Tribes celebrate new homeland in Death Valley

By MARK WAITE

VIEW STAFF WRITER

While the nation was watching the inauguration of the 43rd president George W. Bush in Washington D.C. on Jan. 20, members of the Timbisha Shoshone tribe were celebrating their new homeland on a sun-splashed day in Death Valley.

The homeland will include 300 acres in Furnace Creek where the Timbisha Shoshone now have their tribal headquarters, 1,000 acres at Death Valley Junction near Pahrump, 2,800 acres near the town of Lida in Esmeralda County and 2,800 acres at Scotty's Junction on U.S. Highway 95 south of Goldfield. After speeches by numerous dignitaries, the crowd dined on lunch served with Indian fry bread and were entertained with Indian songs and a hoop dancer.

Peter Taylor, a partner in the Washington lobbyist firm Ducheneaux, Taylor and Associates Inc., told the audience he remembered when he sat in on a meeting of the U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee in 1980 discussing landless Indian tribes. He recalled Timbisha Shoshone Tribal Chairwoman Pauline Esteves stood up and said they were a tribe who lived in California and had an interest in acquiring land.

When Death Valley National Park was created in 1933, Taylor told Esteves, "The park service found you guys out here, wondered how you guys got out here and how long you were going to stay."

When he first visited Death Valley, Taylor said he checked into the hotel and inquired about the tribe. A hotel worker asked "what tribe?" At the time, Taylor said there was only a small sign near the Furnace Creek Visitors Center that read "service road." The Timbisha Shoshone have since put up a large sign announcing their presence in the park, he said.

The Timbisha Homeland bill was introduced by U.S. Rep. Jerry Lewis, R.-Calif. It passed the U.S. House of Representatives Oct. 17, despite some last minute holdups by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R.-Texas, who sought to halt some of the legislation by the Clinton administration, Taylor said. The bill was signed into law by President Clinton Nov. 21.

"I'm extremely glad we got it when we did. It was a window that opened and it's not going to be a window that's going to stay open for long," Taylor told the crowd. A change in administration would've meant educating a whole new group of politicians and administrators about the issue, he said.

"This is one of the rare occasions when park service lands have been returned to a tribe," said Karen Atkinson, deputy director of the National Park Service. "We're going to see a new chapter here on how we deal with Indian tribes."

After the ceremonies, Taylor added it was also unique legislation in that an Indian tribe acquired land without going through litigation.

"This piece of ground will be transferred from what white America, European America, counts as the most sacred landscape in the world in the national parks, to the most sacred trust," said John Reynolds, National Park Service western regional director. "The two nations will have come together right here in respect and equality."

Timbisha Shoshone Tribal Administrator Barbara Durham said, "This is something good that happened not only for the Timbisha tribe but Native Americans and the whole United States."

The tribe took the barbed wire down from around the Furnace Creek headquarters and cleaned up the village, she said.

"We look forward to the future. We're in the planning stage, but hopefully when you come back, you'll see more buildings and improvements," Durham told the audience of about 150, which included members of the Shoshone tribe and Death Valley National Park Service workers.

Durham said after the ceremonies, the tribe will now request grants for a tribal court and economic development. They will seek grants from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs and private sources.

"We have to learn how to exert our own sovereignty now. Right Pauline?" Durham asked Tribal Chairwoman Pauline Esteves during the ceremony.

"No problem," Esteves replied.

"I'm really proud that my agency has been able to participate in one of the teams on this historical event," said Dale Risling, BIA Central California Superintendent. "Now Timbisha has the third largest land base in my agency."

"Out of the 54 tribes in my agency, about 12 of them have no land," Risling said. "Many of our tribes are seeking land, some of them are seeking a smaller land base."

Mike Pool, director of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in California, said the Timbisha Homeland bill had its roots in the California Desert Protection Act passed in 1994. The passage of the homeland bill was legislation long overdue, Pool said.

Ben Viljoen, chairman of the Esmeralda County Commission -- where the Timbisha Shoshone will have fertile uplands near the historic town of Lida -- said his county has a lot of resources.

"The one natural resource Esmeralda County is really lacking in is people. We have the smallest population of any county in Nevada," Viljoen said. "Esmeralda County's thrilled to see everybody (in the tribe) come back after all these years."

Viljoen urged tribal members to get involved on county committees, noting Esmeralda County hasn't had enough people to form committees on nuclear waste or to oppose any Las Vegas Valley water grabs.

Steve Haberfeld, from Indian Dispute Resolution Services, thanked tribal members Esteves, Durham, Grace Goad and Spike Jackson for working on the project. He also credited former BIA Superintendent Fred Marr for including the Timbisha Shoshone provision in the California Desert Protection Act.

"This is an enormous achievement for the tribe," Haberfeld said. "They were dispossessed of their land in 1933."

Raymond Yowell, chief of the Western Shoshone National Council, said the Western Shoshone nation once covered area in six states including Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, part of Utah, Nevada and California. Decimated by disease and warfare, the Western Shoshone couldn't muster enough force to keep the settlers from coming in, he said.

"Hopefully, maybe the whole Shoshone nation will accomplish a satisfactory resolution to the problems that we face," Yowell said.

Lois Whitney, from the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone in Northeastern Nevada, said, "As a Shoshone, standing on the Treaty of Ruby Valley, we still have a long way to go." The Treaty of Ruby Valley in 1863 designated large areas of Nevada to the tribe.

J.T. Reynolds, the incoming superintendent of Death Valley National Park, said he is familiar with the issues of native people, having dealt with the Hualapai Tribe as deputy superintendent at Grand Canyon National Park.

"This is the right thing to do to restore the native land to the tribal people. We will have a long and fruitful relationship where the tribal traditions will continue," the incoming superintendent said.

Actually, Charles Wilkinson, a law professor at the University of Colorado, told the audience the name Death Valley was a misnomer, if the native residents, like the Timbisha Shoshone, knew where to find the springs for bathing and healing, where the mesquite and pinyon pine grew for their fruit, where the rabbits, big horn sheep and the deer roamed.

"If you knew when to live on the valley floor and when to move up high," Wilkinson said, "if you knew all these things, this place would never be a place of death."

After a prayer in Shoshone to start the ceremony, Tribal Elder Corbin Haney, of Tecopa, Calif., said native people have taken care of the land for thousands of years. He told the various people in attendance they weren't different from each other, everyone had red blood. Haney urged everyone to talk to each other and join hands together.

"When we receive whatever we can from Mother Earth we have to enjoy it," Haney said. "We were told, from generation to generation, take care of what's out there first before yourself."