Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Shoshone file suit against Yucca dump

The Western Shoshone Nation has rejected millions of dollars in compensation for the loss of their ancestral lands, and now the tribe is suing the federal government to stop nuclear waste from being housed at Yucca Mountain.

The lawsuit, filed in Las Vegas on Friday, asks a federal judge to enjoin the Energy Department from moving forward with plans to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles north of Las Vegas.

The tribe's attorney, Robert Hager, said the Energy Department has completely disregarded an 1863 treaty between the government and the the tribe that specifies uses for the tribe's nearly 60 million acres.

"The government has ignored the treaty and ignored the (Western Shoshone National) Council, and not allowed the tribe to participate in the intergovernmental process," Hager said.

Hager said the Shoshone have brought the treaty to the attention of the government but have been rebuffed, which has led to the lawsuit.

In summer 2004 President Bush signed a measure to distribute $145 million to the approximately 10,000 Western Shoshone in compensation for land that was taken from the tribe.

"The tribe has not accepted any of that money, and even if it had, it wouldn't affect the treaty," Hager said.

The Ruby Valley Treaty specifies that the government could only use the land for settlements, mines, ranches and the construction of roads and railroads.

The Shoshone land encompassed by the treaty covers most of Nevada, with the exception of its southern tip and an area in the northwest corner. The land also stretches into California, Idaho and Utah, and includes the Nevada Test Site and Yucca Mountain.

"The restrictions on use of lands covered by the treaty reflect the spiritual beliefs of the Western Shoshone people who hold the earth and all living things sacred," the lawsuit states. "It is the responsibility of plaintiffs to past, present and future generations to prevent the dispoiling of traditional Western Shoshone lands which the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump would portend."

Along with the Western Shoshone National Council, four Western Shoshone tribe members are also listed has plaintiffs in the suit.

Energy Department Secretary Samuel Bodman and Interior Department Secretary Gale Norton are named as defendants along with the United States.

The Western Shoshone have had a long history of litigation with the federal government over ancestral lands.

In 1991 the Western Shoshone Defense Project was created to protect the rights of Mary and Carrie Dann, Shoshone sisters who refused to pay the Bureau of Land Management to graze their cattle on land they said belonged to them under the Ruby Valley Treaty.

The Bureau of Land Management seized and sold 227 of the sisters' cattle in February 2003 and confiscated 500 horses from them in fall 2002.

A hearing on Hager's motion for an injunction against the government has not yet been set by U.S. District Judge Philip Pro.

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