Indigenous peoples issues

Newe Sogobia
Updated 11/28/06

Under construction - Please visit our allies The Western Shoshone Defense Project

Native American fights corporations For more than 30 years, Carrie Dann, a native Shoshone American, has been fighting the US government for her people's rights to their ancestral land. Read more >>>

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

Newe is the Shoshone word for all people, and this is how they refer to themselves. The Newe believe they have a sacred trust to protect Newe Sogobia (Homeland) and draw their sustenance from it.

When the white people came searching for gold and a route to California, the land the Shoshone lived on was radically changed and their culture was almost eliminated. The white settlers distorted the natural balance of the area in their quest for gold and any other resource they could exploit. They destroyed many of the plants and animals that the tribes had formerly eaten to survive.

On October 1, 1863 the Ruby Valley Treaty of Peace and Friendship was signed between the Western Shoshone Nation of Newe Sogobia and the Nation of the United States of America. The US proposed the treaty in order to end Shoshone armed defense of Sogobia, acquire gold from the territory and establish protected communication and transportation routes to California. President Lincoln needed gold from California and Sogobia to finance the North's forces in the Civil War, but Shoshone resistance blocked this strategic east-west corridor. The treaty ended hostilities; averted further massacres of unarmed Shoshones; and gave the US use rights for stagecoach, railway and telegraph routes, military posts, and lands for mining, agriculture and ranching. The treaty recognized Shoshone territorial sovereignty; no ownership rights were transferred. The US Senate ratified the treaty in 1866 and President Grant confirmed it in 1869. The treaty is still in effect.

This is a map of Newe Sogobia Click on it for a larger image

The nation of Newe Sogobia has an area of some 43,000 square miles (about the size of Honduras) bounded by western Nevada, southern Idaho, eastern Utah and the Mojave Desert in southeastern California.

Since the 1950s, the U.S. government has used Western Shoshone lands to test nuclear weapons, to dispose of thousands of metric tons of radioactive waste, and has spent billions of dollars to study Yucca Mountain as a national dump site for the deadly waste product of the nuclear industry.

In addition, modern corporate gold mining is gauging the heart of Western Shoshone homelands. Newe Sogobia ranks second in world gold production behind South Africa. Using a method that involves grinding up whole mountains to extract minute particles of gold, this heap leach gold mining is causing tremendous impacts to the Western Shoshone, including: spiritual and economic dislocation, the destruction of Newe cultural sites, and the desecration of land and water.

To invade and occupy this large nation the US has employed a range of land-grabbing strategies not covered or permitted by the treaty. The US has usurped almost 90 percent of Shoshone lands and resources and placed them under the control of the Department of the Interior (Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, Park Service, Fish and Wildlife, etc.), Department of Energy (Atomic Energy Commission), Department of Defense, Department of Transportation and many other agencies used as part of the occupation. But Western Shoshone people assert their nation cannot be taken, sold or bought by people of another nation regardless of how much Indian land is needed for "national defense" or for conservation, recreation and profit for non-Shoshones.

Western Shoshone claims to their territory have promoted a Supreme Court case (United States of America v. Mary and Carrie Dann) over ownership - a setback to development of the MX "racetrack" missile system. Shoshone have title to the proposed Great Basin site and have been demonstrating against nuclear testing within Newe Sogobia.

In 1986 the Western Shoshone National Council began issuing one- and two-day permits to be on Shoshone land to demonstrators at the Nevada test site. The strategy was to use arrests for trespassing as a means of demonstrating that the US cannot accuse someone of trespassing on land it does not own. The government of the Western Shoshone wants to show that it is the US who is trespassing.

The following information accompanied the permit.

The Western Shoshone need to be acknowledged as the rightful caretakers of their land and included in discussions about all proposed mining and nuclear waste storage. The government should consult and negotiate in good faith with the Shoshone over their treaty rights to ancestral lands,

On July 7th, 2004, President Bush signed the "Western Shoshone Distribution Bill"

Read the Western Shoshone Defense Project press release

While Nevada’s congressional delegation tried to protect their state against environmental catastrophe, they worked with the Bush administration to enact a forced payment to the Western Shoshone in an effort to legitimize U.S. government control over land with rich potential for gold and geothermal energy. This land yields 64% of U.S. gold production and nearly 10% of the world's, totaling $30 billion to date. The Western Shoshone Distribution Bill of July 7, 2004 authorizes a payoff of approximately 15 cents per acre for 24 million acres of land that was supposed to have been protected by the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley. The settlement, totaling approximately $145 million, was welcomed by some in the Shoshone community who thought they should accept the money since there was no chance of regaining the land. However, a majority of involved tribal councils, including the Western Shoshone National Council, strongly opposed the bill, arguing that their ancestral lands were too high a price to pay. Politicians justified the bill based on polls of individual Shoshone rather than the various tribal councils, the governing bodies that can legitimately negotiate sovereignty. Massive opposition by numerous traditional people, human rights organizations, and thousands of individual citizens delayed numerous votes on the bill, but was ultimately unable to stop its passage.

Since the passage of this bill, the Western Shoshone have been increasingly harassed by U.S. government and corporate attempts to assert control of the land. In August 2005, the Western Shoshone filed an urgent action request with the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which resulted in a formal letter from CERD to the U.S. government. The letter asks the U.S. government to explain its violations of treaty rights and the rapid pace of development on Western Shoshone land. Pressure tactics used by the government have included the seizure of livestock and the assessment of alleged trespass fines by the Internal Revenue Service and private collection agencies. “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,” states the action request.

The Western Shoshone took their Human Rights case to the United Nations, and on March 10, it was decided.

Gold Mining

Nowhere is the collusion between government and industry more blatant than in the case of gold mining, where the government is allowing multinational companies to mine without permission from or recompense to the Western Shoshone. The gold embedded in the desert is present in tiny traces, and must be extracted through the environmentally destructive cyanide heap leach method, which uses a cyanide-water solution to remove gold particles. This process produces vast tracts of blasted rock, open pits, and contaminated water. One of the companies operating in Nevada and Cajamarca is Newmont, a Denver-based gold giant which is facing a global campaign to hold it responsible for its environmental damage and impact on local communities. At Newmont’s April 2005, shareholder meeting, Western Shoshone representative Kristi Begay criticized the company’s “overabundant use” of water, desecration of sacred sites, and lack of community contact — problems reported at Newmont facilities around the world.

Cortez Gold Mines also received permission in 2004 from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to expand its open pit mines and conduct further exploration at Mt. Tenabo and Horse Canyon. In a troubling sequence of events that began two years earlier, the federal government removed horses in this area belonging to Western Shoshone elders Mary and Carrie Dann, who have been prominent activists for land rights. Just months later, Placer Dome Inc., which holds a 60% interest in Cortez Gold Mines and oversees its operations, doubled its estimate of the amount of gold contained in that same land — and the BLM’s approval followed. The Western Shoshone have filed suit to stop Cortez’s 200-acre expansion and in May 2005, a delegation traveled to Vancouver, British Columbia, to speak to shareholders of Placer Dome. They complained that the company has shown no awareness of the impacts of their mining activity and no respect for Shoshone culture. “They are even claiming to have leased our hot springs which we still use for cleansing and healing,” states Carrie Dann. Cortez’s expansion efforts are being furthered by the introduction of the Northern Nevada Rural Economic Development and Land Consolidation Act of 2003 (HR 2869), sponsored by Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-NV), which would authorize the sale of the land directly to Placer Dome. In November 2005, Rep. Gibbons also unsuccessfully tried to repeal the 1994 congressional ban on the sale of public lands to mining companies, which would have opened up Shoshone land to corporations at bargain rates, further increasing the collusion between government and multinational mining interests.

Indigenous Peoples Unite to Oppose Destructive Mining Practices across North America

Indigenous Anti-Nuclear Statement: Yucca Mountain and Private Fuel Storage at Skull Valley

NEWE SOGOBIA AND THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Land Rights Battles of the Western Shoshone Indians

UNITED STATES TREATY WITH THE WESTERN SHOSHONI, 1863

WITHOUT RESERVATION
A Western Shoshone official challenges the U.S. government's authority over tribal claims and refuses to let a treaty be ignored.

Litigation to Protect Western Shoshone Territorial Integrity

Western Shoshone Treaty and Lands Rights

Western Shoshone Land Rights and Grazing
Thanksgiving A time to Prepare for Round Up of Indian Horses?
Western Shoshone Distribution Bill Dies Quietly in the House As the Call for Land Talks Mounts
Preliminary Report of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights concerning the human rights complaint filed by Mary and Carrie Dann, Western Shoshone Indians.