When Navajo lawmakers unanimously voted down legislation allowing a developer to erect a 420-acre mega-resort on the rim of the Grand Canyon, they sided with local landowners, at least 18 tribes with ties to the area and more than 66,000 people around the globe--many who have never visited the Grand Canyon—who signed petitions opposing the development.

The five-member Law and Order Committee on October10 voted against a bill approving $65 million in funding, a master agreement with developers and withdrawal of land in the Navajo Nation’s Bodaway/Gap Chapter for a resort some have called “industrial tourism.”

Lawmakers at the meeting called the project a “gamble” that has divided the Navajo Nation and requires money that should be used elsewhere. The tribe’s economic development, justice and historic preservation departments had already opposed it.

“If we start establishing these particular projects across the Navajo Nation, how are we going to be in five years, in 10 years?” delegate Kee Allen Begay said. “Why can’t we invest back in our own culture, our traditional way of life?”

Save the Confluence, a coalition of Navajos fighting against the Escalade, greeted the no-vote with a short-lived, “two-second celebration” as they anticipated the next step in the battle, spokeswoman Renae Yellowhorse said. Leaders of the coalition attended the meeting, along with 15 landowners who have not agreed to abandon homes or grazing leases to make way for the resort.

“We weren’t allowed to cheer or to express anything verbally, or even to provide any of the information we wanted to share,” Yellowhorse said. “But the outcome of the vote was fantastic, refreshing. We did a short ‘yahoo,’ but then he had to regroup, get ready for the next step, move forward.”

A Wilderness Mega-Resort

The highlight of the proposed Grand Canyon Escalade is a 1.4-mile gondola tramway that could deliver as many as 10,000 tourists per day to the canyon floor. Blueprints also call for an elevated river walk, hotels, RV park, restaurants and a cultural center, all perched on the eastern rim of the Grand Canyon near the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers—land held sacred by at least 18 local tribes.

The $1-billion project is the latest in a long and contentious history of attempts by developers to build just outside the boundaries of a national park that attracts 4.5 million visitors per year. If approved, the Escalade would be on the western edge of the Navajo Nation, about 100 miles north of Flagstaff.

Scottsdale, Arizona-based developers Confluence Partners unveiled the project in 2012, promising jobs and revenue to this impoverished corner of the Navajo Nation. Development here was halted half a century ago under the Bennett Freeze, a federal policy enacted in 1966 over disputes between the Hopi and Navajo. The freeze was lifted in 2009, but development continues to stall in this 1.6-million-acre area.

In October 2012, voters in the Bodaway/Gap Chapter narrowly approved withdrawal of land for the Escalade, but the proposal died in 2014 when it didn’t make it to the Navajo Nation Council’s agenda. In the years since, it has continued to generate ire from environmental organizations, the National Park Service, local and national opposition groups and thousands of individuals.

Delegate Benjamin Bennett, who represents the Crystal, Fort Defiance, Red Lake and Sawmill chapters, woke the sleeping giant in September when he introduced the latest proposal. During the October 10 meeting, Bennett defended the project, claiming the Escalade would create an estimated 3,500 jobs with an average yearly salary of $39,000.

“This project will allow the Nation to take part in the tourism market,” he said. “Our Nation is facing shrinking revenues from coal, oil and gas, and this project will assist those deficits.”

Bennett did not address the likelihood that the majority of jobs would go to non-Navajos. Nor did he tackle the myriad unanswered questions raised in a proposal that favors developers and largely ignores existing grazing permits and home-site leases, calls for the displacement of women and children and endangers water rights and sites held sacred by more than a dozen tribes.

The proposal also ignores opposition from adjacent pueblos, like the Hopi, who have called development at the confluence “unacceptable” as it will “irreversibly compromise the tranquility and sacredness of all the surrounding development area”— and a bill in Congress that seeks to create a national monument in a 2,600-square-mile area surrounding Grand Canyon National Park. That bill, introduced in October 2015, would ban new development and protect sacred tribal sites.

Bennett, of Fort Defiance, Arizona, lives more than 180 miles from the confluence. He did not respond to phone and email requests for comment.

A Losing Deal

Albert Hale, an Arizona state representative and an agent with Confluence Partners, also attended the October 10 meeting and spoke in favor of development, claiming the Navajo Nation would retain ownership of the land and improvements while Confluence Partners would develop and operate the project. Confluence Partners would contribute $162 million to develop and construct the first phase of the project while the Navajo Nation would give $65 million for roads and utilities.