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[source: NativeNews; Fri, 04 Feb 2000 22:14:0]

A dream blooms in desert for Indian tribe
http://www.sacbee.com/news/news/local03_20000203.html
By Stephen Magagnini Bee Staff Writer
(Published Feb. 3, 2000)

Steven Haberfeld spent Aug. 1, 1996, in the hottest place on Earth, in a
room without air conditioning, negotiating the unprecedented give-back
of national park lands to the Timbisha Shoshone Indians, original inhabitants
of Death Valley.

Tempers rose on that 127-degree day in Death Valley's aptly named Furnace
Creek. National Park Service officials accused the Indians of not being able
to manage the land if they got it back; the Indians said the park service had
spoiled the streams and springs, causing Big Horn sheep, deer and other
wildlife to die.

But Haberfeld, associate director of the capital-based Indian Dispute
Resolution Services and president of Sacramento's Kenesset Israel Torah
Center, an orthodox synagogue, kept the sides talking for four years of
often-vitriolic negotiations that bridged radically different ideas about
land,
ownership and sovereignty.

In the coming weeks, Congress is expected to ratify the return to the
Timbisha
Shoshone of 300 acres at Furnace Creek in the heart of Death Valley, plus
roughly 7,200 acres of public land outside the park.

The 300-member tribe plans to build 50 homes, a modest inn, a tribal office,
a cultural center that tells their story and a gift shop that sells
authentic Indian
jewelry, rather than the foreign-made trinkets sold now to some of the more
than 1 million annual park visitors, Haberfeld said.

John Reynolds, the National Park Service's Western states director, called
the
agreement "a wonderful precedent for the United States and Indian nations to
talk to each other as nations, as opposed to one being over the other."

At a dinner in Sacramento honoring them last week, Reynolds and Pauline
Esteves, the hard-bitten 75-year-old tribal chairwoman of the Timbisha
Shoshone, said the deal could never have been reached without Haberfeld.

He said he has honed his negotiating skills through 30 years of experience
mediating for farm workers and Indians, as well as engaging his fellow
Jewish congregants, who thrive on debate.

The Death Valley agreement is little short of a miracle, Haberfeld said,
given
how far apart the sides were when they first met in 1994.

For centuries, the Timbisha Shoshone lived, prayed and died in what they
call Timbisha Valley, a desert expanse European settlers named Death
Valley. The tribe takes its name from the ochre found in the Black Mountains
above Furnace Creek. Their ancestors would paint their faces with "timbisha"
to enhance their spirituality and heal them.

But in 1933, they lost access to much of the land when President Herbert
Hoover declared Death Valley a national monument. The federal government
tried to drive the Timbisha Shoshone out, forbidding them to build homes or
harvest mesquite beans, which they have traditionally pounded into a sweet
flour.

But the Indians refused to leave. Since 1935, about 50 have lived in trailers
on 40 acres near Furnace Creek, rejecting the name Death Valley and its
morbid connotation.

"It's a horrible place, it's a windswept sand pit," Haberfeld said. "They're
virtual squatters. They've had no legal title or lease, but they've hung on."

In 1983, the Shoshone received federal recognition that they were the
original
inhabitants of the land -- but no land to go with it.

In 1994, the park service began meeting with the Indians after passage of
the Desert Protection Act. The act transferred millions of acres of desert to
the park service with the proviso that the Timbisha Shoshone be consulted
on the creation of a reservation.

The tribe hired Indian Dispute Resolution Services to train its negotiating
team.
For 10 years, the nonprofit agency has trained hundreds of Indians on how
to solve disputes involving the government or other Indians.

Haberfeld and partner Jon Townsend, working for expenses, trained a 15-member
team led by Esteves in the art of negotiating.

Initially, Haberfeld said, the Indians wanted 750,000 acres in the park, as
well
as a role in the management and protection of another 8 million acres of
ancestral lands. The park service wanted the Indians out of the park
altogether,
and offered them a few acres of desert 30 miles away.

At the first meeting, the federal government was represented by the park
service,
the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Reclamation, the U.S. Forest
Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. They wanted to talk about giving
the
Indians a "homeland."

Esteves opened the Indian's case with a 10-minute speech in her native
language. She then said in English that since this was the place where their
forefathers are buried and where their traditional beliefs emanate, the land
belongs to them whether the government wanted to give back 300 acres or
750,000 acres.

Esteves' speech "was met with deadening silence by all those federal
representatives," Haberfeld said. "They didn't feel an agreement was
necessary.
They told the tribe, 'If you have a dissenting opinion it will be included
in the
report (to Congress).' "

By the time the two sides met in March 1996, the park service had decided
that
none of the 3.5 million acres of Death Valley was "suitable" for a
reservation.

"The tribe was outraged," Haberfeld said. "This meeting took place in a park
firehouse, and the Indian people, including this 75-year-old chairwoman of a
sovereign nation, had to sit on buckets. It was the height of insult and
disrespect."

The tribe vowed never to talk to the park service; they launched a national
protest campaign, forming an alliance with the Navajo, native Hawaiians and
other indigenous peoples who also were battling the park service. They sent
angry letters to elected officials from the president on down, accusing the
Interior Department of "ethnic cleansing."

In 1997, Haberfeld went to Washington, D.C., to jump-start a second round of
negotiations. He found a sympathetic ear in Pat Parker, chief of the park
service's American Indian liaison office, and Reynolds, the newly appointed
Western regional director, who brought a fresh respect for the Timbisha
Shoshone.

"It's my privilege to negotiate with the head of a nation (Esteves) and
right a
wrong that's been going on for more than 65 years," Reynolds said Saturday.

At Haberfeld's urging, Reynolds persuaded his bosses to let him talk about
a land give-back. The tribe backed off its initial demand for 750,000 acres.

In September 1998, the historic "nation-to-nation" agreement was reached,
giving the Timbisha Shoshone 300 acres at Furnace Creek, access to 1,000
acres for harvesting mesquite and other traditional plants, co-management of
300,000 acres in the park and ownership of about 7,200 acres outside.

Haberfeld traces his persistence in the process to his Jewish roots. "In our
culture we come from a whole tradition of debate," he said. "It's perfectly
legitimate to have different points of view and to argue. That's how the
truth
emerges."
 

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