Shoshone /UN

[Guest guest]

My friend, in august 2001, you've send this info to the Pinellas Green

list, if you remember:

 

[pinellasgreens] Shoshone ask UN to Condemn US, Will the UN Do

the right thing?

 

Western Shoshone want US condemned

 

(I.C)WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 8, 2001 Members of the Western Shoshone

Nation asked a

United Nations panel on Tuesday to condemn the United States for

breaking

treaties and international law. The delegation said the United

States

illegaly took their land in an 1863 treaty. The Supreme Court has

upheld the

treaty, authorizing a $26 million judgement for tribal members.

But the

judgement, which has since grown to $130 million, has been

refused. Carrie

Dann and her sister, two elderly women in Nevada, have continued

to graze

their cattle on ceded land, to the opposition of the Bureau of

Land

Management. Dann was among those who made the Shoshone's case to

the United

Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial

Discrimination.

On Monday, the United States finished presenting a report to the

committee,

citing that progress has been made reducing discrimination

against indigenous

peoples and other minorities. The Shoshone tribes are spread

throughout

Nevada, California, Idah and Utah. They are protesting use of

traditional

land for nuclear and mining activities.

 

Western Shoshone leaders appeal to U.N. over U.S. land

policy

By Jonathan Fowler, Associated Press, 8/8/2001 00:35

GENEVA (AP) A group of American Indians appealed for the United

Nations to

condemn what they said were abuses of their ancient land rights

by the U.S.

federal government. Leaders of the Western Shoshone said Tuesday

they hoped a

U.N. panel would back their case that the American government is

trying to

chase them off their ancestral territory, causing them physical,

economic and

cultural hardship and violating U.N. human rights treaties. ''We

are here

hoping that the international community can put pressure on the

United States

to stop its discriminatory conduct against the Western Shoshone

people,''

said tribal elder Carrie Dann. The Western Shoshone tribes

numbering about

6,600 live mainly in the western states of Nevada, California,

Idaho and

Utah. Dann and her sister Mary have been a focal point of a

dispute over land

since the government sued them in 1974 for grazing livestock on

federal land.

The Shoshone delegation said the U.S. government has authorized

the use of

environmentally damaging cyanide for gold mining and approved

military

testing and nuclear waste storage on Shoshone lands. Some 85

percent of

Nevada is federal land, and the Nevada Public Lands Act aims to

sell it off

to private companies, the Shoshone said. The Shoshone have asked

a U.N. panel

the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial

Discrimination to

condemn the United States, arguing that the U.S. action amounts

to racism. A

ruling by the committee in 1999 gave hope to indigenous groups

around the

world by declaring that Australia should suspend implementation

of new land

rights laws as they discriminated against Aborigines. The

committee has been

reviewing a report by U.S. authorities on the government's

compliance with an

international anti-discrimination treaty which the United States

ratified in

1994. The panel is expected to issue its ruling on the U.S.

compliance report

next week. On Monday the U.S. Justice Department's newly

confirmed civil

rights head Ralph Boyd Jr. responded to the panel's questions

about the

Shoshone case. Boyd said that U.S. law stated that ''as a result

of European

discovery the Native Americans had a right to occupancy and

possession, but

that tribal rights to complete and total sovereignty were

diminished by the

principle that discovery gave exclusive title to those who made

it.''

(Doesn't this permit theft, as in larceny, by right of

discovery?) At issue

is the  1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley between the Western Shoshone

and the

United States, which took 23.6 million acres of land away from

the tribes.

Tribal leaders argue that the treaty which they say was one of

friendship

simply granted the United States limited access to the land and

did not cede

it to the federal government. In 1979 the Supreme Court ruled

that the Ruby

Valley treaty had made the U.S. government the trustee of the

Shoshone,

entitled to negotiate compensation for the land on their behalf.

The court

also approved a government offer of $26 million to the tribes.

The

compensation package has accumulated interest and is now worth

$130 million.

Dann said the Shoshone can never accept money for their land,

because they

believed it is sacred.

 

As a member of the French Green Party, I should like knowing if this

case has got ahead. Do you have new infos ? And could you tell me how

could we help from France ? Best regards to you all. Bernard Blanc.