by: Brenda Norrell, Southwest Staff
Reporter
Indian
Country Today
20 May 2004
CRESCENT VALLEY, Nev. -
United States Congressmen are mirroring the same deceptive tactics in Western
Shoshone territory as in Iraq, said Western Shoshone as legislation was pushed
to compensate tribal members for Aboriginal land in an effort to seize it and
open it up for mining, energy and nuclear corporations.
While Western Shoshone
maintain their Aboriginal land claim secured by the Treaty of Ruby Valley of
1863, their sacred Yucca Mountain is being gutted for nuclear dumping, their
horses and cattle seized to make way for geothermal industries and the earth
mutilated for gold extraction.
"If the war on
terrorism is about protecting this country, then why is our own government
trying to take away our homelands?" said Mary McCloud, Western Shoshone
elder.
"Our Indian
children are over in Iraq supposedly fighting for their country. And yet our
Nevada Congressional leaders through the Western Shoshone Distribution Act are
trying to take away the Western Shoshone homeland.
"What are our
Shoshone kids going to come back to? What are they fighting for?" McCloud
said.
Current legislation
before the United States Congress, the Western Shoshone Distribution Bill, H.R.
884/S. 618, is described by tribal members as an attempt to strip away U.S.
treaty obligations and their connections to their homeland with a one time
payment of cents per acre.
"Under the guise
of bi-partisanship, Senator Harry Reid and Congressman Jim Gibbons are once
again gearing up to force this one time payment on the Western Shoshone people
for 24 million acres of land at approximately 15 cents an acre," said Julie
Fishel of the Western Shoshone Defense Project.
Reid is Democrat and
Gibbons is Republican.
Fishel said the push
for passage of the distribution bill is being made at the same time that Gibbons
is sponsoring other legislation, H.R. 2869 and H.R. 2772, which would open
Shoshone lands to privatization by multinational mining companies and massive
geothermal energy development, with no provision for Western Shoshone interests
or concerns.
Simultaneously, the
Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste repository is being pushed forward, regardless of
whistleblowers exposing inherent dangers.
Western Shoshone elders
are the victims of the schemes to seize the land. During May, Robert Healy Sr.,
Mary Dann and Carrie Dann received federal notices of intent to impound their
livestock.
Carrie Dann said it is
domestic terrorism designed to steal the dignity of the people.
"Economically we were a self-sustaining people. With these recent actions
stealing our livelihood we are now facing economic starvation designed to remove
us from our lands. To me, that is terrorism. Domestic terrorism. This behavior
is designed to steal our dignity, our honor and to make us feel that we are less
than or lower than human - we are treated like animals. We are being
dehumanized."
Dann said the
distribution bill is an unconstitutional, unjust and unwanted payment. "As
Western Shoshone, we have been fighting for many years to simply remain who we
are - Western Shoshone. The earth is our mother and land provides us with life,
like the water and the air. To take this land from us will be to lead us into a
spiritual death.
The distribution bill
could come up for a vote in the U.S. House in May or June. The fear of many
Western Shoshone people and the majority of Councils is that money is being used
by Congress to silence Western Shoshone concerns over U.S. violations of the
Treaty of Ruby Valley.
By treaty, Western
Shoshone maintain their ancestral land base - where they still live and pray -
approximately 24 million acres of land, most of which the U.S. classifies as
"public" lands.
Steven Newcomb,
Shawnee/Lenape co-founder and co-director of the Indigenous Law Institute, said
neither Congressman Gibbons nor Senator Reid wants to address Western Shoshone
land rights based on the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley.
"After personally
researching the Indian Claims Commission records in the Western Shoshone case, I
could not find one shred of historical documentation to support the
"finding" that Western Shoshone lands described in the Ruby Valley
Treaty were ever "taken" by "gradual encroachment," Newcomb
said.
In order to force the
people off the land, the Department of Interior has conducted armed roundups of
Western Shoshone livestock for the past two years. Western Shoshone say the
beneficiaries of this theft of Aboriginal Shoshone lands are the mining, energy
and nuclear industries.
Western Shoshone land
encompasses the world's third largest production of gold, cited in 1999 as the
number one investment opportunity for mineral extraction companies. In the past
40 years, $26 billion dollars in gold has been extracted from Western Shoshone
aboriginal lands defined by treaty.
Open pit cyanide leach
mining for gold is destroying the water and air, said Carrie Dann. Multinational
gold companies Kennecott, Placer Dome, Barrick and Newmont and others, take the
water out of the water table at a rate of 30 to 70 thousand gallons of water per
minute.
One Nevada politician
described these lands as the next "Saudi Arabia" of geothermal energy
production.
If that wasn't enough
abuse, the U.S. has selected the land for nuclear dumping at Yucca Mountain, the
proposed site of the nation's nuclear waste repository and the Nevada Test Site.
The Bush administration has referenced possible renewed nuclear weapons testing.
Although one excuse for
the war in Iraq was the violation of human rights, Western Shoshone point out
that the United States government abuses its indigenous peoples at home.
Last year, the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights found that with regard to the Western
Shoshone, the U.S. is currently in violation of rights to property, due process
and equality under the law. In the fall of 2003, a federal lawsuit was filed on
behalf of Western Shoshone in the U.S. District Court in Washington. (Western
Shoshone, et al. v. U.S. Case No. 03-CV-2009).
It has been a long
fight for Western Shoshone elders, and in the eyes of the world, they are
winners.
McCloud said, "The
elders before us stood up for life and their understanding of the treaty and
this elder and others still stand for the treaty and life."
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