The raiders
arrived at dawn. Contract cowboys backed by BLM rangers and other heavily armed
law enforcement personnel fanned out across the desolate but alluring Nevada
countryside to confiscate livestock owned by a family who – under a
controversial claim of sovereignty -- had allowed them to graze on public lands
without paying fees to the federal government.
“They have been
overgrazing and damaging the land for years,” asserted BLM
spokesman Mike Brown, who also pointed out that the family – the last holdouts in the region – had
been fined millions of dollars for trespassing on public land. In defiance of
federal judicial rulings and the “consensus” of their representatives, the
family persisted in claiming that they had a right to graze cattle on land
their ancestors had settled many decades ago. The dispute had been going on for
decades, and the institutional patience of the federal government had been
exhausted.
A previous
roundup nearly resulted in tragedy when a member of the family doused himself
in gasoline and threatened to set himself on fire. The 59-year-old man, who had
no previous criminal record, was tackled, beaten by law enforcement officers,
arrested, and prosecuted on terrorism-related charges.
After spending several
years in prison, that supposed terrorist, Clifford Dann, was allowed to return
to the tiny, ramshackle homestead he shares with his 82-year-old sister, Carrie,
who is the same age their elder sister Mary was when she died in an accident
while repairing a fence in 2005.
Like the Cliven
Bundy family, their distant Nevada neighbors, the
Dann family spent two decades fighting in federal courts to defend their
property against the depredations of the federal government. As members of the Western Shoshone
nation, the Dann family had inherited land that was protected by the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley and the U.S. Constitution – parchment
barricades against aggression that were quickly reduced to ashes by the flame
of elite ambitions.
When the United States assimilated northern Mexico following
the aggressive war of 1846-1848,
it exacerbated the regional tensions that would lead to the War Between the
States. Nevada's continuing status as a quasi-colony, rather than
fully realized state, is a lingering echo of that conflict.
Such statehood as
Nevada enjoys resulted from partisan machinations by Republicans who wanted additional
congressional seats in the event that the election of 1864 was thrown into the
House of Representatives.
Statehood was rushed along with the help of an enabling act promising that Washington would sell off
surplus lands beyond what would be necessary for the construction of military
bases and similar facilities.
The promises made
to statehood advocates proved to be as ephemeral as assurances of marriage and
strict fidelity offered to a reluctant young woman confronted by an
irrepressibly libidinous suitor. Washington's treatment of the Western Shoshone
was immeasurably worse.
Although the
territory that would become Nevada was included in the cession made through the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico never had a permanent presence
there, and the Shoshone, quite understandably, never considered themselves to be
Mexican subjects. The territory acquired huge strategic significance after the
war began, owing to its abundance of silver and its location astride transportation and communication
routes from California to the East. This is why Article 2 of the Ruby Valley Treaty
specified that in exchange for leaving travel routes “forever free, and
unobstructed,” and for allowing stage and telegraph routes to continue “without
hindrance, molestation, or injury,” the US Government promised that the
then-extant boundaries of the Shoshone bands would remain inviolate.
The Ruby Valley
Treaty, like all such measures, acknowledged the supposed authority of the US
President to consign the Indians to reservations when he considered it
“expedient for them to abandon the roaming life, which they now lead, and
become herdsmen or agriculturalists....” Those reservations were to exist
within the boundaries of their ancestral lands, which once again were promised
to them in perpetuity. The Shoshone were likewise promised annuities from the
United States, and “compensation and equivalent for the loss of game and the
rights and privileges hereby conceded.”
Those promises,
like all others extended to American Indians, may as well have been written on
the wind in disappearing ink.
“The Shoshone
kept their end of the bargain,” recalled Western Shoshone National Council
Chairman Raymond Yowell. “The United States did not. As more and more emigrants
settled on ourlandsd, he promise of peace wasn't enough for the United States.
Instead of dealing with us as a sovereign nation, the United States implemented
a scheme to acquire title unlawfully.”
In 1946, the
Regime in Washington created a pseudo-judicial body called the Indian Claims
Commission (ICC), the
purpose of which was to dispose of outstanding land claims. The 1946 act
permitted that Commission (it is axiomatic that any body called a “Commission”
was created to facilitate fraud) to recognize as authoritative tribal spokesman
any “identifiable group” within a given tribe, no matter how unrepresentative
it might be.
In 1951, one tiny
Shoshone band, the Te-Moaks (descended from a signatory of the 1863 treaty)
filed an ICC claim on behalf of the entire nation. Eleven years later the ICC
settled that claim by ruling that the Shoshone claims had been extinguished
through “gradual encroachment” of American settlers. Furthermore, the
Commission ruled that the “taking” had occurred on July 1, 1872 – a date used
to establish the value of the land, long before discovery of gold and other
valuable minerals had occurred. In 1979, the Commission offered the Shoshone a
$26 million settlement – an amount equivalent to about fifteen cents an acre
for the same land commanding $2.50 an acre when purchased by gold mining
interests.
When the
Shoshones refused to accept the settlement – which had been reached ex parte –
the Department of the Interior paid that money to itself, absorbing it into an
Indian trusteeship bureaucracy that was riddle with corruption and fraud.
About a decade
ago, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sponsored a measure that would have
“settled” the longstanding dispute with a one-time payment of $26,000 to each
member of the Shoshone tribe. That bill was never enacted, and the money
remained unpaid – which suited the Dann family just fine. They had never agreed
to surrender their land, had never signed any documents, and insisted on
exercising their right to raise livestock on land that had been peacefully and
productively used by their family for generations.
In 1974, the US
Government sued the Dann family, claiming that they had committed “trespassing”
by grazing their horses and cattle on land that legally belonged to them.
Successive rulings by federal judges upheld the Government's claims.
The
Supreme Court declined to hear the Dann family's appeal, insisting that the
matter was closed when the federal government paid itself $26 million to
consummate the theft of the Shoshone lands. The Feds would eventually claim
that the impoverished Indian family owed nearly $5 million in grazing fees and
interest.
The BLM staged
its first cattle rustling raid against the Danns in April 1992. At about 4:30
in the morning, the ranch lands were invaded by a column of vehicles that
decanted a platoon of BLM Brownshirts. Not intimidated by the
bullying display, Carrie plowed through the picket line and cast herself into a
cattle chute to prevent hireling cowboys from loading her stolen cattle onto a
truck.
“My land has
never been for sale,” Carrie told Eureka County Sheriff Ken Jones, who rather than defending his
constituent's rights was aligned with the invaders. “It's not for sale now,
it's not for sale tomorrow, either. And that's the way it is, Mr. Jones.”
As would happen
more than twenty years later at Bunkerville, the BLM backed down and withdrew,
restoring the stolen cattle to their rightful owners. But this gesture was purely
a public relations ploy.
When the raiders
returned the following November, Clifford used a vehicle to block a road,
cutting off a convoy of BLM trucks carrying the family's livestock. Sitting
down in the bed of his pickup, Clifford immersed himself with gasoline and
threatened to set himself on fire unless the federally licensed rustlers
relinquished the stolen animals.
Feigning sympathy
with the Dann family's plight, Sheriff Jones told Clifford that the cattle
weren't being confiscated and invited him to see for himself. When Clifford
stepped down from his truck, he was surrounded by a thugscrum of BLM
Brownshirts, some of him sprayed him with fire extinguishers, others
surrounding the 59-year-old man and assaulting him.
Carrie ran to
help her brother, only to be seized from behind by a BLM agent.
“You're hurting
me – I've got a bad shoulder!” cried Carrie.
“Then be a good
old lady and quit struggling,” sneered BLM special agent Terry Somers, his
voice dripping scornful condescension.
The stolen
livestock escaped – but Clifford did not. Beaten and bloodied, he was taken
into custody. Four months later he was sentenced to nine years in prison for
“assaulting an officer with gasoline” – that is, for being seized and beaten by
BLM agents after he had poured gasoline on his own body. As he pronounced
sentence, Federal Judge John McKibben pointedly said that the severity of his ruling was
intended “to send a message to journalists, activists, and the Western
Shoshone.”
With their
brother behind bars, and their supporters understandably intimidated, the Dann
sisters weren't able to resist as several subsequent federal raids
systematically deprived them of their stock, much of which was left to die of
neglect by the BLM.
For decades the
BLM had accused the Danns of damaging the delicate Crescent Valley ecosystem by
“overgrazing” their herds – even though BLM commissar Somers admitted in 1994
that there was no evidence to sustain that charge. Once their grazing lands had
been denuded of cattle and horses, the BLM leased it to a Canadian conglomerate
that gouged huge open-pit mines out of the landscape and left the countryside contaminated with lead, mercury, and
cyanide.
It should be
recalled that the Department of the Interior placed the value of the Shoshone
lands at fifteen cents an acre. It charged gold mining companies up to $2.50 an
acre for leasing the lands that had been stolen from the Dann family. Gold
mining is a worthy undertaking – when it is carried out through honest,
mutually beneficial commerce, rather than government-abetted theft.
The Dann family
and the Western Shoshone, acting out of desperation, made a futile effort at
redress by filing a grievance with the Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination at the United Nations, an organization that is utterly worthless
when it isn't being aggressively harmful. In the meantime, the BLM directed its
malevolent attention at non-Indian ranchers in Nevada.
In 2001, BLM
hired contractors to steal the cattle of Nevada ranchers Ben Colvin and Jack Vogt, whose argument against paying grazing
feeds was similar to that made by the Danns, to wit: The US Government had no
legal and constitutional authority to claim ownership of the range land.
The
BLM and Forest Service likewise pilfered cows belonging to rancher Wayne Hage,
who like the Danns spent decades fighting the Feds in court. Last year, in what
must be regarded as little short of an epoch-shattering miracle, a federal
judge ruled
that those agencies had conducted a criminal conspiracy against Hage and
recommended that their administrators face criminal prosecution.
Unlike the Bundys, who are materially comfortable but not opulently wealthy, the Danns -- like many American Indians -- are desperately poor. Their ancestral claim to the land is stronger than that of the Bundy family, but this didn't prevent the Feds from stealing their livestock and leaving them destitute.
Despite the significant differences separating the Bundys from the Danns, both families are
involved in what can accurately be described – without the unfortunate
ideological baggage – as an anti-colonialist struggle. The US Government had no
legal right to ratify the theft of Western Shoshone lands, nor does it have the
constitutional authority to occupy and claim to own more than eighty percent of
Nevada's territory.
Cliven Bundy and
his family were hardly the first Nevada ranchers to confront federally licensed
cattle rustlers who operated under the protection of militarized law
enforcement agents. They were, however, the first to fight back.
Dum spiro, pugno!
9 comments:
I can not express in words how I feel about these sorts of things. Thank You for bringing them to light.
Mr. Grigg,
Where do you find these atrocity stories? Each one leaves me feeling more sick to my stomach than the last.
To the tune of the song, heard so often after 9-11-2001:
"I'M ASHAMED TO BE AN AMERICAN, WHERE I CAN NEVER SAY I'M FREE..."
Just in case any white people reading this think these sorts of things only happen to folks of color or ranchers out West, check out this link:
http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/galveston-wedding-beatdown/
What scares me, in a country that piously proclaims, "In God We Trust" is the solemn Biblical assurance: "God will not be mocked". I am afraid for the divine punishment that someday will descend upon us all, and for the price that Satan will exact for his favors, showered upon the corrupt and evil two-legged animals who have run this country for the last 150 years.
We can forgive a sinner, but we can never excuse a hypocrite. This country drips with hypocrisy like Niagara Falls drips with water. The utter evil and corruption, masquerading as goodness and light, is monumental in scale.
- Lemuel.
Fantastic! This is exactly the article and facts we need to get out in response to the let's references to Indians or "welfare cowboys" and other lies.
As always, this is an outstanding column that brings to light news I have not read anywhere else.
Mr. Grigg,
Thank you once again for writing about the plight of ranchers with our federal government. You may want to check out Range Magazine (rangemagazine.com). They have some of the best investigative journalism that I have seen. It may give you some more ideas on where and how to look to find more of these stories. (There are thousands of similar stories. Few are as blatantly wrong as what happened to the Danns, but there are still many that could be found and reported.)
Another great article with outstanding references.
A suggestion. Please highlight the links in this article. They are difficult to find without moving your cursor over the link.
Also, in paragraph ten, "and the Shoshone, quite understandably, ever considered themselves to be Mexican subjects." should say "and the Shoshone, quite understandably, (N)ever considered themselves to be Mexican subjects." I believe you meant to say.
http://goldtradercommentsaugust2010.blogspot.com/
As always Mr. Grigg lays out the truth...
Is anyone keeping track of the body count in New Mexico? I will never set foot anywhere near that state. I would love to see a Pro Libertate post on the APD.
OK, I know this comment will be largely unappreciated, but I'm big on consistency, so am compelled to post it.
When the U.S. annexed about 1/2 of the territory of Mexico at the conclusion of the Mexican-American War, some of that property had been owned by private citizens of Mexico. Officially, the U.S. honored those property rights, though in reality most of it was confiscated by U.S. citizens or local governments, largely through the courts and few of the descendants of those property owners still hold any of their ancestors' property.
Much of the land that was not previously in private hands was either given away or sold very cheaply to U.S. citizens, but a good portion of it has remained under ownership of the U.S. government. Now I don't appreciate the government owning so much land, and am anxious to consider options to put more of it into private hands, but for now, we taxpayers own that land.
From what I can find, the land in question here falls into that category of property that the Mexican government claimed as theirs and which the U.S. government has ever since 1848 claimed as theirs.
My experience with BLM-managed land (or generally, mismanaged land) is that it is leased to oil, lumber, ranching and other interests at well below market rates. I consider all of those to be government subsidies, and since I am generally opposed to government subsidies to private business interests, I'm having a hard time seeing letting Bundy graze his cattle on our land for what I've read is about 10% of the local rate for range fees on private property to be some form of tyranny. The only scent of tyranny I get is of our government nearly giving away our property to private business interests without our consent.
I am having an even harder time seeing Bundy refusing to pay y'all and me even the discount rates we charge him to be anything except a welfare scam.
But, I'm in full agreement with William that the real victims in all of this are the Shoshone, and other Indian groups who were in legitimate possession of that land before Mexico and then the U.S. took possession of it.
OK, INCOMING!
Keep up the good work, William. I recommend your blog to others all the time. I haven't been able to donate yet, but I'm hoping some of those I've turned on to your excellent research and writing have.
I feel the U.S. government is the most worst hypocrites who are destroying our lands throughout Nevada and Indian Land! You the government give the worst of the worst land to the indiansindians. Then take it back when you discover it holds gold, or oil or coal? Worthless is our government! Take and kill for it until there's no earth or water left! Dumb! Mary, you are a warrior in this life and the next R.I.P. our land will crumble and there will be no excuses left the government will kill itself it already has,discrimination on our Natives which we are also that have been detached from our culture many years ago,I am heart broken and a Indian without a tribe but not by choice!
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