Reclaimers

For most of the past century, Humbug Valley, a forest-hemmed meadow sacred to the Mountain Maidu tribe, was in the grip of a utility company. Washington’s White Salmon River was saddled with a fish-obstructing, inefficient dam, and the Timbisha Shoshone Homeland was unacknowledged within the boundaries of Death Valley National Park.

Until people decided to reclaim them.

In Reclaimers, Ana Maria Spagna drives an aging Buick up and down the long strip of West Coast mountain ranges—the Panamint...