Speaker: Ian Ford-Terry, Archaeologist/Horticulturist at the Las Vegas Springs Preserve
Nuwu Pahsats (“The People’s Garden”) is the latest and largest of the Springs Preserve’s Botanical Garden spaces. It is dedicated to preserving the language and lifeways of the Southern Nevada Paiutes, particularly those of the Moapa, Las Vegas, and Pahrump Paiute tribes, with a special focus on the botanical aspects of their traditional ecological knowledge. The Springs Preserve consulted with members of these groups, collectively known as the Nuwuvi Language Group, on the interpretation of this garden. From the very first meetings, it became clear that this process represented an opportunity to help preserve and revitalize the local dialect of the Southern Paiute language by focusing on everyday words and terms that visitors to the Springs Preserve could relate to: names of plants, words describing the preparation and storage of foods, and words and phrases related to the production of housing, baskets, and other material goods. This focus on language as the basic building blocks of everyday life and culture, and by extension, traditional ecological knowledge, allows the Springs Preserve to concentrate on conserving the native plants that make up the basic physical materials of Nuwu culture. Nuwu Pahsats has endeavored to preserve over 70 words and local Nuwu phrases by representing them phonetically within the interpretive panels and embedding QR codes linking to professional audio recordings of these words as vocalized by the most fluent speaker of the local dialect in the region. It is also home to numerous species of culturally significant native plants and cultivars of Southwestern heirloom crops, with an eye toward building seed banks and eventually nursery stock of these plants to be made available first to our local indigenous communities and partners, and then to the general public.
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