The Northwestern Band of The Shoshone Nation are Healing the Bear River
On a warm August morning, I set out from my home in northern Utah’s Cache Valley to where my favorite river winds through a landscape of hot springs and green hillsides dotted with grazing cattle. In my green Subaru, I made my way through the rural countryside of northern Utah and southern Idaho — a place where beauty meets solitude. A place where you can reflect and listen.
Though seemingly untouched, this land has been shaped by human hands over the past couple of centuries. Beneath its surface, it holds countless stories of both sorrow and resilience. I like to think that the trees, both native and invasive, are the land’s best storytellers. As I stood among them in a valley just north of Preston, Idaho, I tried to listen to what they had to say.
These trees rise from the same soil where, in 1863, more than 400 members of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation were brutally massacred in one of the deadliest attacks on Native Americans in U.S. history. When I arrived at the Bear River Massacre Site, I gazed out over the rolling hills, their slopes lined with Russian olive trees and sagebrush. The Bear River snaked its way through the farmland below, peaceful yet in sharp contrast to the horror that unfolded here just over a century and a half ago. For thousands of years before the massacre, the Shoshone people gathered here, performing their “Warm Dance” and camping during cold and snowy winters.
I was greeted by Darren Parry, former chairman of the Shoshone tribe and author of The Bear River Massacre: A Shoshone History. Parry is the great-great-great-grandson of Chief Sagwitch Timbimboo, the tribe’s leader during the massacre, and he carries his ancestors’ stories with him. As he recounted the details of that frigid January morning when his people were slaughtered, his words were both heartbreaking and hopeful. He spoke of the tribe’s ongoing efforts to reclaim the site and restore it to how it looked before white settlers took control of the land.
“For our people, this restoration is part of the healing process,” Parry said as we stood overlooking the sacred ground his tribe named Wuda Ogwa, which translates to Bear River. “You have to heal the land before you can truly begin to tell the story of the people.”
In 2018, the tribe purchased approximately 350 acres of their ancestral land at the massacre site and began restoration efforts, and for the past three years the Utah Conservation Corps has been removing hundreds of thousands of invasive Russian olive trees that have overtaken much of the floodplain. In a place where water is now more vital than ever, these trees siphon off up to 75 gallons of water per day.
In November 2023, over 400 volunteers from across Utah and Idaho gathered to help restore both the ecological and spiritual balance of the site. Together, they planted over 8,000 native trees and shrubs. Cottonwoods, dogwoods, currants, and willows, which for the Shoshone, hold great meaning. They were once used to make baskets and winnowing pans, and during the massacre, they provided hiding places for some survivors.
The tribe’s vision for healing the land includes planting 300,000 native trees and shrubs, cleaning up local creeks, and transforming degraded agricultural fields into wetlands. Parry explained these efforts could return 13,000 acre-feet of water annually to the threatened Great Salt Lake. After the massacre, settlers diverted the Bear River—the lake’s largest tributary—altering its flow to generate power and irrigate farmland. The river was used in every way imaginable: dammed, diverted into canals, and reshaped into ditches. The grizzlies that once roamed the river’s banks disappeared, along with the bison and beaver. Now, the Shoshone are working to reverse what was stolen—not only from their people, but from the land itself and the Great Salt Lake.
I returned to the massacre site on a warm October morning, the straw covered mountains beamed with the golden hues of autumn. A golden eagle soared overhead, and I saw the newly planted trees—the efforts of healing from people of different walks of life.
I couldn’t help but wonder what the world might look like if we took this approach everywhere—if we made a collective effort to heal what has been broken. The 400 people who showed up that November day are proof that we have the desire to repair the past. And come this November, even more will arrive to plant native plants and continue the work of healing.
Soon, beavers will return to Wuda Ogwa. Maybe even bears — reminders that we can always begin again.
RCC National Environment Leadership Presidential Fellow – Clarissa Casper – Utah State University
Clarissa Casper is studying English Creative Writing as a master’s student at Utah State University. She was born and raised between the Wasatch Mountains and the Great Salt Lake in Northern Utah. While living there, she grew to love the stories nature told by observing the flowers, mountain goats, and waterfalls decorating the green slopes near her home. Clarissa has loved birds all her life and enjoys writing about ecosystems through their lens.
