Columnist Susan Snyder: Sisters own culture — and resolve

Monday, Feb. 24, 2003 | 8:09 a.m.

Perhaps the one thing Mary and Carrie Dann have accomplished is to remind us that it is hard to be the winner.

For most of their lives, the aging Western Shoshone sisters have battled the U.S. government for claim to their tribal lands, which they say is spelled out in the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley.

They maintain the treaty allows access to their tribal lands, which once covered some 24 million acres across Nevada and into California, but it did not cede ownership.

A 1985 U.S. Supreme Court ruling says the tribe lost its claim to the land in the late 1970s when a federal commission designed to settle such American Indian treaty claims deposited $26 million into an account as payment.

Until recently the Western Shoshones were divided on whether to accept the money, and with interest it has grown to $137 million. Last summer an overwhelming majority of the tribe voted to accept and distribute the money.

The Danns live on an 800-acre ranch their father owned southwest of Elko. Bureau of Land Management officials say the sisters have since 1973 been illegally grazing hundreds of head of horses and cattle on BLM land without permits, destroying the range for ranchers who did have permits.

The agency has sought more than $3 million in unpaid fees and penalties and confiscated most of the sisters' horses and cattle. The last roundup of horses was completed last week.

Still, the Danns hold firm.

Carrie Dann, guessed to be in her 60s, told an Associated Press reporter last month that money is a material thing and accepting payment would mean accepting "all the things that I think are wrong.

"What we're fighting for is our culture and our beliefs, and that is not material," she told the AP.

The sisters have received national and international recognition from human rights groups for having the courage to stand up for the rights of indigenous people. They have raised the ire of other Shoshones who want and need the settlement money to make their children's lives better in the society that is real, rather than fable.

But the Danns remind us that settlements and laws are written and enforced by the winners. And our nation's indigenous people have been losing since white European explorers first set foot here more than 500 years ago.

The winners wrote and signed treaties they never intended to follow. They lied, cheated, stole and killed. They put children in schools designed to strip them of culture, language and customs and assimilated them into the winners' circles. This is how the West was won.

When the federal Indian Claims Commission awarded the Western Shoshones $26 million 30 years ago, it ruled that the tribe lost its land due to the "gradual encroachment" of white settlers.

As we -- American Indian, European, Asian and all others in-between -- sit in our air-conditioned ranchettes, visit our national parks, drive our scenic highways in our SUVs and enjoy the only version of the American West most of us have ever known, it is easy to forget how we got here.

The Dann sisters remind us.

They force us to stand uncomfortably on our legal grounds and remember that losing is a burden, but winning carries its baggage too.