A Visit to the Homelands of the Timbisha Shoshone


"In our religion, we don't practice within four walls. Our religion is written in all these mountains and in the valleys, in the waters, in the wildlife--everything that belongs to the Creator. So, we're in church everyday. That's what we say."
By Pauline Esteves, a Timbisha Shoshone elder

Pauline Esteves, a Timbisha Shoshone was 8 years old when  President Herbert Hoover established 2 million acres of her homelands as Death Valley National Monument (DVNM) on February 11, 1933. The federal government presumed that the valley had no permanent residents. Timbisha Shoshone people have nomadic lifesyle of hunting, gathering wild food, visiting sacred sites, participating in ancient tribal rituals, and the like. Now at 3.4 million acres and the largest of all US national parks outside Alaska, Death Valley showcases the spectacular beauty of extremes that has always been reverred by Pauline Esteves and her people. The valley has been home to the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe for over a thousand years. 

The film "The Women in the Sand" documents the lifestyle of the Timbisha Shoshone and how Pauline Esteves  her sister-in-law Madeline Esteves fought for their tribe's survival and federal recognition.
In 1849, emigrants from the East got lost in the area and renamed Timbisha homelands into Death Valley.  The lost 49ers not only  displaced the Timbisha Shoshone people but also disrupted their way of life. The Timbisha lived off their ancestral land hunting jack rabbits and eating harvesting pine nuts and whatever bounty their homelands offered. The word "timbisha" comes from the Shoshone name of red ochre earth smudged onto the faces and used in the homes of this particular Shoshone tribe to strengthen their spirituality.

 "Just as we were ready to leave and return to camp we took off our hats, and then overlooking the scene of so much trial, suffering and death spoke the thought uppermost saying:--'Good bye Death Valley!' then faced away and made our steps toward camp."
Manly, William Lewis, "Death Valley in '49: An Autobiography of a Pioneer Who Survived the California Desert", The Pacific Vine and Tree Co. 1894 

The Timbisha Shoshone never liked how settlers who 


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