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Western Shoshone Nation, USA
Indigenous Peoples Unite to Oppose Destructive Mining Practices across North America
Read the press release from the first North American Indigenous Peoples Mining Summit, organized by the Indigenous Environmental Network.
Sacred site of the Western Shoshone
Credits: Chris Sewall/Western Shoshone Defense Project | The story of the Western Shoshone is a long lesson in the ways that law can fail indigenous people threatened by mineral interests. The ancestral territory of this native American people encompasses an area stretching from southern Idaho, through eastern Nevada, to the Mojave Desert of California. Underneath this swath of over 240 thousand square kilometers (over 60 million acres) lie billions of dollars worth of gold. Nearly 10 percent of the world's gold production -- and 64 percent of US production -- comes from Western Shoshone land.
Prospectors hoping to strike it rich began entering Western Shoshone territory in the 1840s. Clashes with the Shoshone prompted the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley between the US government and the Western Shoshone Nation. The treaty allowed settlers to mine, establish ranches, cut timber, and extract other natural resources from Shoshone lands, but it also recognized the Western Shoshone people as the landowner, entitled to royalties for the extractive activities. But no royalties have ever been paid.
The gold rush continues today, but the prospectors have been replaced by corporate mining -- a practice that has proved far more destructive to Western Shoshone lands, sacred places, and scarce water resources.
The failure to pay royalties is a treaty violation and the Shoshone have been attempting for decades to get the government to live up to its constitutional obligations. In 1979, the government tried to legislate a settlement that would have abrogated the treaty and awarded the Shoshone a one-time payment of $26 million, or roughly 15 cents an acre, in exchange for relinquishing title to their land. The Shoshone refused the settlement, maintaining that the lands were never for sale in the first place. Even so, the government is acting as if it were the landowner. Today, Shoshone ranchers are required to pay federal grazing fees to run cattle on their traditional lands, and the government continues to hand over huge tracts of Shoshone lands to mining companies. Among the beneficiaries are Newmont, Placer Dome, and Barrick. Under the national mining law, which dates from 1872, corporations can purchase so-called public lands from the government for as little as $5 a hectare ($2.50 an acre), without owing a penny in royalties for the minerals they extract.
Western Shoshone activists Credit: Chris Sewall/Western Shoshone Defense Project | In December 2002, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a part of the Organization of American States, found that the US government was violating the fundamental rights of the Western Shoshone to property, due process, and equality under the law. But the government has ignored the ruling and is moving forward with legislation that would open the territory up to a major new form of extraction, geothermal energy, and to additional mining. In September 2003, the Shoshone filed suit yet again, reasserting their claim to their ancestral territory and demanding payment of the royalties owed them under the treaty.
For more information:
Western Shoshone Defense Project
http://www.wsdp.org/
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