Recreate intentionally The Timbisha Shoshone tribe were heartbroken to learn that western colonizers misunderstood their homeland enough to name it "Death Valley." To the people who lived in the area for more than a millennium, the valley's resources offered everything necessary for comfort. Traditional brush homes made perfect desert dwellings, allowing breezes to filter in through the arrowweed walls. Men hunted jackrabbits and bighorn sheep, using arrows tipped with stone points. Women wove baskets so intricately coiled they could hold water. These were sometimes decorated with patterns of interlocking shapes or a delicate geometry of lizards and butterflies. • Death Valley was declared a national monument in 1933, presenting additional challenges for the Timbisha. Already exploited by the mining company, many tribal members viewed the National Park Service as simply the newest wave of intruders. After settling into the current Timbisha Indian Village at Furnace Creek, an early superintendant arranged for the CCC to build adobe homes for native families. A less progressive administration in the 1960s ordered these same homes washed away with high power fire hoses as part of a policy to evict tribal members from the park. • Pauline Esteves, Timbisha elder and former Tribal Council Chairperson, eloquently wrote: "The Timbisha people have lived in our homeland forever and we will live here forever. We were taught that we don't end. We are part of our homeland and it is part of us. We are people of the land. We don't break away from what is part of us." • Featuring @im_nicolemarie of @womenwhohike Nicole is heading to Washington D.C. in a few days to lobby for the America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act, a bill that, if passed, will protect sacred land such as Bears Ears, Grand Staircase, the San Rafael Swell among many others. Head to the link in her bio to learn more about the bill and how you can support it. • Photo by @alexander.morton • • • We Are Women Owning Our Wild We Are #GoGalavanting