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<h1 class="post-title left" itemprop="name headline">Here’s What
Happened When These Unarmed Native American Sisters Defended Their
Land from the Feds</h1>
<span class="author-names" itemprop="author"><a
href="http://usuncut.com/author/amanda/" title="Posts by Amanda
Girard" rel="author">Amanda Girard</a></span> <span
class="post-date" style="color: #CCC">| <time class="post-date
updated" itemprop="datePublished" datetime="2016-01-06"
pubdate="">January 6, 2016<br>
<font color="#000000"><b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://usuncut.com/resistance/dann-sisters-brutalized-by-blm-defending-land/">http://usuncut.com/resistance/dann-sisters-brutalized-by-blm-defending-land/</a></small></small></b></font><br>
</time></span>
<hr style="border: 0;height: 1px;background: #CCC;"> <span
class="post-excerpt">
<p>Like the Bundys, the Dann sisters tried a standoff with the
BLM. But it ended very differently.</p>
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<p>The <a
href="http://usuncut.com/news/oregon-militia-standoff-double-standards/"
target="_blank">double standard in the media’s treatment</a> of
<a
href="http://usuncut.com/news/armed-militia-members-take-over-federal-building-in-oregon/"
target="_blank">Ammon Bundy and his gang</a> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>In 1863, the U.S. government signed the Ruby Valley Treaty with
the Western Shoshone nation, who laid claim to <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/07/us/us-agents-seize-horses-of-2-defiant-indian-sisters.html"
target="_blank">26 million acres of land in Nevada, Idaho, and
Utah</a>. 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 <a
href="http://www.reviewjournal.com/columns-blogs/john-l-smith/shoshone-sisters-also-couldn-t-beat-blm"
target="_blank">$26 million</a> 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.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court gave its blessing to the Indian Claims
Commission ruling, claiming that the Shoshone <a
href="http://www.reviewjournal.com/columns-blogs/john-l-smith/shoshone-sisters-also-couldn-t-beat-blm"
target="_blank">had no claim to the land</a> 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.</p>
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<p>”Trespass? Who the hell gave them the land anyway?” Mary
Dann said in an <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/31/us/range-war-in-nevada-pits-us-against-2-shoshone-sisters.html"
target="_blank">interview with the New York Times</a>. ”When I
trespass, it’s when I wander into Paiute territory.”</p>
<p>In September of 2001, the government <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/31/us/range-war-in-nevada-pits-us-against-2-shoshone-sisters.html"
target="_blank">sent in the cavalry</a> to show it was serious
about its claim to the Shoshone tract:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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<p>Because the Dann sisters refused to leave their land, the
government once again began <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/07/us/us-agents-seize-horses-of-2-defiant-indian-sisters.html"
target="_blank">seizing large numbers of their livestock</a> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ2N9-n-ka0">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ2N9-n-ka0</a><br>
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