U.S., Death Valley Indians Strike a Unique Land Deal

A small California Indian tribe, all but exiled from its homeland in Death Valley years ago, has struck a precedent-setting deal with the federal government to serve as partners in the management of the 3.2-million-acre national park.

The agreement with the Timbesha Shoshone is “a new template on how to deal with Native Americans in the [national] parks,” said Don Barry, assistant U.S. Interior secretary for parks and wildlife. Officials hope that the pattern can be used in other parks where Indians have long-standing claims on land.

From Alaska to Florida, a number of tribes have been pushing in recent years to build homes and businesses on parklands they once occupied.

The Death Valley deal, which Congress must still approve, is unique because it combines acquisition of land with broad management powers, according to the federal officials who have been presiding over the negotiations with the tribe.

Indians have asserted claims to national park holdings, including some in Alaska, the Everglades in Florida and areas ranging from the Great Smokies in North Carolina to Big Horn National Recreation Area in Montana. In the Everglades, pressure from the tribes led to legislation last year that overrode a veto by park officials of a wetlands development by the Miccosukee Indians.

The Death Valley agreement allows the Timbesha to have their own land and develop it, but it sets limits on how much can be built, federal officials said.

In addition to acquiring 300 acres at Furnace Creek, the center of the park’s visitor activities, the tribe will have exclusive use of an adjacent 1,000 acres and share in the management of a 300,000-acre expanse of parkland to be known as the Timbesha natural and cultural preservation area.

Just outside the park, the tribe will also gain ownership of several pieces of property totaling more than 6,000 acres. Those parcels, in California and Nevada, are currently administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

At Furnace Creek, the tribe will be able to build 50 houses, a government complex, a cultural center and an inn.

The agreement is much more modest than the deal originally sought by the Timbesha for ownership of 5,000 acres at Furnace Creek alone.

Nevertheless, tribal officials have indicated satisfaction with the agreement in its present form.

“We believe the draft agreement is fair,” said Barbara Durham, the tribe’s administrator. “The Park Service is recognizing that we have a right to be here.”

From the point of view of the park service, which has been criticized for trivializing the role of Native Americans in parks, “this agreement is special because preservation of the Timbesha way of life now becomes an official purpose of the park, and that will make it a better, more interesting place to visit,” said Pat Parker, chief of the National Park Service’s American Indian Liaison Office.

“Now visitors will have a chance to learn firsthand the human history of the park from the people who made that history,” Parker said.

“After all,” said Barry, “this park is all about 1,000 years of Timbesha culture and history, and it only makes sense for the tribe to be the interpreters of their own traditions.”

The way the agreement was reached was also unique, Parker said, “with the tribe selecting land areas of particular importance to them and saying how they want to live in the park.”

In particular, the tribe wanted to resume traditional harvesting activities, including picking berries and pine nuts and taking willow branches for basket making.

For centuries the Timbesha Shoshone were the only people who knew how to survive in Death Valley, and their stewardship of the land is now credited with keeping the desert vegetation and scattered water sources in better shape than they are in today.

“Because we have not been able to interact with the land, the wildlife and plants have suffered,” Durham said. “A lot of the springs that we kept clean have been clogged up with debris, and where we used to be able to clear out the undergrowth, a lot of the vegetation died out,” she said.

Since 1933, when Death Valley was added to the park system, the Timbesha had been confined to 40 acres. They were not allowed to own land in the park or to tend the plants traditionally used for sustenance and medicine.

As a result, most members of the landless tribe, which today numbers fewer than 300, moved out of Death Valley.

Negotiations between the tribe and the park service got off to a shaky start four years ago when federal officials balked at a joint sovereignty proposal that they feared would give the tribe veto-proof authority to build whatever it wanted in a vast area of the park.

“The park service told us there was no suitable land for us in the park and suggested we move 30 miles north,” Durham said.

The two sides said they were able to return to the bargaining table, in part, due to the efforts of author and University of Colorado law professor Charles Wilkinson, who has helped settle land use disputes with other tribes and who was retained as a “facilitator” in the talks with the Timbesha.

“What really brought this agreement into proper focus,” said Wilkinson, “is when it became clear how much better the park would be as a result of the Timbesha presence.”

Assistant Interior Secretary Barry echoed those sentiments.

“I sat down under the trellis between the two trailers where Pauline Estevez [the tribal president] lives, and she talked about the springs that have disappeared and the areas where certain plants are the sweetest, and it became obvious how much the Timbesha were part of the place.”