Shoshone sisters: Indian wars are not over

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times, Oct. 31, 2002

Range War in Nevada Pits U.S. Against 2 Shoshone Sisters
By CHARLIE LeDUFF [Duff is of indigenous descent and one of this
newspaper's most principled reporters]

CRESCENT VALLEY, Nev. — The Dann sisters are rough, elderly, hidebound
ranchers who live without electricity, hot water or furnace. Though
Carrie Dann is nearly 70 and her sister Mary is nearly 80, they still
break their own horses and mend their own fences. This is how their
Shoshone Indian ancestors lived, and the bones of those ancestors are
among the Danns' closest neighbors.

Their wish is to be left alone, and to graze their cattle freely on land
they claim as their birthright.

The federal government's wish is for the Danns to stop fattening their
livestock at taxpayers' expense.

This battle has gone on for 30 years, and the Danns have not given up
yet, even though the government has seized hundreds of their cattle,
sold the animals at auction, charged the sisters nearly $50,000 in fees
and fined them $3 million for willful trespass.

"Trespass? Who the hell gave them the land anyway?" Mary Dann asked as
she mended a fence on a windswept desert morning. "When I trespass, it's
when I wander into Paiute territory."

Her sister Carrie said: "I was indigenous and in one single evening they
made me indigent. If you think the Indian wars are over, then think again."

The dispute is rooted in the refusal by the sisters and some other
Shoshone ranchers to pay grazing fees on traditional Western Shoshone
land — nearly 26 million acres in Nevada, roughly two-thirds of the state.

The government considers it public land, and to drive the point home, 40
agents from the Bureau of Land Management descended on the Danns' ranch
in September, heavily armed and fortified with helicopters, and
confiscated 232 cattle, which were later sold.

The sisters and their supporters argue that their tribe never legally
ceded these range lands. Though the federal government controls 85
percent of Nevada, they contend that it has no legitimate title to the
land — or the gold, water, oil and geothermal energy beneath it.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/31/national/31SIST.html
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