The Mescalero Apache, whose traditional territory includes portions of the Sacramento Mountains bordering the Tularosa Basin, have their own histories of deep connection to this landscape.

None of these traditions are straightforwardly reconcilable with the specific evidence from White Sands, nor do they need to be.

They are not alternatives to the geological and geochronological evidence; they are different kinds of accounts of human relationship to place, operating within different frameworks and preserving different kinds of knowledge.

What the White Sands research provides, at its best, is additional evidence of the depth of human presence in the Southwest — evidence that is congruent with the general claim of deep antiquity that Indigenous traditions have always made, even if it cannot speak to the specific identities or histories of specific modern communities.

The challenge for researchers, communicators, and park managers is to present the White Sands evidence in ways that honor this complexity — that convey the scientific significance of the findings without appropriating the story of human presence in the Southwest as if it were a story that Western science discovered and now owns.

The Children Running Along The Shore