Jeremiah Joseph, Lacy, James Fleming

Tribal Cultural Resource Protectors and Land Restoration Specialists

Owens Valley, CA

October 7th, 2025

Owens Lake is a desolate place. For travelers going to much more “pristine” environments on US-395 and California highways 136 and 190, it is difficult to visualize that Owens Lake is the site of one of the most significant ecological restoration and mitigation projects in the United States. Throughout the former lakebed, numerous areas must be managed by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), as well as many other agencies, to mitigate hazardous dust emissions that have made the Owens Valley one of the most air-polluted regions in America. One of these sites is the Keeler Dunes project. Initiated in 2014, the dunes project was undertaken by the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District to mitigate the impact of particulate matter caused by a degraded dune system near the town of Keeler. Through this project, members of the Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone began working on the restoration and stabilization of the dunes by planting native vegetation.

Jeremiah Joseph, a member of the Lone Pine Paiutes, emphasized his people’s role in the restoration of the dunes, boasting an 80 percent survival rate of plants planted by the tribal crew, as opposed to 35 percent for non-tribal plantings. Jeremiah emphasized the role of Owens Lake (Patsiata) in his people’s culture and the role that the restoration crew has played in empowering the tribe and healing the land. Furthermore, the success of the Keeler Dunes Project has enabled the tribe to expand into additional areas of the lake, including collaboration with the LADWP, a typically adversarial entity. Finally, Jeremiah and the members of the tribal restoration crew emphasized the success of integrating traditional ecological knowledge with Western science on the dunes and expressed hope for the success of future projects.

We thank the Lone Pine Paiute Shoshone restoration crew for explaining their people’s relationship with the land in the Owens Valley, for their continued stewardship of their traditional homeland, including Keeler Dunes, and for spending time with us on Semester in the West!

by Trevor Maziek