[News] Here’s What Happened When These Unarmed Native American Sisters Defended Their Land from the Feds

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  Here’s What Happened When These Unarmed Native American Sisters
  Defended Their Land from the Feds

Amanda Girard <http://usuncut.com/author/amanda/> | January 6, 2016
*http://usuncut.com/resistance/dann-sisters-brutalized-by-blm-defending-land/*
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Like the Bundys, the Dann sisters tried a standoff with the BLM. But it 
ended very differently.

The double standard in the media’s treatment 
<http://usuncut.com/news/oregon-militia-standoff-double-standards/> of 
Ammon Bundy and his gang 
<http://usuncut.com/news/armed-militia-members-take-over-federal-building-in-oregon/> 
at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is shameful, but the case of the 
Dann sisters underlines even further the disparity in how non-white 
activists are treated.

Carrie and Mary Dann, two elderly Shoshone women who have defied seizure 
of their land, have been repeatedly roughed up and harassed by federal 
officials and mobs of white ranchers for refusing to cede their claim to 
land that was illegally stolen from them 30 years ago.

In 1863, the U.S. government signed the Ruby Valley Treaty with the 
Western Shoshone nation, who laid claim to 26 million acres of land in 
Nevada, Idaho, and Utah 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/07/us/us-agents-seize-horses-of-2-defiant-indian-sisters.html>. 
The Shoshone tribe and the U.S. government agreed that settlers and 
cowboys had access to the land, but not title. But in the 1970s, the 
federal Indian Claims Commission ruled that the land no longer belonged 
to the Shoshone nation due to “gradual encroachment” of white settlers 
and ranchers. The government seized the land and put $26 million 
<http://www.reviewjournal.com/columns-blogs/john-l-smith/shoshone-sisters-also-couldn-t-beat-blm> 
into an account meant for the Shoshone nation in 1979, but the tribe 
turned down the money, saying they never agreed to sell their land.

The Supreme Court gave its blessing to the Indian Claims Commission 
ruling, claiming that the Shoshone had no claim to the land 
<http://www.reviewjournal.com/columns-blogs/john-l-smith/shoshone-sisters-also-couldn-t-beat-blm> 
since the tribe had been paid $26 million. Dann sisters stopped paying 
grazing fees out of protest in 1973, saying they only honored the Ruby 
Valley Treaty, and the BLM responded by slapping the sisters with a 
series of fines totalling $3 million in 1998. Federal officials called 
for the roundup of the Danns’ horses and cattle, saying they were 
trespassing on federal land.

”Trespass? Who the hell gave them the land anyway?” Mary Dann said in an 
interview with the New York Times 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/31/us/range-war-in-nevada-pits-us-against-2-shoshone-sisters.html>. 
”When I trespass, it’s when I wander into Paiute territory.”

In September of 2001, the government sent in the cavalry 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/31/us/range-war-in-nevada-pits-us-against-2-shoshone-sisters.html> 
to show it was serious about its claim to the Shoshone tract:

    The government considers it public land, and to drive the point
    home, 40 agents from the Bureau of Land Management descended on the
    Danns’ ranch in September, heavily armed and fortified with
    helicopters, and confiscated 232 cattle, which were later sold.

    The sisters and their supporters argue that their tribe never
    legally ceded these range lands. Though the federal government
    controls 85 percent of Nevada, they contend that it has no
    legitimate title to the land — or the gold, water, oil and
    geothermal energy beneath it.

Because the Dann sisters refused to leave their land, the government 
once again began seizing large numbers of their livestock 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/07/us/us-agents-seize-horses-of-2-defiant-indian-sisters.html> 
in 2003, claiming the horses and cattle were grazing at the public’s 
expense. BLM officials even deputized local cowboys to assist with the 
livestock seizure. At which point, the sisters were forced to remove 
over 400 remaining horses from the disputed range, many of them pregnant 
mares, but they lost track of many in the forced move.

Furthermore, they were caught in a catch-22 regarding these stray horses 
that ran away in the chaos, wherein even strays marked with the Danns’ 
brand would be seized and auctioned if not claimed, but the 
sisters would incur trespassing fines if they did claim these horses.

While Mary Dann died on the ranch in 2005, her sister Carrie continues 
to protest for indigenous rights in her old age. Oxfam made a short 
documentary about the two sisters’ struggle to keep their land. Watch 
it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ2N9-n-ka0

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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