Western Shoshone Defense Project
FYI. Daily Ireland reporting on Western Shoshone and stopping the Divine Strake test – Remember – May 28, 2006 is the International Day of Action to stop Divine Strike (700 ton Ammonium Nitrate detonation in Nevada). For more info send us an email or call the number below.

Western Shoshone Defense Project
P.O. Box 211308
Crescent Valley, NV 89821
775-468-0230 - 775-468-0237 (fax)
www.wsdp.org - wsdp@igc.org

Native Americans step up campaign against bomb test
19/04/2006

With the clock ticking towards the Pentagons testing of a massive new bomb, Native Americans of Nevadas Western Shoshone nation are stepping up their efforts to stop the scheduled blast from occurring.

The Pentagon plans to detonate the new megabomb weighing 700 short tons (635 metric tons) on June 2, as part of its efforts to develop non-nuclear ordnance capable of destroying deeply buried, subterranean targets. Dubbed Divine Strake, the test is scheduled to take place on the Nevada Test Site a high desert valley that is surrounded by mountains and sits 140 kilometres from Las Vegas.

If the blast occurs, it will be the largest open-air chemical explosion in the sites history. According to Utah's Salt Lake Tribune, Divine Strake will be five times bigger than the largest non-nuclear bomb currently in the United States arsenal the Massive Ordinance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB), which has been nicknamed the Mother of All Bombs.

Western Shoshone woman Carrie Dann, who has been a Native American activist for four decades, told Daily Ireland that the proposed blast was wrong not only for the indigenous peoples but for all peoples and all life.
The earth is your mother, and you cannot separate yourself from your mother," Ms Dann said during a telephone interview from the Nevada-based Western Shoshone Defence Project. You cannot take away the earth that feeds you and clothes you and everything. No way.

Kevin Rohrer a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency that operates the test site has claimed that the United States is within its rights to conduct the testing. He insists that a 1985 US Supreme Court ruling recognised that the Shoshone were paid in full for the land under the Indian Claims Commission Act of 1946 and therefore the land no longer belongs to the tribe.

Julie Fishel, a lawyer for the Western Shoshone Defence Project, said all such court rulings were illegitimate because they were rooted in proclamations and laws passed during the original European conquest of indigenous lands.
Ms Fishel said such US claims were based on the Christian Document of Discovery, a doctrine formed via a series papal bulls that were issued between 1452 and 1493, as the Europeans began exploring lands in the western hemisphere. The Document of Discovery gave moral sanction to the seizing of native lands.

In 1823, the US Supreme Court officially incorporated the concept into US law by ruling that European settlers had achieved ultimate dominion over the lands that they had explored over the previous 330 years and that Native Americans had forever lost their rights to complete sovereignty, as independent nations.

Ms Fishel told Daily Ireland: US federal Indian law is based on the Document of Discovery antiquated, racist doctrines. And during those proceedings, the Western Shoshone were never allowed to present evidence. They were not given a hearing on the record.
Ms Fishel, whose great-grandparents were Irish, said she frequently used a link to Ireland when explaining events on Shoshone lands.

The pattern of behaviour between the United States and Native Americans is the same as whats happened in Ireland. In fact, we make that analogy quite often because many of the trees that were clear-cut in Ireland by the colonisers in Ireland were used to build ships to get to the US, and those people then colonised Indian lands here, she said.

According to Western Shoshone leaders, the proposed June 2 blast site was recognised by the United States as belonging to the Western Shoshone nation under the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley. The US authorities dispute this claim.
The Nevada Test Site, previously known as the Nevada Proving Ground, was the United States main nuclear weapons testing site between 1951 and 1959. Some arms-race experts believe that, even after the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the United States conducted underground tests for many more years.

Scientists have linked increased cases of cancer and leukaemia in areas surrounding the test site to exposure to radiation from the nuclear testing.

Julie Fishel said the proposed blast was all the more striking because of recent US government actions regarding nuclear science both in signing a treaty to bolster Indias nuclear capabilities, and US efforts to thwart the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea.

I think the United States is doing whatever it wants to do. It doesn't seem to be paying heed to whether or not there is any consistency in that behaviour. They are behaving as if they dont have to follow anyones rules, that they can say one thing and then do exactly the opposite, she said.

In March, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva called on Washington to abort the June 2 test and to desist from activities that violated Western Shoshone sovereignty.
Activist Carrie Dann said: Even looking at it from the point of health, when you detonate a bomb like that down at the test site, its going to raise up the deaths from people already exposed to radiation.
America has never really looked at the indigenous problem. America is supposed to be ruled by laws. But when it comes to indigenous issues, its just ruled by arrogance, as far as Im concerned.


Western Shoshone Defense Project

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The Sunday Times April 23, 2006
Defiance in the land of the free
A Native American woman is at war with the US. For 30 years she’s been fighting to keep her ancestral land — and now the United Nations is on her side. Report by Nicola Graydon


The government came for the horses at dawn. It was spring 2003 and it was foaling season. A helicopter flew low over Pine Valley, herding them to corrals. Some prematurely gave birth, others were trampled. Armed federal agents stood by. By the end of the day, over 500 horses were taken to be auctioned off to a local rancher. Not long afterwards some 50 carcasses were dumped – the horses had starved to death.Carrie Dann, a diminutive Western Shoshone grandmother who owned the horses, refuses to talk about it. “Indians love horses,” is all she’ll say. But she thinks it caused the death of her sister, Mary, who died last April. “After that,” she says, “Mary went down real fast.”

The 2003 round-up was the fourth military-style operation in one of the longest-running land disputes in the history of America. For over 30 years, Carrie and Mary Dann have fought the US government for Western Shoshone rights to 60m acres of land that stretch through Nevada into neighbouring states. Until now, the harassment has hardly scratched the conscience of America, but that might be about to change. In March, in an unprecedented document, the UN demanded that the US government halt all actions against the Shoshone and find a solution acceptable to them and in accordance with their rights.

This landmark decision could force the government to transform antiquated federal Indian law. And if it does it will be in no small part down to the Dann sisters.What she lacks in physical stature – she barely scrapes 5ft – Carrie Dann makes up for in presence and sheer bloody-mindedness. Her face is weathered by decades in the saddle and a 20-a-day habit – and her swearing doesn’t endear her to government officials. “The Indian wars ain’t over yet,” she says fiercely. “They’re still happening here and now.” But, despite her defiance, she admits she’s still afraid the US government will confiscate her ranch to pay outstanding fines for disputed grazing fees.The Dann ranch isn’t much to look at.

A single-story rambling clapboard house, it’s surrounded by tall cottonwood trees and rusting wrecks. Uncle Clifford, who famously threatened to douse himself in gasoline when the “feds” first confiscated the family livestock in the early 1990s, earning nine months in state prison as a result, lives in a trailer in the garden. He’s now profoundly deaf. Carrie’s severely disabled son is playing in the cabin of a tractor in the front yard.Panes of glass have been replaced by cardboard and there’s no central heating. Cooking is done on a wood-burning stove.

The only things that place the ranch in the 21st century are the solar panels that replaced the generator last year.But Carrie doesn’t care about home comforts. Her grandmother, she tells me proudly, never had a bed. Anyway, the land is all that matters. “We’ve been here since time immemorial,” she says, as we make our way to a small dam to catch brown trout for dinner. “I was born here and this is where I’ll die, whatever the government says.”The ranch is dwarfed by the Nevada landscape. Crescent Valley stretches away from it for miles like a vast carpet of desert shrubs and wild flowers.To the naked eye, it’s a vast plain of nothing much – but the ranch is on some of the most expensive real estate in the world. Carrie Dann is, quite literally, sitting on a gold mine.

Just down the road, the Carlin Trend, discovered in the 1960s, is the second largest gold depository in the world after Witwatersrand in South Africa, but the entire state is covered with open pits. Mining has always been Nevada’s raison d’etre. There was a lull at the beginning of the 20th century; silver ran out and gold was yet to be discovered so the state legalised divorce, gambling and prostitution. But today nearly 10% of the world’s production of gold ­– over half of US production – comes from Nevada.Carrie’s ranch sits on the slopes of the Cortez mountain range, first prospected in the original gold rush but as yet untapped. Not long before the 2003 round-up, Cortez Mining (a joint venture between Placer Dome, the largest mining operation in the area, and Rio Tinto) tried to introduce legislation to privatise 60,000 acres for mining around Mount Tenabo, the most imposing mountain in the range.

Tenabo is sacred to the Shoshone for reasons other than gold, and the ensuing uproar killed the bill but, for the Danns, this was just another battle in an ongoing war of attrition.The Danns’ legal dispute began in 1973 when the Bureau of Land Management fined the sisters for grazing their livestock on “public lands”: that is, land owned by the federal government. The sisters never had any intention to pay. As far as they were concerned, they were grazing ancestral land ratified in the Treaty of Ruby Valley in 1863. Collection notices still arrive at the tiny local post office but Carrie doesn’t even bother to open them. “I probably owe $5m by now,” she laughs hoarsely.From 1974 to 1991 their case was shunted from court to court: through the US District Court and bouncing backwards and forwards between the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court, which ruled against the Danns in 1985. “It was all totally wrong. I felt like we were being screwed by the federal court system all the way along. But sometimes I think that being Indian means they can screw us whichever way they want.

”The Western Shoshone had been screwed by earlier findings of the Indian Claims Commission on which the Supreme Court based their final ruling. Set up by President Truman in 1946, ostensibly to honour Indian rights and treaties, the commission ruled in 1977 that the Shoshone had “lost” their lands in 1872 by “gradual encroachmemt” and awarded $24m as compensation“Gradual encroachment by what?” Carrie Dann sweeps her hand angrily over the emptiness. “There’s nobody else here – but the drilling rigs. In 1965 the word was ‘taken’. T A K E N. Now it’s become ‘lost to gradual encroachment’. As far as I know, the constitution states that nobody can take another’s land unless it’s by the federal government for public use: and, even then, there are procedures to follow.” However, the Western Shoshone refused to take the money. “It’s still there drawing interest,” says Carrie. “I understand it’s now over $130m.”

She snorts in derision. “But no amount of money will make us give up the rights to our lands.”The Peace and Friendship Treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863 is one of the few Indian treaties that didn’t cede land, because nobody wanted it. It was a parched high desert; vicious in winter and equally so in summer.The white settlers were looking for safe passage to the gold mines
in California during the great gold rush that began in 1848. Until then, the Indians of the interior had barely come into contact with white people. But once the rush began, thousands of settlers began moving west with rifles to shoot wild game and herds of livestock that grazed Shoshone land to dust. In just one year, 70,000 gold-seekers passed through Shoshone territory.The gold rush was devastating for native peoples.

From 1848 to 1870 the population dropped from 150,000 to 31,000. According to Carrie, only 10 families survived massacres in Ruby Valley itself. The treaty allowed settlers to mine, ranch, cut timber and extract natural resources but, crucially to the Danns’ case, it recognised the Western Shoshone as landowners.The Shoshone nation stretches over four states: from Snake River in Idaho, through much of Nevada to the edge of the Mojave desert in California and taking up a small corner of Utah. The treaty awarded the Indians compensation for use of land at $5,000 a year for 20 years.

It was never paid, and neither was a promised royalty for extraction.The HQ of the Western Shoshone Defence Project (WSDP), set up by the Western Shoshone National Council in 1991 to help the Danns’ case, is a trailer on scrubland off 6th Street in Crescent Valley, a barely-there town that is mainly made up of mine workers.Julie Fishel, a human-rights lawyer who’s been with the WSDP for three years, points out of the window: “There it is: the mountain they’re desperate to get their hands on.”

Mount Tenabo dominates the horizon. Fishel became involved with the Danns in 1998, beginning full-time work on their case in 2001 when she received a desperate call asking her to help them respond to a bill that was being introduced by Harry Reid, Nevada’s Democratic senator, to force the distribution of the disputed monies the Shoshone have never claimed. Fishel began to turn their case around.
Reid has widely-reported links with the mining and gaming interests that have made Nevada one of the fastest growing states in the US. The Los Angeles Times recently revealed sizable sums his sons and son-in-law have received for lobbying on behalf of mining companies in Nevada.

“They really needed my help. The spin against them in Washington was claiming, basically, that they were almost terrorists. That really alarmed me. I finally got to talk to someone in authority. When I explained the situation, he said, ‘This is completely different to what I have been told.’ I asked him where he was getting this from. And he said, ‘Senator Reid’s office’.”Nonetheless the Western Shoshone Distribution Bill was signed by George W Bush in July 2004, forcing the Western Shoshone to accept the award at $20,000 at person. But still the money is languishing in state coffers.

While the first gold rush was devastating to native peoples, the modern gold rush that began in the 1980s and intensified in the 1990s is disastrous for the environment. Thousands of acres of woodlands have been cleared, streams have been contaminated with cyanide and mercury, wildlife is disappearing and the landscape is scarred by open pits a mile wide and towering waste dumps.

Environmental experts say it could take 100 years for the land to recover, and fear the consequences of the rapid depletion of the aquifer – a vast underground lake – by an industry that wastes some 10m gallons of water a day per mine in the most arid state in the US. About 383 billion gallons of water have already been pumped from one mine alone. Yet the gold industry remains one of the least regulated of all extractive industries, with no federal environmental guidelines and no requirements to clean up after the mines become defunct.In a memorable indictment in The New York Times recently, John Leshy, a lawyer for the Department of the Interior in the Clinton administration, said: “Nevada is being written off as a sacrifice area for gold.”

For the Indian communities that, like Carrie, still rely on the land for ranching and subsistence farming, sacred pools used for ritual are diminishing or poisoned; mountains of legend and folklore are dynamited and turned into toxic waste dumps. “For us, the Earth is a sacred thing,” explains Carrie, seeming slightly frustrated at having to explain once again what is, to her, a basic tenet of life. “We were taught the Earth is like our mother, and we have to take care of our mother because she gives us life.
The Earth, the air, the water and the sun are all sacred to us and they are being destroyed, polluted and contaminated. For us, this is like spiritual genocide.”

She admits that the treaty allows mining on Western Shoshone lands but points out that, in 1863, this amounted to a few men with pickaxes and explosives. But she’s still willing to talk with mining representatives. “We’re prepared to meet with them. Is there such a thing as responsible mining? I’ll have to work that out for myself.”The Danns were one of the few Indian families who avoided moving to the reservations or into town. They would retreat to caves in the mountains to avoid trouble.

Once, her grandmother told her, they had hidden for months during an epidemic when clothes distributed as gifts by the military infested the tribe with smallpox. “Their own records tells that 98% of our people died – killed by bullets or disease,” she says bitterly. “If you don’t call that genocide, what is? But they still treat us badly.”In 1951 the Atomic Energy Commission chose Western Shoshone land to set up a test site for nuclear weapons. Between 1951 and 1992, the US and Great Britain exploded around 1,000 nuclear devices there. More recently the Western Shoshone invoked the treaty in a lawsuit against a Department of Energy plan to make Yucca Mountain into a dump for the country’s nuclear waste.

“We call that mountain Snake Mountain because it moves,” one elder told me. And, sure enough, geological surveys indicate the area around the mountain has more than its share of seismic shifts and mini-earthquakes.The Western Shoshone call their land Newe Sogobia, meaning ‘“the people’s earth mother”, and their creation myths tell them they were placed here to take care of the Earth. Unlike other tribes who were placed in reservations far from their original homelands or migrated to safety, they have, at least, managed to stay.

The Dann ranch is as good a place as any to conduct a last stand. At night, Carrie watches the lights of exploratory drilling rigs – or “metal horses”, as she calls them – as they move around in the valley below her. She has no idea how she will survive financially without her livestock but continues to catch fish and gather pine nuts. The few horses that remain stay close to the ranch now, as if for comfort, and the land is missing the cattle to graze back the grass that has overgrown in an unusually wet summer.

Fishel recalls the day of the round-up: “Carrie was nearly broken by it. She was on the ground sobbing. She said to me, ‘Julie, I’m done. They’ve destroyed us.’”The weekend I visit, the Shoshone are conducting the first sun dance in Ruby Valley since 1941, after which Indian religious rites were banned by the Department of the Interior until the 1970s. It’s an extraordinary ritual
where dancers fast for three days and three nights while they dance to the point of exhaustion. It’s said to connect the people to the sun in an act of self-sacrifice to both the Earth mother and the community.

In this case it has brought together hundreds of Western Shoshone in the place where the Treaty of Peace and Friendship was signed over a century ago. Nobody is downplaying the significance. Carrie is hopeful it’s a sign of a cultural resurgence.“I want the spiritual rights of our people to be restored,” she says. “And that means we need our rights to the land, for that is where we worship.”
The UN decision in March has given long-awaited recognition to her struggle and a July deadline for the US to report on compliance. The Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva has also demanded the US recognise and protect the Shoshone’s cultural and spiritual practices. Carrie admits it’s a huge step in the right direction but she has further ambitions. “I want the United States government to come to us and say, ‘Our history is long and painful.

We have mistreated you. We massacred, raped, humiliated and starved your people. We admit we committed acts of genocide.’ That would be a good thing. If they decided to put a price on that, I would accept the money. But I will never accept money for this land.“We’ve been put here by our creator to be custodians of this land. But believe me when I say to you that we are not caring for these things just for Indian children. We are caring for these things for everyone’s children.”

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Western Shoshone Victorious at United Nations: U.S. Found in Violation of Human Rights of Native Americans – Urged to Take Immediate Action

March 10, 2006

Geneva Switzerland - Today, in an historic and strongly worded decision by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) the United States was urged to “freeze”, “desist” and “stop” actions being taken or threatened to be taken against the Western Shoshone Peoples of the Western Shoshone Nation.

In its decision, CERD stressed the “nature and urgency” of the Shoshone situation informing the U.S. that it goes “well beyond” the normal reporting process and warrants immediate attention under the Committee’s Early Warning and Urgent Action Procedure.

This monumental action challenges the US government’s assertion of federal ownership of nearly 90% of Western Shoshone lands. The land base covers approximately 60 million acres, stretching across what is now referred to as the states of Nevada, Idaho, Utah and California. Western Shoshone rights to the land - which they continue to use, care for, and occupy today - were recognized by the United States in 1863 by the Treaty of Ruby Valley.

The U.S. now claims these same lands as “public” or federal lands through an agency process and has denied Western Shoshone fair access to U.S. courts through that same process. The land base has been and continues to be used by the United States for military testing, open pit cyanide heap leach gold mining and nuclear waste disposal planning. The U.S. has engaged in military style seizures of Shoshone livestock, trespass fines in the millions of dollars and ongoing armed surveillance of Western Shoshone who continue to assert their original and treaty rights.

Based upon these actions and a dramatic escalation of new actions threatening irreparable harm to Western Shoshone and their environment, last year, with the support of the Univ. of Arizona Indigenous Law and Policy Program, the Western Shoshone filed a renewed legal action at the United Nations CERD.

In addition to evidence of the United States’ conduct, the Western Shoshone delegation also delivered over 13,000 signatures from citizens across the United States of America supporting the Western Shoshone action to CERD. This petition was a result of a campaign organized by the rights-based development organization Oxfam America to demonstrate the widespread concern for the Western Shoshone peoples to the United Nations.

CERD rejected the U.S.’ argument that the situation was not “novel” and therefore should wait to be reviewed until the U.S. submits its Periodic Report – past due since 2003. The Committee informed the U.S. that “[a]lthough these are indeed long-standing issues…they warrant immediate and effective action… [and] should be dealt with as a matter of priority.”

The United States was “urged to pay particular attention to the right to health and cultural rights of the Western Shoshone…which may be infringed upon by activities threatening their environment and/or disregarding the spiritual and cultural significance they give to their ancestral lands.”

CERD presented its decision to the Western Shoshone this morning. The decision details the U.S.’ actions against the Western Shoshone and calls upon the United States to immediately:

• Respect and protect the human rights of the Western Shoshone peoples;
  
  
• Initiate a dialogue with the representatives of the Western Shoshone peoples in order to find a solution acceptable to them, and which complies with their rights;
  
  
• Adopt the following measures until a final decision or settlement is reached on the status, use and occupation of Western Shoshone ancestral lands in accordance with due process of law and the U.S.’ obligations under the Convention;
  
  
• Freeze all efforts to privatize Western Shoshone ancestral lands for transfer to multinational extractive industries and energy developers;
  
  
• Desist from all activities planned and/or conducted on Western Shoshone ancestral lands;
  
  
• Stop imposing grazing fees, livestock impoundments, hunting, fishing and gathering restrictions and rescind all notices already made.
  

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The decision is historic in that it is the first time a United Nations Committee has issued a full decision against the U.S. in respect to its highly controversial Federal Indian law and policy. The decision expressed particular concern that the U.S.’ basis for claiming federal title to Western Shoshone land rests on a theory of “gradual encroachment” through a “compensation” process in the Indian Claims Commission.

The decision highlights that this same process was found by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to violate “international human rights norms, principles and standards that govern determination of indigenous property interests.” When the U.S. last appeared before the Committee in 2001, Committee members expressed alarm and concern that U.S. laws regarding indigenous peoples continue to be based on the outdated, colonial era “doctrine of discovery.”

The Committee gave the U.S. a July 15, 2006 deadline to provide it with information on the action it had taken. The decision issued today demonstrates a solid commitment by the United Nations human rights system to make the Western Shoshone’s struggle a priority. Whereas indigenous peoples have been active at the United Nations for several decades, the decision today also brings a breath of hope to indigenous communities across the U.S. and globally where the negative effects of U.S. policy and influence reach. In its decision, the Committee drew particular attention to its General recommendation 23 (1997) on the rights of indigenous peoples, in particular their right to own, develop, control and use their communal lands, territories and resources.

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Comments from Western Shoshone Delegation to United Nations (March 10, 2006):

“We have rights to protect our homelands and stop the destruction of our land, water, and air by the abuses of the United States government and the multinational corporations. The situation is outrageous and we’re glad the United Nations Committee agrees with us. Our people have suffered more nuclear testing than anywhere else in the world and they’re continuing underground testing despite our protests. Yucca Mountain is being hollowed out in order to store nuclear waste. We cannot stand for it – this earth, the air, the water are sacred. People of all races must stop this insanity now in order to secure a safe future for all.” Joe Kennedy, Western Shoshone.

“The Western Shoshone Nation is very thankful to the Committee members for their decision affirming U.S. discrimination and destructive policies do not go on unaccounted for. Truth is what it is – that can never change. We pray for the healing of our peoples, the land and the harassment and destruction to stop. While others are allowed the freedom of religion, we are kept from the very same right. The Newe (people) use this ancestral land for sacred ceremonies. The federal agencies prevent our access to some of these important areas. Our ancestors’ burials are being dug up and placed into local museums’ basement storage areas because of surge of gold mines and nuclear developments. This is an outrage to our people!” Judy Rojo, Western Shoshone.

“This battle has been going on for quite some time, but we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the federal government and the companies’ rush to finalize what they consider a settlement in order to get a hold of our lands for activities that are contaminating our water and our air. Again, we are very pleased that our rights are finally being taken seriously and we look forward to positive actions being taken by the U.S.” Steven Brady, Western Shoshone.

“We are Shoshone delegates speaking for a Nation threatened by extinction. The mines are polluting our waters, destroying hot springs and exploding sacred mountains—our burials along with them--attempting to erase our signature on the land. We are coerced and threatened by mining and Federal agencies when we seek to continue spiritual prayers for traditional food or medicine on Shoshone land. We have endured murder of our Newe people for centuries, as chronicled in military records, but now we are asked to endure a more painful death from the U.S. governmental agencies —a separation from land and spiritual renewal. We thank our past leaders for their persistence and courage and the CERD for this monumental step” Bernice Lalo, Western Shoshone.


For additional information, contact: Julie Fishel, at wsdp@igc.org or 41-22-747-0000(Geneva)/775-468-0230 (U.S.).Or Raymond Yowell, Western Shoshone National Council at 775-744-4381.
(Quotes at end of Release – PRESS Conference today in Press Room 2, Library, Palais Nations, Geneva Switzerland) 

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Western Shoshone appeal for United nations intervention
Native Group Takes Land Dispute to UN
Haider Rizvi (02.0106) UNITED NATIONS, Jan 26 (IPS) - Feeling cheated and betrayed by Washington for nearly 150 years, a Native American tribe is now looking to the United Nations for help in protecting its ancestral lands. "Where else do we go?" Carrie Dann, a leader of the Shoshone people of the United States, told IPS in an interview about why her people have gone to the U.N. to demand justice. Dann and other Shoshone leaders maintain that the U.S. government has used a series of illegal tactics to gain control of their ancestral lands, including seizures of livestock and the imposition of heavy trespass fines. They charge the U.S. government with trying to sell or lease their land to big corporations involved in gold mining and other excavations in the area, which has disrupted not only their traditional way of life, but
also caused enormous damage to the environment. Last August, Shoshone elders filed a petition with the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) calling for action against the U.S. government for claiming large parts of indigenous lands as federal property. CERD was established under an international human rights treaty called the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. It prohibits racial discrimination and defines it as a breach of international law. The Shoshone lands cover about 60 million acres in the states of Nevada, Idaho, Utah and California. These lands, which are known to contain rich reservoirs of gold, also include a proposed national repository for radioactive waste. The U.S. government argues that 90 percent is ''public'' or federally controlled lands. The Shoshone people belong to the Numic branch of the larger Uto-Aztecan
language family. In the past two centuries, they also have been
identified as "Snake Indians", according to the Encyclopedia of North
American Indians. In their petition to the U.N., the Shoshone have argued that the U.S. government has no right to occupy or privatise their ancestral land because the treaty it had signed in 1863 does not allow Washington to do so. The U.S. government maintains that the Shoshone people have lost their rights to ancestral lands, as identified in the treaty, due to "gradual encroachment" by non-Native Americans. But this argument has failed to fully satisfy U.N. rights officials. "Has the 1863 Treaty of the Ruby Valley been abrogated in whole or in part, and if so, following which process?" Mario Yatzis, chairman of the U.N. Committee, asked the U.S. envoy in Geneva in a letter sent last August. In 2004, the U.S. government tried to resolve this issue by passing a law, known as the Western Shoshone Distribution Act, which allowed Washington to claim large swathes of indigenous lands by financially compensating the Shoshone people. However, the compensation to the tribes is based on the 1872 price for their land and minerals -- about 15 cents per acre. Shoshone elders say the land is priceless because it is sacred and central to the survival of their traditions and belief system. Most Shoshone objected to the procedures that led to the passage of the controversial act, and refused to accept the money because they believe their ancestral lands are sacred. "Our traditional laws tell us we are placed here as caretakers of the land," said Joe Kennedy, a Shoshone leader and one of the signatories of the petition. "We will not stand idly by and allow the U.S. government to cement its hold on our ancestral land," he added. Kennedy and others assert that there has never been a legally valid transfer, sale or cessation of land by Shoshone people. In his letter, Yatzis also pressed the U.S. for an explanation of expanded mining and nuclear waste storage on Shoshone ancestral lands, and for "placing their land up for auction for privatisation". The letter has a list of 10 questions, which are based on the Shoshone people' request for "urgent action". If accepted, the U.N. committee has the power to investigate the U.S. conduct. In a similar inquiry, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued a report in 2003 concluding that the U.S. government's claims to Western Shoshone land were illegal and contrary to international human rights law, and that it had used illegitimate means to assert ownership of the lands. While the U.S. response to the U.N. body is still pending, Shoshone elders and their lawyers say they are planning to visit Geneva in March this year to present more than 11,000 signatures in support of their petition. "There is no remedy in the U.S.," Julie Fishel, a Shoshone lawyer, told IPS. "They are dealing with the treaty by ignoring it. That's why were going to the U.N." Both Fishel and Dann are cautiously optimistic that a number of non-Native groups have joined their campaign to regain control of the ancestral lands. One is the London-based Oxfam International, a leading humanitarian and development aid organisation. "This is a critical issue," Oxfam America's Laura Inouye told IPS. "This isn't about (American) Indians. It's about everybody." "This is about not allowing the U.S. government to place corporate interests before human rights and environmental concerns," she said of the petition. (END/2006)
Indian Country - August 19, 2005

GENEVA - In an urgent appeal to halt the assault on ancestral lands, the Western Shoshone Nation filed an urgent action request before the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in August.

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Western Shoshone appeal for United nations intervention

Indian Country - August 19, 2005
GENEVA - In an urgent appeal to halt the assault on ancestral lands, the Western Shoshone Nation filed an urgent action request before the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in August.

The request challenges the U.S. government's assertion of federal ownership of nearly 90 percent of Western Shoshone lands.

Joe Kennedy, Western Shoshone, was among those urging immediate action to halt the United States and gold and energy corporations.

''Our traditional laws tell us we were placed here as caretakers of the land,'' Kennedy said. ''As part of the Western Shoshone Nation, we will not stand idly by and allow the U.S. federal government to cement its hold on our ancestral land base.''

The Western Shoshone land base covers approximately 60 million acres, stretching across what is now referred to as the states of Nevada, Idaho, Utah and California. The lands include the proposed Yucca Mountain high-level nuclear waste facility and lands targeted for expanded gold extraction.

''Western Shoshone rights to the land - which they continue to use, care for and occupy today - are recognized by a ratified treaty with the United States,'' said the Western Shoshone delegation in Geneva, Aug. 8 - 19.

In its 2005 CERD written request, the Western Shoshone seek a halt to all further U.S. actions against Western Shoshone and the expansion of any extractive or other activities permitted by the United States.

Western Shoshone said the United States has conducted numerous military-style seizures of Western Shoshone livestock, has transferred alleged Western Shoshone trespass fines to the Internal Revenue Service and private collection agencies, and has reinvigorated federal efforts to open a nationwide nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

''In 2003, the U.S. Congress passed legislation allowing for distribution of a highly controversial Indian Claims Commission award for [the] alleged extinguishment of Western Shoshone land.

''Since that legislation was passed, efforts to privatize Western Shoshone lands for transfer to multinational extractive industries and energy developers have been intensified,'' the delegation said.

Western Shoshone asserted that these actions, justified by racially discriminatory legal doctrines enshrined in the domestic law of the United States, demonstrate a serious, massive and persistent pattern of racial discrimination against the Western Shoshone Nation and its people in accordance with CERD urgent action and early warning procedures.

The U.N. committee established the early warning/urgent action procedures in 1993 in order to act quickly in preventing the further escalation of human rights abuses.

Western Shoshone have also raised concerns before the U.N. Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.

''The role of non-state actors, or multinational corporations, in the ongoing human rights violations against indigenous peoples is also being addressed by the delegation in response to the influential posture of the gold companies and the energy industry under the current administration,'' Western Shoshone said.

Previously, CERD expressed concern about the ongoing struggle of the Western Shoshone people and the continued violation of indigenous human rights in the United States.

In 2001, the committee questioned the United States' continued application of the ''doctrine of discovery,'' a racially based legal fiction that was used to justify the genocide of Indian peoples and the taking of their lands due to their ''inferior'' status as non-Christians.

The committee also questioned the U.S. delegation about why domestic law allowed the U.S. government to unilaterally abrogate Indian treaties, to which the United States never provided an answer.

Western Shoshone said the situation has become even graver.

CERD is slated to meet with U.S. government representatives in August to hear the government's response.