U.N. says U.S. exploiting Shoshones

Sat., March 11, 2006

Erica Bulman Associated Press

GENEVA – A United Nations anti-racism panel Friday said it had evidence the U.S. government was working with industry to ride roughshod over the rights of an American Indian tribe by exploiting its ancestral land in the western United States.

The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination ruled that the United States was failing to respect an international anti-discrimination treaty, to which it became a party in 1994.

Organizations defending the rights of the Western Shoshone hailed the decision as a victory, but the U.S. mission to the U.N. and other international organizations in Geneva had no immediate response, an official said.

“Maybe this will make the United States start looking at itself and at the problem of discrimination, and make it start to look at us as people instead of subhumans,” said Western Shoshone delegate Bernice Lalo.

The panel of 18 independent experts said it had received “credible information alleging that the Western Shoshone indigenous people are being denied their traditional rights to land.”

The committee said it was particularly concerned about reported legislative efforts to privatize Western Shoshone ancestral lands for transfer to multinational mining industries and energy developers, federal efforts to open a nuclear waste dump and the reported resumption of underground nuclear testing on Western Shoshone ancestral lands.

The panel said it also was worried about reported intimidation of the Western Shoshone people by U.S. authorities through the imposition of grazing fees; trespassing and collection notices; the impounding of horses and livestock; restrictions on fishing and hunting; and arrests.

Western Shoshone rights to the land – some 60 million acres in Nevada, Idaho, Utah and California – were recognized by the United States in 1863 by the Treaty of Ruby Valley.

However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1979 that the treaty gave the U.S. government trusteeship over tribal lands and it now claims them as “public” or federal lands.