From: lpb@STRATUS.SWDC.STRATUS.COM (Len B.)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Native American Genocide
Date: 6 Oct 92 23:10:41 GMT

from PeaceNet via ACTIV-L:

Date:      Sat, 3 Oct 1992 00:41:40 GMT
From:      "(Rich Winkel)" <rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu>
Subject:   TEARING UP A BLOOD-STAINED TREATY
To: Multiple recipients of ACTIV-L <ACTIV-L%MIZZOU1.BITNET@pucc.Princeton.EDU>

/** headlines: 324.0 **/
** Topic: Tearing up a blood-stained treaty **
** Written  5:45 pm  Sep 30, 1992 by ggundrey in cdp:headlines **
~From: George Gundrey <ggundrey>
~Subject: Tearing up a blood-stained treaty

/* Written  4:53 pm  Sep 30, 1992 by gn:peacenews in cdp:wri.news */
/* ---------- "Tearing up a blood-stained treaty" ---------- */

                     TEARING UP A BLOOD-STAINED TREATY
                              by JULEY HOWARD

    On 3 August 1992, the US Senate voted decisively to bring an end to
    nuclear weapons testing in Nevada. On 18 September a nuclear bomb was
    exploded creating a 4.0 earthquake at Rainer Mess, Nevada, traditional
    territory signed over to the US government by the Western Shoshone
    people as part of the 1863 Ruby Valley Treaty.
    
    Two Shoshone women, Pauline Esteves of the Western Shoshone National
    Council and Heidi Blackeye of the Citizen Alert Native American
    Program, spoke to _PN_ about land, reservations, Sir James Goldsmith
    and nuclear testing.
    
    "There was a war before the Shoshone were forced to sign the 1963
    treaty," says Heidi. "The original treaty is in archives in Washington
    DC. It has blood on it where some of the native people have signed the
    treaty." Pauline adds that the Indian Claims Commission of 1979, when
    the US government attempted to pay off the Shoshone people with $26
    million, is equally invalid because they refused to accept the money.
    "They used the fact that we have been paid off, but we never received a
    dime. We don't want any money, because we'd be losing as lot more than
    we already had. The land is not for sale. If we were to sell the land
    we would be selling ourselves."
    
    They are both clear that Indian Reservations, the enclaves created by
    the US governments for indigenous peoples, are effectively small
    prisons controlled by the federal authorities. In Timbisha (Death
    Valley), Pauline's family are considered squatters and have been
    uprooted to make way for a visitors' centre and a camping ground.
    Because Timbisha has been declared a "National Monument" the Shoshone
    are not permitted to become economically self-sufficient. Instead, they
    are targeted by corporations and government departments eager to dump
    toxic and other waste. They are also made the victims of arsenic
    poisoning, as a direct result of gold mining. It is worth noting that
    Newmont Mining, a major contributor to pollution in Nevada, is partly
    owned (42 per cent) by Sir James Goldsmith ...
    
    Nuclear testing is also targeted towards the Shoshone rather than white
    North Americans. Sometimes, Pauline says, tests are postponed "because
    the winds might be blowing towards Las Vegas." The US military and
    government prefer nuclear debris to blow onto the reservations downwind
    of the test sites. As a result, Heidi says, "a lot of people have been
    affected. There have been children born with no limbs, with cancerous
    diseases which have affected our elder people too."
    
    The Shoshone position is set out by Chief Raymond Yowell of the Western
    Shoshone National Council. "This is Shoshone land. Its use by the
    United States for nuclear testing is a blatant violation of law and our
    civil property rights. We cannot help but see that the United States
    and other nuclear testing powers are testing their most destructive
    weapons on other peoples' lands ... on the territory of native peoples
    who cannot prevent the larger and more technologically powerful nations
    from doing this to them."
    
    But it goes beyond this, as Pauline explains. "Our recognition is not
    written in the histories that you read. Ours is written into the
    mountains, and into all the life-forms that the creator has placed upon
    this land. And this land, this earth, we respect. We walk upon it
    honouring it because it is our mother. When they do their weapons'
    testing out there they make a hole down to a great depth and run into
    the veins of mother earth. We have always known that we must not dig
    that far into mother earth."
    
    Heidi continues: "The law of the Shoshone people says that all living
    things are connected and that you are not better off than any other
    living thing. We all live off the land and living things feed us, keep
    us alive. We're so modern today that we forget these things, but we
    need to remind ourselves."
    
    And finally, Pauline reminds us, "When the British do their weapons'
    tests they are on Western Shoshone lands."
    
    *******************************************************************
    * Reprinted from Peace News 2359 (October 1992).                  *
    * Please credit if reprinting.                                    *
    * Peace News and War Resisters' International,                    *
    * 55 Dawes Street, London SE17 1EL                                *
    * (tel +44 71 703 7189; fax 708 2545; email peacenews@gn.apc.org) *
    *******************************************************************
    
    
    ** End of text from cdp:headlines **
    
    

--
  The Hopi believe this is the Fourth World.  There were seven worlds created 
  at the beginning.  The first three were each destroyed in turn because the 
  humans inhabiting them had diverged too far from their original sacred path
  of connectedness with and respect for all life on Mother Earth.  Their 
  prophecies (see "Book of the Hopi" by Frank Waters) describe the possibility
  of such a destruction of the Fourth World (in the forms of uranium mining, 
  the existence of powerlines, and the atomic bomb):

       If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster.

              Near the Day of Purification, there will be cobwebs 
                       spun back and forth in the sky.

           A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky,          
                which could burn the land and boil the oceans.



                                KOYAANISQATSI

    ko.yaa.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi Language)  n.  1. crazy life.  2. life
        in turmoil.  3. life out of balance.  4. life disintegrating.  
          5. a state of life that calls for another way of living.


----- End Included Message -----

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