The Southern Sierra Band of Miwok Indians lived in the Yosemite Valley since the 14th century. After the California Gold Rush began, the tribe wrote to the U.S. government claiming that the settlers were making it impossible to sustain themselves through their traditional ways.

When Yosemite National Park is established, the U.S. government responds by creating a kind of “living tourism," in which the Miwok are restricted to certain villages that can be visited by tourists. Between the 1930s and the 1960s, the park will use a series of strategies to remove and contain the Native residents, forcibly shifting their housing and “allowing” native folks to stay at the park only if employed as workers. The last of the Miwok residents will leave in 1996.