A new interactive teaching garden at Springs Preserve aims to keep traditional ecological knowledge and the native Southern Paiute language alive in Las Vegas.
Nuwu Pahsats, a Southern Paiute or Nuwuvi term that translates to “people’s garden,” is tucked inside Springs Preserve behind a gate decorated with metallic Joshua trees, desert tortoises and blue streams of water.
“It’s sort of a microcosm of Southern Nevada. We have different areas that represent different geographical locations here in the valley,” said the preserve’s archaeologist Nathan Harper. “Each of these beds here are planted with specific plants that have specific functions.”
The circular shaped garden guides visitors with informational panels about various native plants, animals and philosophies.
One of the first panels visitors encounter upon entering reads “Too-VEEP tah-wuh mahn-NOH-kos mah-GHARR,” a phonetic spelling of a Nuwuvi phrase that translates to “the land provides for us all.”
“Every panel that we have in the garden, the header is going to be in Southern Paiute,” Harper said. “The language part of it is really important because your language is the way you structure the world, the way you understand the world, and so there’s not a one-to-one direct translation for a lot of words.”
To create the garden, Springs Preserve worked with members of Southern Nevada Paiute groups, including the Moapa and the Las Vegas and Pahrump Paiute tribes. Together these tribes compose the Nuwuvi Language Group.
Walking through the garden, Harper pointed out the honey mesquite plant and picked one of its pods. He then took the pod over to a large stone slab that had several circular indentations.
“This is the tree you see all over town with the yellow pods,” said Harper. “Those yellow pods are food hanging off everybody’s tree and everybody’s yard.”
Harper placed the pod in one of the indentations and began grinding the pod with a stone. In less than a minute, the pod turned into a course powder that can then be processed into a sweet, carbohydrate-rich flour.
On the panel about mesquite is a QR code that leads to a YouTube video that teaches the pronunciation of the Nuwuvi word “op,” which means mesquite pod, or “op-IMB,” which means mesquite tree.
The voice behind these videos is elder Leroy Howell, a direct descendant of John Howell, one of the first U.S. government-sanctioned landowners in early Las Vegas history. John Howell, a formerly enslaved Black man from North Carolina, gained ownership of The Big Springs in the 1870s. He married a Paiute woman, and together they had several children. Today that land is the Springs Preserve.
“Showing that continuity is so important because everybody talks about natives living in the past,” Harper said. “They are here today. They have an influence on our culture here today.”
Kenny Anderson, who runs the language program for the Las Vegas Paiute tribe, worked with Harper on the language component of the garden.
“We worked with them since the Springs Preserve opened,” Anderson said. Springs Preserve first opened in 2007. “They were always talking about building that garden.”
Anderson is satisfied with how the language preservation project at Nuwu Pahsats turned out. He likes to stop by the garden occasionally to check in on its progress. In the future, Anderson plans to do cultural demonstrations there with his language program.
Springs Preserve first began building Nuwu Pahsats after funding for the project was passed during the 81st Nevada State Legislative Session in 2021. Five years later, on March 28, Nuwu Pahsats hosted the opening ceremony.
The garden is now open to the public. However, Springs Preserve has agreed that the Southern Paiute people will be able to access Nuwu Pahsats privately for special community events when needed.
As temperatures begin to cool in the fall and winter, Harper anticipates the garden will come alive with greenery, flowers and wildlife. He hopes that when visitors walk through Nuwu Pahsats they will leave with a respect for native ecological knowledge.
“For what some people looks like a wasteland of a desert is a grocery store. It’s your convenience store. It’s your hardware store,” Harper said. “Like the panel says, the land provides for us all. Everything we need, the land gives to us. So we need to make sure that we’re giving back to the land and reciprocating that care.”
Contact Kalohe Danbara at kdanbara@reviewjournal.com.
