Travel Photography > Great Basin > Loneliest Road

This sweet voice, it cracks and she says, "It is all around us, everywhere. It may not be the largest of mountains, but it's there and it is a serene place."

I ask her why take the side of the blue butterfly over the off-roaders? I mention that the off-roaders who come to Sand Mountain are one of the largest economic draws for the entire county.

"When a doctor uses his tools, he will always use a scalpal for example. But when our medicine men are doctoring somebody, they will use things they’ve never used before. Say the Kearney buckwheat for example. There may be a case where an Indian doctor will need it for some yet unknown use. The visions will tell them to come to Sand Mountain. If it's not there when we are called to it, then we’ve failed and we’ve lost something for all our future generations."

To Mrs. Downs, the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe is a name the federal people gave them because they just happened to be hanging out around this area at the time. Because they were hanging out, the government set their reservation here.

But in fact, her tribe is part of a much larger network of related tribes; the designation the government gave her people is not the designation her people gave themselves. These tribes she considers the Great Basin tribes; all were wanderers. The whole of the Great Basin was connected by networks of a common people.

To the off-roading groups, Mrs. Downs and the Indians of the Fallon area are an impediment to their recreation. And Jon Crowley Jr. knows just how to punish them.

He says he wants all off-roaders to boycott the tribal gas station, which is an important source of income for them. He emails me, 'If I was in their shoes, and REALLY believed in the serpent and what it meant to me, my family and my ancestors, I would fight to have the mountain put completely off-limits. But that is not what we see. For a point in time, they would talk about the serpent, but not ask for anything regarding it. But they would agree with the environmentalists that a thousand acres should be closed to protect the butterfly. Huh? I thought that Sand Mountain was an important spiritual place for you? Looks like [The Native Americans of the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone tribe] are being used by the environmentalists to further their agenda, not necessarily [theirs.]"

I read that quote to Mrs. Downs. She says, "Jon and I have debated many times, we do have our little gas station here and I am a firm believer in economic development, if our gas station is going to be boycotted then obviously that is not good for the well-being of our tribe and the money that needs to go to educating our children, but at the same time, as tribal people, we cannot sell out on our culture in order to make money."

Mrs. Downs pauses and then says, "We have a responsibility to protect our culture."

She had left Western Nevada for dreams of other places. She went to school in California and never planned to settle down in her hometown. But when she came to visit her family, "I went to Walmart and I ran into a friend that ended up being my husband."

The first day she returned home, she was hired to work on Indian affairs. "Everything has a reason," she says. "Everything in the world has a purpose, nobody has the right to take something away from everybody else. Nobody's recreation should impede on something’s right to exist."

She pauses and then,

"Jon Crowley might say now 'don’t climb on our churches, those are our buildings', but Sand Mountain is our church, it is our sacred place. People may think it's strange that we believe in a serpent in the sand, but that doesn't give them the right to take our church from us."

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