September 23, 2002

By Jeffry Mullins, Editor

jmullins@elkodaily.com

Elko Daily Free Press

3720 Idaho Street

Elko, Nevada 89801

775-738-3118

www.elkodaily.com

To submit a Letter to the Editor: edit@elkodaily.com 

CRESCENT VALLEY, Nevada - A battle that has lasted nearly 30 years came to a head Sunday as the U.S. Bureau of Land Management confiscated about half of the cattle belonging to two Western Shoshone women.

To Mary and Carrie Dann, it was the culmination of a war that began with the arrival of the white man.

"Today is the first time that we are going to be conquered by the United States," Carrie Dann said Saturday. "And the way they are going to conquer us is conquering our livelihood."

What white people call Nevada, the Danns call "Newe Segobia." They said the BLM hasn't produced any documentation showing how it took the land from the Shoshone people. Instead, the agency is relying on a U.S. Supreme Court decision, which the sisters claim did not address the issue of title.

"We said, if you show us those documents, we'll step out of your way and let you gather our animals," said Mary Dann, the eldest sister who is now in her 70s.

Saturday morning, a day after being tipped off about the impending roundup and the day before it began, the Dann sisters were busy cooking breakfast for three ranch hands who came up from the Yomba reservation to help them. They would spend the day collecting more than 200 of their 450-500 head before BLM contractors arrived.

The Dann Ranch lies at the base of the Cortez Mountains in Eureka County on private land purchased by their father, Dewey Dann. After his death the sisters refused to transfer his grazing permits into their name, prompting the BLM to send them a trespassing notice.

Their small abode -- some would call it a "shack" -- sits under towering shade trees. Horses prance in nearby corrals, which are rustic but sturdy.

In the early morning light, a raven carcass lies along the wooden path near their front door like an omen of approaching doom. By the time the roundup was over the sisters had lost about a quarter of a million dollars worth of livestock.

The sisters say their ranching business is not profitable. Inside the house a circle of linoleum is all that remains on the worn floor of the living room. A generator putts away outside, sending power to lamps that dim and brighten erratically.

A color television appears to be the only modern amenity. This morning, brother Clifford Dann sits in front of it watching cartoons. Now in his mid-60s, and having lost much of his vision and hearing, he won't be confronting federal agents this weekend as he did a decade ago during a BLM impoundment. He was arrested after pouring gasoline on himself and threatening to set himself on fire.

In the kitchen the sisters are frying potatoes and onions. Cousin Barbara Ridley pours cups of "cowboy coffee" from a monstrous kettle. Once breakfast is ready, Carrie Dann sits at the kitchen table and tells her story, occasionally swatting emphatically at a fly.

"I always tell people I was free until 1973, before the BLM came. Me and Mary, we had our own individual livestock."

Nature provided water for the animals and for the plants they would feed on.

"So here we have this white society that says, 'I own this water.' 'The state owns this water.' Nobody owns that water in my point of view. Nobody owns that land," Carrie Dann said. "We refuse to pay grazing fees. I do not have a grazing permit from the Bureau of Land Management."

The Danns believe their ancestors never gave up rights to the land and water that sustained them.

"In 1863 the American government drafted a treaty of peace and friendship with the Shoshone people," Carrie Dann said. "It's a recognition by the United States, there is a people they recognize as a nation."

"When all of this happened, our people they thought it was in order for us to be safe from the militia, you know, because we were being killed left and right," she said.

At that time, Indians didn't negotiate a land deal because they didn't think in terms of the land as property to be bought and sold.

Carrie Dann said Indians were given autonomy in the 1930s under tribal legislation, but it was structured to give the United States "almost dictatorial control" over them.

She called the Indian Claims Commission legislation of the 1940s "the most racist law that was ever created by Congress. It took the rights of indigenous people away. The traditional people were never represented by those attorneys."

She questions the validity of the United States' claim to Shoshone land, pointing out that court documents have cited several different dates in history when it was supposedly taken. In the 1960s, courts started using the term "gradual encroachment" to justify the transfer of ownership. In their lawsuit with the BLM, which went all the way to the Supreme Court, the Dann sisters said they learned there was a "bar clause" in the Indian Claims legislation.

"Once you accept this money this will bar your rights forever," Carrie Dann interpreted the law as saying. "I didn't want the future children's rights to be barred forever."

"The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said, 'these people haven't paid you the money, the land is still your land." But when it got to the Supreme Court, it was no longer a title issue, she said, and the court ruled the land had been taken by "gradual encroachment."

"If I knew it was going to be like this I would have never screwed around with the American court system," Carrie Dann said.

She questioned whether "gradual encroachment" is a valid component of American law.

"Is it in the Constitution? Is it an amendment to the Constitution? Is it an act of Congress? Gradual encroachment is not a law of the United States as far as I know."

"I certainly don't want people saying 'I gradually encroached on you, and took your rights away. Either I am a human being or I am not a human being," she said insistently.

Congress is attempting to legitimize the theft of Shoshone land, Carrie Dann said.

"It is wrong! And that is what is happening in Congress today by Senator Harry Reid -- he is trying to make this wrong right."

All Americans are equally to blame, she said.

"I think you people out there ought to write to Harry Reid and tell him 'we cannot do this to the people. That is totally wrong.' And each and every one of you is responsible as a citizen of the United States of America to recognize a wrong that has been committed against your brothers and sisters who have different color of skin."

"It is up to you white people, who is the majority, to tell your senators and your congresspeople whatever is going on with the indigenous people, 'do right by them.' 'Do not steal from them in our name.' That's what they are doing. Not in 1872 -- today, this very minute.

"You people, you are as guilty as the United States of America as long as you don't do nothing about it. That's your duty.

"If American people are going to live in freedom, you've got to protect that. Not only for yourselves, but for us as well.

"American people's going to wake up some day when it is totally late, when they are completely controlled by some organization or department of government."

Carrie Dann took their arguments to the Organization of American States and to an organization against racial discrimination at the United Nations in Geneva.

"Out of the 18 member states, 15 questioned the United States about its Indian policy," she said.

The BLM claims the sisters' livestock are overgrazing the land, a charge that was confirmed by citizens in the federal agency's own Resource Advisory Council. The BLM accuses the sisters of 'irreparable damage."

"The damage I do is not like the damage across the way at that mine," Carrie Dann said, gesturing toward the nearby Cortez Gold Mine. "Now to me that's irreparable damage. Not only is it irreparable to the Earth, but it's irreparable to the waters. Two sacred things."

Mary Dann said this year the crickets and grasshoppers overgrazed their hay fields, nearly consuming the entire first crop. But the BLM didn't come out to round them up -- they didn't even spray for them. "We say 'leave us alone, let us take care of our land. But they're not going to leave us alone, because they have to make it a little bit better than what it is," Carrie Dann said.

"We've lived under constant fear of being rounded up, almost 30 years," she said, calling it "mind terrorism."

She said when the federal government offered the Shoshone a claims settlement, it came out to 15 cents an acre. But money is not what the sisters are after.

"I want us to be free," Carrie Dann said. "All we ask from the United States is the opportunity to sit across the table and talk."

Just who would do the talking is uncertain, however.

"I don't want to sit across the table from the Department of Interior," she said, because Interior claims to be the Indians' trustee.

The Western Shoshone National Council should represent the Shoshone people, she said. But many Shoshone don't recognize the council or its chief, Raymond Yowell.

In May, the BLM rounded up Yowell's entire herd of more than 100 cows and calves after he refused to pay grazing fees and the BLM transfered his permit to another party.

The cattle roundup in Eureka County threatened to drive the two sisters out of business. But they are proud to call themselves rebels -- albeit aging rebels -- who are willing to stand up for their principles.

Their dispute with the federal government is what makes them visible. In a way, it has become a part of their identity.

"We will continue to live here," Carrie Dann said.

"It's not too late. To make a wrong right, it's never too late. The government can certainly recognize that we are here, that the land was never actually taken by the government."

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