Yosemite Mono Lake Paiute Indians or Native Americans

Ending a lengthy legal battle with environmentalists, the federal government agreed Wednesday to halt all commercial development in Yosemite National Park's most popular stretch and to consider limiting access to its wilderness. The settlement caps years of legal wrangling between the National Park Service and two small environmental groups, which sued the federal government in 2000. They claimed the park's $442 million plan to move campgrounds and upgrade hotel rooms in Yosemite Valley would jeopardize the Merced River, a federally protected waterway that flows beside famous granite monoliths and dramatic waterfalls. Under the new agreement, the park service will hold off on all planned ... Read Full Story

Maggie "Taboose" Howard on cover of Yosemite Indians. She was one of the most photographed women in the Park's history. If you enter Yosemite National Park you will see many interpretive signs throughout the park with photographs of Yosemite Native American Indians. Beautiful old photos with soaring inspirational text of the first Natives of Yosemite. Those Indians the Yosemite National Park claim are Southern Sierra Miwuks, and even Central Mewuks. You might even go to the National Park’s website and see the story of the Ahwahneechee “Miwoks” with several old photos. Now if you didn’t have a clue, like most Non-Indian tourists you would ... Read Full Story

Yosemite's most distinctive monument, Half Dome, dominates most Valley views. Standing at the eastern end of Yosemite Valley, Half Dome rises to an elevation of 8,842 feet. At 87 million years old, the type of granite making up the dome is the youngest plutonic rock in the Valley. (Plutonic rock is formed beneath the earth's surface by intense heat, pressure and slow cooling.) The remaining portions of granite on Half Dome's face are believed to have sheered off during its cooling phase 100 million years ago, deep under the Pacific seabed. Succeeding glaciers deposited some of the debris in moraines along the Valley floor. ... Read Full Story

Now for the most outrageous thing that Yosemite National Park has done. They honor the head Indian scout who hunted down and captured the Yosemite Indians, but not the chief of the Yosemite Indian people. If you have been following the saga, we Paiutes are breaking down the myth that Yosemite National Park was once the homeland of the fabled Southern Sierra Miwuks also called the Yosemite Mewuks. For decades Yosemite National Park has been falsely claming that the original Native Americans of the Yosemite Valley, also called the Ahwahneechees, were Miwoks. Yet Yosemite National Park has never read the early account by Dr. ... Read Full Story

My friend sent this review of a book one of our elders encountered today. He highly recommends this book if you are interested in photograpy. The book has great photos of places John Muir traveled through in the Sierra Nevada; Hetch Hetchy, Yosemite, and Mono Lake. One of our elders ecountered this book when he was out and about. The book is called 'What Would John Muir Say?' which was edited by Bernice Basser Turoff with some of the best photographs of Yosemite, Mono Lake and Hetch Hetchy he had ever seen. The photos were taken by David Best. My elder said the photos ... Read Full Story