00:00.00 archpodnet Go to. 00:04.00 alan Welcome back gang. This is your host Dr Alan Garfinkel this is segment 3 of our 3 segment program with Tim Wag he's ah a rock art and historian enthusiast a native american advocate and an all-round interesting guy. Tim. Ah I want to close this out by asking you about maybe what what was one of your most astounding or interesting experiences with rock art where you began to discover things that began to make sense for you or gave you epiphanies about the way in which one might think about. These ah images and these constructions something that really sang your spirit and rang your chimes. Go ahead. 00:44.23 timwaag Well I actually have a oh yeah that I have an amazing story that kind of was the one that started it at all and for me personally I link. 00:56.48 alan Please. 01:03.37 timwaag The indigenous people their culture and the rock art together for me. They're they're part of the same package and I'm an avid mountain biker and I was biking in mountain biking in Death Valley I was actually. Riding up echo canyon which I found out has some nasty nasty thorns that will destroy any mountain bike tire and for those who know who echo where echo canyon is. It's just height of furnace creek and it's a beautiful ten mile deep canyon with some amazing rock art. But. 01:29.81 alan Ah, wow. 01:41.20 timwaag I blew out my tire I blew out my patch kits and I told everyone to keep riding without me and I turned and did what we call the bicycle carry and it was a long trip and it's just along the bottom of the bottom of Death Valley You know, approaching back to. 01:53.10 alan Ah. 02:00.60 timwaag Furnace creek and fortunately for me. Um, and I know I'm going to because I heard Allen I heard Dr Garfinkel butch ah correctly pronounced I always called him the tim be sho shisonee. But I know it's the wrong pronunciation. But um, Dr Garfinkel maybe you can give me the right pronunciation because I care about that is no, it's spelled t I m b say it again. 02:23.33 alan Okay, the the one but the about the book. The chinni stitch. Yeah, it's chinnet it. Yeah, it's it's pronounced chini snitch. 02:37.17 timwaag Yes, okay, that's why I hacked it in any case that tribe I'm walking past their sign at the reservation at the bottom of Death Valley near furnace Creek and announced the name of the tribe and it said you ready for this visitors. Welcome. 02:41.51 alan Ah. 02:50.39 alan Um, ah ah yep. 02:56.84 timwaag And I went what the heck I'm like I'm gonna be waiting forever for my buddies to come back. So I made a left turn down the dirt road I Found the sign that said office and I knocked on it and they couldn't be more friendly. 02:57.54 alan Yeah. Are have. 03:12.80 alan Um, ah oh I. 03:16.67 timwaag And and inviting I literally told of the story. My bike tires are popped I'm pushing my bike back for miles I Saw your sign it said Welcome I came in and I didn't say this that my mind I was thinking. Dear God I Hope it's true that they're a welcome and I was welcome and lo and behold they were I ended up spending like 4 hours there and the person who happened to be at the desk. Her Mom was a was a native shoshone. 03:35.81 alan I. 03:43.85 alan Wow. 03:51.96 alan You wow. 03:53.70 timwaag That lived in a tribe up above the Charcoal Kilns in in in Wild Rose Canyon and I've been to that camp behind the again we kind of have a good method of of tracking down the different. 04:02.16 alan Ah. 04:10.91 timwaag Indian camps in the greater death valley area. So I'd been to the spot where she grew up and that just blew my mind and we got to talking she introduced me to her 90 year old grandmother who was sharp as attack. 04:16.45 alan Wow. 04:24.64 alan Wow. 04:29.16 timwaag She did look ninety years old um and I talked to her and I was grateful to meet her. She talked about her childhood. It was this crazy experience to actually talk to an indigenous person who lived essentially you know, pre heavy european contact. In the greater death valley region and they said hey we happen to get onto surprise canyon which is a really famous canyon on the on the west side of the Panama mountains and it's prized as a crazy jeep road and it terminates. At eighty two hundred feet in the panament city mines and they were talking about trying to close close it to jeep traffic. Which frankly I was in favor of it because it went through a riparian habitat and I said you know there's these beautiful. Pictograph sites right there in the heart of the silver mines and I had my laptop with me and it was back in the day when they still had a Cd drive and I said I can give you a ton of pictures of these rock art sites in surprise canyon that. You could use to help with your argument to close it down to destructive chief traffic and I went back to the campground. Got my laptop burned a bunch of bunch of cds for them. I'm a prolific photographer so I had tons of photos. 06:03.38 timwaag But that really cemented the relationship and that was my first relationship with the tribe and I realized because I always I always got this impression from other people that tribes just didn't want to talk to non-tribal members and this was the first time it was. 06:06.23 alan Wow. 06:23.60 timwaag Obvious This was not the case they're happy to talk to anybody who's willing to look at at their situation and maybe be able to be on their team in shaping government policies to preserve the tribal culture and. That was the beginning of me realizing I Really love interacting with with Indian tribes and all the all the various conflicting and challenging social and economic conditions. They deal with including stuff like. Protecting their sacred site so that was where that was literally where it began. 07:03.50 alan Fabulous! Great story so that was with a group called the Tim Desha or timbisha shoshone which means red earth that's what the word timbasha means and um, yeah, there's ah, a handful of timbasha shoshone either. Federally recognized and they their campsites ah were scattered throughout the death Death Valley area and remarkable place. Ah. 07:33.98 timwaag Yeah, absolutely. 07:38.53 alan So those ah painting sites up there at the head of Subprise Canyon have ah held my interest for about 50 years I've only seen them. In person once and I've I've written 2 articles about them and given 1 presentation. Anyways, there's a lot to say about those paintings. So interesting that. You brought those up very much so very very yeah remarkable panel of paintings and there's several of them up there I yeah um I believe they're ghosttance paintings that that one there is is what it might be called a ghosttance painting. And I think it was done either in 1870 or 1890 or in that window of time. So anyways, we can talk about that on another ah on another podcast. Ah a whole a whole other set of interesting stories. Well um, what else? Ah, would you like to share about the nature of your journey tim. 08:58.16 timwaag Well I think what's interesting again I'll say it one more time I I warn doctor I warn your doctor that I think differently from other people and I personally as a. Non-native american god gotch knows I must have only european heritage in my genes if you looked at me. That's what you'd assume. But for me personally I I began at one point. Before I got really involved with this to be offended when indians were called native americans and I wasn't I was born in Inglewood California and I considered myself a native american and then I kind of realized despite skin coloring. There is a common history that we share as fellow californians and I think that's important because we are all you know the same species that just happened to get here to California at. Different times under different circumstances. But we have a lot more in common and I want I like to think that we are fellow californians I feel like the indian history is my history because. 10:31.83 timwaag I was conceived in California I was born in California I've explored and and and checked out every conceivable corner of California much like a lot of the the indian tribes did when they were trading and things like that. So I feel like ah. I can we have that common that common heritage of California and that I know that the in the you know that in the tribal reservation schools. They get american history and I feel like in the in the yeah. California public schools. We should get the indigenous tribal history and not in the way that we do it now but in a more meaningful way to have it as an equally weighted equally important history because we're all. I believe we're all native californians if we were born here grew up here traveled here raise kids here again just like the tribes did so that's that's that's a controversial point of view. But. 11:41.85 alan No, but that's a that's the that's a good that's a good pitch Tim and it's something that I'm so glad you shared because it it makes a lot of sense I spoke with the director and the. Ah, developer the manager of the petroleff festival in ridgecrest which themes about american indian educations specifically California indians that are from from that region and that's the platform that she would like to. Ah, to expand and to piggyback with the festival people again? like you said at the very beginning need to be entertained and educated in Tandem. So with that in mind I think we're on the same page. And I'll I'll leave it at that. Thank you all for patching in today and I hope you learned a bit about rock art indian education and even maybe a taste of history god bless you all and have a wonderful day see on the flip flop on the next one god bless