"In this carefully-wrought book, thirty unforgettable Southern Paiute people speak to us. Logan Hebner is our guide, our Studs Terkel—unfailingly generous and warm. Hebner asks: 'Why, in all this time, has nobody simply asked the Southern Paiute for their stories?' Hebner did just that, and in doing so, he was able to record stories that exist nowhere else in print, interviewing elders who remember tales told to them by their grandparents—taking us right back to the nineteenth century. We listen to the full sweep of tragedy and restoration in the life of this often-neglected Southwestern tribe as they 'tell their own histories.' Hebner’s persistence over twenty years pays off splendidly. He is a fine, humorous, and observant writer, sharing intimate scenes from his fieldwork and taking care to provide trustworthy and wide-ranging historical and anthropological context. Michael Plyler’s quiet portraits reflect the same honorable approach. In moving and eloquent words, the Southern Paiute share with us the forgotten 'clues to who they were, who they remain, how they’ve survived, and what will carry them into the future."
—Stephen Trimble, author of The People: Indians of the Southwest
—Utah Historical Quarterly
—High Country News
Now little recognized by their neighbors, Southern Paiutes once had homelands that included much of the vast Colorado Plateau, Great Basin, and Mojave Desert. From the Four Corners’ San Juan River to California’s lower Colorado, from Death Valley to Canyonlands, from Capitol Reef to the Grand Canyon, Paiutes lived in many small, widespread communities. They still do, but the communities are fewer, smaller, and mostly deprived of the lands and resources that sustained traditional lives.
To portray a people and the individuals who comprise it, William Logan Hebner and Michael L. Plyler relay Paiute voices and reveal Paiute faces, creating a space for them to tell their stories and stake claim to who they once were and now are.



Media
Utah Public Radio