California seeks Native American help after years of environmental abuse
Native people had been living in California’s Owens Valley since time immemorial when the first permanent settler arrived in 1860. More followed, and within a year, fences erected around homesteads blocked access to traditional sources of food and water. The Indigenous Paiute who crossed fence lines were shot, a sudden clash between a culture built on partnership with nature and one striving to profit from what the natural world had to offer. This pattern was repeated over and over as Americans pushed westward to fulfill the country’s “manifest destiny” and natural resources were harnessed to grow its capitalist economy.