Bill would distribute $121 million to Shoshones in Nevada

Wednesday, June 28, 2000 | 10:42 a.m.

Reid, D-Nev., said he introduced the measure on Tuesday because it's "increasingly apparent the vast majority of those who qualify to receive these funds support an immediate distribution of their money."

Tribal members who opposed the payments have maintained that taking the funds could end the tribe's claim to land that it has longed for since white settlers began to push the native people aside.

But others pressed for the money - $20,000 to every Shoshone man, woman and child - in payment for 23.6 million acres taken from their ancestors more than a century ago. About 6,500 people would be eligible.

The U.S. Congress and President Harry S. Truman hoped for an expedient resolution when, in 1946, they established the Indian Claims Commission. The panel and a court that followed it heard more than 600 cases and paid out nearly $1.5 billion.

But that meant that the average American Indian often got a check for less than $1,000. Some tribal members spent their money on new cars or other goods that have long since landed on the junk heap. But others pooled their resources and invested in economic development.

Over the years, the Western Shoshone feud quietly churned through a dozen remote reservations and urban Indian "colonies" of northern Nevada.

Opposing camps framed the debate as a struggle between traditional values and a devotion to the land on the one hand, and pragmatism and pursuit of economic development on the other.

Advocates of the payments include Nancy Stewart of Fallon and Larry Piffero of Elko, who conducted a straw poll that seemed to show overwhelming support among tribal members for a cash settlement.

Though some have called the vote a sham, others say it signaled a fundamental shift among the Shoshones. The result: 1,230 for the payment and 53 against.

Stewart and Piffero acknowledge that the U.S. government's settlement is a paltry sum, considering the land lost. The Western Shoshone once ranged from the Snake River in Idaho to Joshua Tree in California. But they say it's unrealistic to hold out for anything more.

Opponents of the payments include Elwood Mose of Elko, chairman of the largest single Western Shoshone political entity - the Te-Moak Bands Council. The council represents 2,514 tribal members in Elko, Battle Mountain and Wells and on the South Fork Reservation.

Mose has expressed fear that tribal members will gamble their money away or quickly spend it on cars. He and another opponent of the payments, Marla Stanton Woods of the South Fork Reservation, have said they'll fight Reid's plan.

"There is no price you can put on the land. It is part of us," says Woods, whose great-great-grandfather was one of the chiefs who signed the Treaty of Ruby Valley in 1863, making peace with the U.S. government.