Burns Paiute Tribe

The high desert stretching around you has been Northern Paiute homeland for thousands of years. The people here called themselves Wadatika, the seed eaters, after the wada seeds harvested in the marshes of the Malheur basin. American settlement in the eighteen seventies brought catastrophic disruption: after the Bannock War of eighteen seventy-eight, the Northern Paiute of this region were force-marched three hundred miles north to the Yakama Reservation in Washington.

Survivors began drifting back to Harney Valley in the eighteen eighties and nineties. Today the federally recognized tribe holds more than thirteen thousand acres of reservation and trust land near Burns. Today the tribe runs its own government, cultural programs, and language revitalization efforts to keep Wadatika heritage alive on its ancestral ground.