Wildfire Sweeps Past Sacred Sites — The Story in Pictures
This was published by Indian Country Media Network in 2017. For more on topics like this, see my book American Apartheid: The Native American Struggle... Northern Nevada high desert after the wildfire. T he pickup truck rocked over boulders and rolled through dips and rises in the rough dirt track, as we approached 3,200+ acres of ancient sacred sites, recently deeded to the Western Shoshone by the gold-mining company Klondex Mines. The northern Nevada landscape that photographer Joseph Zummo and I traversed, with Battle Mountain Band official Joseph Holley at the wheel, was a grim brown-black. A massive wildfire that swept through the high desert the previous month had left little more than charred tree trunks and tufts of grass to interrupt a view that ended in dark, distant mountains. Joseph Holley; surviving native plants seen at rear. The sacred sites we were seeking—prayer circles, shrines and more—are at the heart of an even larger cultural landscape encompassing