Western Shoshone of North America

Excerpt from "Early Warning and Urgent Action Procedure, Decision 1 (68): United States of America"

    Posted on the United Nations Web site http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cerd/docs/68decision-USA.pdf Issued March 10, 2006

On March 10, 2006, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) issued a strongly worded statement aimed at the U.S. government from its home in Geneva, Switzerland. The statement urged the United States to stop all actions against the Western Shoshone peoples (indigenous Native American peoples who live in eastern California and western Nevada) of Nevada. This statement resulted from almost 150 years of land disputes between the Western Shoshone and the U.S. government.

In 1863, the Western Shoshone Nation of Indians signed the Treaty of Ruby Valley with representatives of the U.S. government. The treaty was primarily one of friendship, not land cession (to give up something to someone else). At that time, American citizens did not want land in eastern Nevada. They simply wanted to get safely through Shoshone lands on their way to California and Oregon. As the Shoshone were losing natural resources to the grazing herds of cattle, oxen, and horses of the white emigrant trains, they increasingly raided the wagon trains for food, including the livestock.

"The Committee recommends to the State party [United States] that it respect and protect the human rights of the Western Shoshone peoples, without discrimination based on race, color, or national or ethnic origin…."

The treaty recognized Western Shoshone control of a large area and identified boundaries of that land. It gave the United States limited use and access to the lands. Through the 1870s following the treaty, Western Shoshone lands in northeastern Nevada became increasingly desired by U.S. citizens for the gold deposits the lands held. Through the remainder of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century white settlement of the region occurred at the best watered lands and much of the less desirous dry areas became established as public lands of the United States.

To provide some compensation for the taking of Indian lands, the U.S. government established the Indian Claims Commission (ICC) in 1946 following World War II (1939–45). The purpose of the ICC was to provide monetary payments, not give back lands, a decision not satisfactory to most Indians. A decision on compensation for Western Shoshone lands was issued in October 1962. The U.S. government awarded the Western Shoshone $27 million in 1979, but the tribe refused to accept the payment, saying they wanted their land back instead. They claimed they never agreed to sell or abandon the land, or give it to the United States. In reaction, the U.S. government accepted it on the tribal behalf, exercising its legally defined trust responsibility to conduct business for Indians regardless of tribal wishes. The government then claimed that the case was closed. The money was placed in a holding account for future distribution to the Shoshone whenever they should decide to receive it.

During the latter part of the twentieth century, the ancestral lands of the Western Shoshone saw steady growth in gold mining activities. By the early twenty-first century, the ancestral lands produced most of the gold mined in the United States and almost 10 percent of the world's gold production.

Two Western Shoshone sisters, Mary and Carrie Dann, led the charge of the tribe in challenging the loss of ancestral lands to the United States after the United States sued them in 1974 for trespass of their cattle raising operation onto federal lands. Operating a cattle ranch in northeastern Nevada, they continued to refuse to pay the U.S. government for rights to graze on public lands, claiming their ancestral lands were unjustly taken by the U.S. government. In response, the government seized 232 cattle belonging to the sisters in September 2002 and sold them at a public auction to pay past grazing fees.

Things to remember while reading excerpts from "Early Warning and Urgent Action Procedure, Decision 1 (68): United States of America":

• The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) is an international group of human rights experts that meets twice a year in Geneva, Switzerland, to review accusations of human rights abuses reported around the world.

• CERD had requested an explanation from the United States in regard to the concerns raised by the Western Shoshone in 2003 and again in 2005, but did not receive a response either time.
• The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ruled in January 2003 that the process used by the United States through the Indian Claims Commission violated international human rights law by denying Western Shoshone the right to legal protection and the right to hold property. According to the Commission, the United States has no legal right to claim Western Shoshone lands.

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The Merriam Report

In 1926, the U.S. Secretary of Interior hired Lewis Merriam to investigate the conditions of Native Americans. The Native Americans had just been granted U.S. citizenship through the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. Merriam was a researcher at the Institute of Government Research, later renamed the Brookings Institution. After two years of investigating and researching, Merriam issued his report. The findings strongly condemned past U.S. policies toward Native Americans. Merriam found that most lived in extreme poverty with poor sanitary conditions. Access to education and healthcare was poor. Infant mortality (death) rate of 191 deaths for every 1,000 births was the highest of any ethnic group in the United States, much higher than the general U.S. population. Merriam concluded that efforts to force Native Americans to adopt the ways of the dominant white culture were not working. Placed on remote reservations with few resources, Native Americans were unable to adjust to white society.

In early 1933 newly elected U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945; served 1933–45) took office. He appointed social worker John Collier, a well-known advocate of Indian rights, to the position of Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Using recommendations made in the Merriam Report, Collier worked through Congress the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934. The act guided establishment of tribal governments so that tribes largely governed themselves and opened the door to federal funds for establishing Indian businesses. In addition, the use of native languages, the practice of traditional religions, and the making of tribal crafts were no longer discouraged by the government.

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What happened next …

Complicating a U.S. response to CERD's requests was a large, ongoing lawsuit in U.S. federal court in Washington, D.C. In Cobell v. Norton Native Americans charged in 1996 that the U.S. government consistently mismanaged Indian properties over a 150-year period. Due to ineptness (lack of ability) and dishonesty, the Native Americans claimed that approximately 500,000 American Indians had lost billions of dollars. Throughout the long time period, the U.S. government had retained the responsibility to collect revenues resulting from mining, oil and gas operations, timber cutting, grazing of livestock, and other commercial activities occurring on Indian reservations across the nation. The massive legal case is likely to result in major reforms of U.S. Indian policies and an accounting of the monies actually lost. With a change of leadership in Congress from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party in November 2006, the Indians hoped that a proposed $8 billion settlement might be more easily reached.

The Western Shoshone continued to fight for increased representation in U.S. decisions that affect their lands and culture. They wish of be fully informed in the future before government decisions are made and participate in the decision-making. The United States contends that no human rights violations are involved. Rights to the land were lost by the Western Shoshone through the gradual spread of settlement on their lands by non-Indians by 1872.

Just as with the Cobell lawsuit, the Western Shoshone may press ultimately for a solution by the U.S. Congress through legislation rather than via an administrative solution from the administration. In 2002, Congress offered the prospect of an increased payment of $140 million to the tribe through the proposed Western Shoshone Claims Distribution Act. However, the Western Shoshone continued to fight against any type of monetary settlement. They instead continued to seek ownership of their ancestral homeland. As a result, the bill died before passage.

Recognition of Indigenous Rights

Several efforts have been made to protect and promote the human rights of indigenous peoples. Throughout the world, extractive industries such as as mining, timber harvests, and oil exploration threatened indigenous cultures through forced resettlement, loss of access to native food resources, and environmental destruction of traditional homelands. In 1997, the Organization of American States, an international organization of over thirty nations in the Americas, adopted the American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The United Nations had earlier drafted a similar declaration in the 1980s, known as the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. However, it was still not officially adopted by the early twenty-first century. In the meantime, the UN did declare the decade of 1995 to 2004 the International Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples that served to increase public awareness of the discrimination faced by indigenous populations. All of these efforts recognized indigenous populations as the social groups most vulnerable to economic and social discrimination.

Did you know …

• This was the first United Nations' decision targeting U.S. treatment of Native Americans.

• Amnesty International and other human rights watch groups continue to monitor violations of indigenous peoples' human rights in the Americas, including North, Central, and South America. Findings are continually posted on their Web sites.
• Plans to develop the Yucca Mountain repository for nuclear waste by the U.S. Department of Energy were progressing very slowly in 2006 while facing many regulatory hurdles. According to the YuccaMountain.org watchgroup Web site (http://www.yuccamountain.org/new.htm) the opening date to begin delivering nuclear waste to the facility was 2017.
• Among the most notorious policies of the United States that systematically took ancestral lands away from Native Americans was the Dawes Act of 1887. The act divided up the communally owned (shared ownership of property used for the good of the community) Indian reservations into small, private allotments (plots of land given to a person for farming purposes) and sold the so-called excess lands to the public. By the late 1920s, Native Americans had forever lost 90 million acres out of 126 million acres of land still held at the time the act was passed.

Consider the following …

• The Western Shoshone did not yield their traditional homelands to the United States through the 1863 treaty they signed. Rather, they allowed certain limited use of their lands and safe passage for emigrant wagon trains from the eastern United States traveling to the West Coast through their territory. Divide the class into two groups and debate who now has legal use of the traditional homelands, which include much of the state of Nevada.
• Research whether Native American tribes within the present-day United States have the right to approach the United Nations concerning their issues. The United Nations was established to address international disputes and severe human needs. Is this an international dispute or a severe human need, or both?
• Why did the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights rule that the U.S. Indian Claims Commission violated international human rights law?

For More Information

BOOKS

Deloria, Vine, Jr. Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988.

Ellis, Clyde. To Change Them Forever: Indian Education at the Rainy Mountain Boarding School, 1893–1920. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996.

Strickland, Rennard. Tonto's Revenge: Reflections on American Indian Culture and Policy. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997.

WEB SITES

"Early Warning and Urgent Action Procedure, Decision 1 (68): United States of America." United Nations High Commission on Civil Rights. http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cerd/docs/68decision-USA.pdf (accessed on December 12, 2006).

YuccaMountain.org. http://www.yuccamountain.org/new.htm (accessed on December 12, 2006).