Timbisha refers to red ochre found in the black mountains area of death valley - a dubious name given to a place where the Timbisha Shoshone have lived and thrived for over 1,000 years. each time i return to death valley, i’m more and more amazed at just how much life exists in a place with such a nocuous name.

there is not, at least based on the research that i’ve done, much evidence of the Timbisha Shoshone spending much, if any time at this particular location within death valley. but this scene within the national park is a stark reminder of what it is i love about national parks and monuments - their unspoiled nature and their preservation of a wilderness unaffected by mankind.

as i dig deeper into locations and subjects, i often research them with a near-insatiable zeal, and so it was as i researched the history of death valley - a place with an amazing history from a geological perspective, or a biological perspective, and even a human perspective. i came to an important realization in my research - that i had an incorrect belief of what the national parks and monuments do, and are doing. i have been viewing these area as the European descendent that i am. any indigenous person would say these lands have been touched by man for thousands of years, yet the parks and monuments are doing their best to remove even that aspect of interaction with the land. am i searching for a land untouched by man, or a land untouched by a man that presides over the land, rather than communing with it?

in 1933, death valley was declared a national monument, and soon thereafter, the Timbisha Shoshone were forcibly moved. the government moved the people again, and eventually the government built adobe structures for homes for the indigenous people of the area - structures completely foreign to these people. after some time, the structures began to deteriorate and a new policy was implemented by the bureau of indian affairs in 1957 - any homes that appeared abandoned were destroyed by spraying them with water until the walls had disintegrated. there were restrictions placed on the people regarding hunting on any of the monument land or gathering any of their traditional food. eventually, the Timbisha Shoshone tired of being moved and having to stay in their homes for fear of returning “home” to find it destroyed. in the 1960’s, an activist named Pauline Esteves (see the documentary, The Women in the Sand for more on Pauline, her battles and a history of the Timbisha Shoshone people) began speaking for the people and fighting these attempts at slowly “ridding” the monument of the Timbisha Shoshone, who were merely attempting to maintain their homeland. in 1982, after years of legal battles and internal battles with many Native American organizations put in place to help preserve what rights the indigenous people of the nation had, the Timbisha Shoshone received federal recognition as a tribe to the US government. along with this recognition, the group was granted forty acres of land within the now, national park. in 2000, the Timbisha Shoshone Homeland Act set aside 7,500 acres of the Timisha Shoshone’s traditional grounds for the tribe’s members.

this is not meant as a slight on the national parks system or bureau of land management - you should make your own decision on how to feel about them. it is instead, a brief lesson on the actual history of the place we call death valley national park. next time you visit the park, if you see the Death Valley Indian Community/Indian Village near Furnace Creek is open, you might want to stop in where you can find out a great deal about the history of the place by the people that know it best.