The millennia-long experience of the region's first Americans also carries strong implications for future sustainable use not just of the
Northern Paiute homeland, but the much larger Great Basin region of Oregon, Nevada and Utah.
This dialect of
Northern Paiute is down to its last handful of speakers.
Growing up as she did in a contact zone, Sarah Winnemucca occupied social and geographical places that would come deeply to inform her rhetorical advocacy "for the far-off plains of the West" and for the
Northern Paiute tribes (Life 207).1 While a rich body of scholarship lays out the influence of Winnemucca's social place on her discursive strategies, the influence of Winnemucca's physical place on her rhetorical practices has been consistently overlooked.' Yet, as this essay seeks to demonstrate, physical places and the discourses that shape them are critical to Winnemucca's rhetorical choices and to the ultimate success of her rhetoric.
The archaeological record suggests that
Northern Paiute women living in the town "played an essential role in the preservation of their families and traditional culture" (82).
MEDIAN INCOME $51,413 Southern Ute Colorado $46,638 Campbell Ranch (
Northern Paiute) Nevada $32,500 Havasupai Arizona $26,250 Pine Ridge (Sioux) South Dakota $24,396 Squaxin Island Washington $20,250 Sault Sainte Marie (Chippewa) Michigan $18,750 SOURCE: U.S.
The Shoshone were the most numerous of these people, though the Coso also included the southern and
northern Paiute. Between them, these groups left behind a personal history that scientists are just now beginning to properly decipher.
They include an African-American entrepreneur, a
northern Paiute activist, an Ursuline nun, an enslaved Chinese settler, and a Chippewa-Cree basketball player.
This paper recounts the story of education pioneer Sarah Winnemucca (1844-1891), a self-educated
Northern Paiute Indian who spent her life trying to improve the living conditions and education of the Paiutes.
Numa are better known now as the
Northern Paiute (meaning "water over there") Indians.
Corbett Mack: The Life of a
Northern Paiute. As told by Michael Hittman.