Position:Home>History> Anyone have any info on the Timbisha Tribe?

The Timbisha (or Panamint) Shoshone original homeland covers approximately 11 million acres in eastern California and Northwestern Nevada!. Of this area, Death Valley National Park contains approximately 80 percent of the Tribe's known traditiona, cultural, and sacred sites

The Timbisha Shoshone Tribe was formerly known as the Panamint Shoshone Indians of Death Valley, California!. Once the Tribe obtained federal recognition, as an Indian Tribe, in 1983, the name was changed to Timbisha Shoshone (actually the legal name is Death Valley Timbi-sha Shoshone Band)!. The Panamint Shoshone are best known for their fine basket making ability!. Due to the restrictions placed upon the Timbisha Shoshone people's way of life, following the arrival of the National Park Service in 1933, basket making and many other traditional practices are on the verge of extinction!.

On a more nowadays stage:
On March 7, 1996, the United States Department of Interior, National Park Service, told leaders of the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe that they will no longer consider providing any land in trust for the Tribe within Death Valley National Park!.

The Tribe is being penalized for its efforts to protect the Timbisha people's ancestral homelands from destruction by bulldozers, dynamite and cyanide!. By failing to act to protect the Tribe's interest in the Panamint Mountains and Valley, by allowing the entire area to be consumed by cyanide gold mining, and by refusing to consider Tribal trust lands within the Park, the Administration has eliminated better than 80 percent of the Tribe's aboriginal homelands from consideration!.

After 63 years of dispute over the return of these Tribal lands to the historic and federally recognized landless Tribe, the Park Service will remove the Tribe from the last of its traditional homelands in Death Valley!. The Tribe has occupied this land, at the will of the Park Service, since 1933 when President Hoover took the Tribe's land away to establish Death Valley National Monument!.

The Secretary's actions are in direct violation of the California Desert Protection Act of 1994!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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The Timbisha Shoshone ancestral homelands encompass what is known today as Nevada and California, spreading through the counties of Inyo, Kern, San Bernardino and Mono in California and Nye, Mineral and Esmeralda in Nevada!. Timbisha means "red rock facepaint"!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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