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Shundahai
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Over
a Decade of Resistance - Dedicated to Breaking the Nuclear Chain
Shundahai is a Newe (Western Shoshone) word meaning "Peace and Harmony with all Creation" |
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Western Shoshone National Council Newe Sogobia NEWS RELEASE (For Immediate Distribution) (Duckwater -- February 2007) The Western Shoshone Nation responds to the threat of another explosion at the Nevada Test Site code named “Divine Strake” intended to simulate effects of a nuclear weapon. The Western Shoshone government calls attention to the legacy of adverse health impacts and disproportionate burden of risk borne by the people downwind. The US has conducted more than 1000 explosions for development of weapons of mass destruction within the boundaries of the Western Shoshone Nation identified by the Treaty of Ruby Valley in 1863, killing thousands of Americans and Western Shoshone nationals alike. The potential for the resuspension of radiation from this test event poses a unique threat that evoke a special affect or stigma associated with past nuclear weapons related testing’s impact on the Shoshone people. The Secretary of State, Mr. Ian Zabarte, commented, “Nothing in the treaty ever assumed that our nation would be made uninhabitable and our people killed by weapons of mass destruction and their development by the United States. American nationals in our country are here under our protection and we are committed to protecting all people within our country by restraining acts of aggression from any source that violate our customs, laws and International Law as Divine Strake”. The pestilence of cancer suffered by the Western Shoshone people and destruction of Mother Earth are the result of US testing of weapons of mass destruction. Those results are intolerable and not an appropriate manner of honoring the debt owed the Western Shoshone Nation by the US. The US sought to purchase specific rights and interests under Indernational Law through treaty with the Western Shoshone Nation obligating both nations to maintain “peace and friendship”. Western Shoshone national Kenneth Brown said of the weapons test event, “Divine is not a word that signifies an act of an almighty good and compassionate Creator as we might use the term and instead implies that such an act is inspired from a evil deity or dark entity. Strake is an obsolete past tense of strike likely related to that part of the test after the nuclear material would have exploded if used in the test”. The nuclear related test event is condemned as related to further development of a new generation of weapons of mass destruction and a violation of International Law, US law and Western Shoshone law, custom and tradition. |
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