|
Independence Fourth of July Committee
7-1-2010 This Fourth of July, Independence Day, the Inyo County Seat of Independence honors the Fort Independence Paiute Community as its grand marshals, and celebrates the rebirth of the Lower Owens River.
Before pioneer ranchers and miners, before the City of Los Angeles, there was the Valley, the River and the Paiute people.
The Owens Valley Paiutes, who called themselves Numa, or the People, lived in harmony with natural cycles, relying on nuts and seeds, tubers, berries, rice grass, brine shrimp, fish, and small and large animals for food, depending on the season. The streams of the Eastern Sierra slope, rushing down to join with the river on the valley floor, were used for irrigated agriculture by Paiutes. Dams and ditches watered crops like nut grass and rice grass. Each area had an elected irrigator, and many families helped maintain the dams.
The river supplied fish and freshwater clams, and backwater meanders grew tules, which produced fiber as well as food. The Paiute name for the Owens River is Wakopee. That way of life changed as settlers came to the Owens Valley. Now Paiutes, while continuing to document and preserve the traditional culture, are involved in every aspect of civic life in the Owens Valley.
The theme for this year’s Fourth of July party in Independence is “Owens River – Let Freedom Flow!” in celebration of Lower Owens River Project. The restoration of the Lower Owens River is a project undertaken by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power as compensatory mitigation for groundwater pumping in the Owens Valley from 1970-1990. The Owens Valley Committee, the Sierra Club and the Inyo County Water Department have been key participants in this project, and continue to have oversight and input.
While not flowing at the historical capacity, the modest flows in the river already have diversified plant and animal life, and returned a green ribbon to the desert from the aqueduct intake south to the Owens Lake delta. Water is pumped into the aqueduct just above the delta, but a small amount of water flows to the lake to create habitat for wildlife. As Mark Twain succinctly summarized, “Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting over,” and the River Project has been no different. But, this project has moved forward through the processes provided for in our democratic form of government, settling differences to achieve a common good in the spirit of the Republic.
The Fort Independence Indian Reservation was formed in 1915, near the site of Fort Independence on Oak Creek. In 1965, the Fort Independence Paiute Community was formed to provide governance for the Reservation.
Fort Independence was established on July 4, 1862. The Fort is now home to the Pauite Community, other residences, and ranches leased from the City of Los Angeles. Eleanor Meroney, Ida Mae Meroney Cooney, Pearl Symmes Budke, Delores Buff, Irvin Miller and Marilyn Zucco Bracken are the still-living original signers of the first governing documents for the Community.
Independence Paiutes formed a music band in the early 20th century, the Fort Independence Indian Band, which played for the dedication of the new Inyo County Courthouse in April 1922 and for functions throughout the Owens Valley.
Mary Austin, noted Western writer and Independence resident, spent many hours with the Independence Paiutes, learning from them the ways of nature in the region she called the Country of Lost Borders. The seamlessness of the relationship between Paiutes and the land was a revelation to her. She captured the essence of the Owens Valley in her book, “Land of Little Rain,” penned while she lived in the brown house she built in Independence.
The re-creation of the Owens River gives hope to Americans in two vital ways – that the damaged and forgotten natural world of the United States can be restored piece by piece, and that the civic processes that are fundamental to our participatory Republic are intact and fully functional.
|
