subjects offered, at the time. She also noted that students there could often be “mean and rude,” due to rough lives at home.
“I was kind of hopeful for VVS [students], and when they went down they did get a few mean comments from a few students, but some of them actually really touched a lot of kids’ hearts. I know at least a few people who want to come to VVS [now],” Kambria said. “I want the youth to get the kind of education I’m able to get.”
After eighth grade, Havasupai children can only get further education by going to boarding schools elsewhere. Many don’t graduate from high school, and very few go on to college. Kambria is one of those few. She plans to go on to Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo., to study American Indian or environmental studies.
“I plan to return home [after college] and educate my people more about the issues we face,” she said, adding that uranium mining is one of the top threats.
“Kam is being modest,” Carter said of the senior’s accolades. “Kam has been doing social and environmental justice for tribes since before she became Miss Havasupai, and she’s attended many a protest — and been in the face of many a policeman and/or armed guard — trying to prevent her from crossing a line. She’s getting her education so she can go back and support her tribe and [help them] advocate for themselves for clean water, for rights for their own land they’ve been using for hundreds of years, and so she knows about all these tribal issues and is able to represent the youth side of it — whether it’s in the capital of Arizona or whether it’s in Washington, D.C.”
While Kambria will pass on her crown and sash in August to the next Miss Havasupai, it is clear that she will continue to represent her tribe near and far.
Alexandra Wittenberg can be reached at 282-7795 ext 126 or at awittenberg@larsonnewspapers.com
