HOME | INFO | NEWS | -> DOSSIER <- | BACHECA / TERMINE |
EDICOLA / KIOSK | LADINBy Renate Domnick (Society for threatened peoples). English version by Elisa Grazzi
Bozen, 3. October 2003
The Nevada Desert, in the South Western United States, is the
Western Shoshone people's ancestral land. With the Ruby Valley
Treaty, signed in 1863, the USA formally recognised two thirds of
Nevada State as Western Shoshone sovereign territory. Apparently,
at that time white people were not interested in what they saw as
semi-desert land. As soon as gold started to be discovered there,
however, the Ruby Valley Treaty was broken. Today, Newe Sogobia,
as the Shoshones call their land, represents the United States'
main gold source. In the 1930s, Western Shoshone territory
illegally came within US authorities' jurisdiction, as for
instance the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Since then, Western
Shoshones have been dispossessed of more and more land, for
military purposes (as is the case for the Nuclear Test Site, an
area which is used to conduct nuclear testing) and for the
extraction of gold.
Although at present 80% of the United States' gold comes from
Newe Sogobia, Western Shoshones do not benefit from their
ancestral territory's wealth. Quite the opposite: they are
struggling against forced expropriation. On the firm claim that
their land can not be sold, so far they have been constantly
rejecting monetary compensation for the taking of their land,
awarded in 1979 by the Indian Claims Commission.
The biggest gold companies in the world
Four of the biggest international gold companies operate on
Western Shoshone land. Most of them run more than one mine at the
same time. At least 30 of the mines that are active in Newe
Sogobia belong to multinational corporations. Round Mountain, for
example, is one of the first modern gold mines. It turned out a
native village and a cemetery. Many corporations have been
working mines in Round Mountain, and it seems that many are yet
to come: the Carlin Trend area, which is the richest in gold, was
discovered in 1961, and it is thought that over 600 tons of gold
are still to be found within the Tuscarora Mountains. While
producing half a million ounces of gold per year, Echo Bay Mining
Co. destroyed most of the massifs in Round Mountain. Newmont, a
Canadian company, has bought more than 500 square miles of land
in order to run four mines, five husbandry plants and three
lye-washing basins.
Considerable gold reserves were also discovered in the Crescent
Valley area, in the middle of Western Shoshone land. Cortez was
one of the first mines there. Shortly after Cortez came Pipeline
Mine, whose cyanide lye-washing basins, liquid waste outlets and
detritus depots alone occupy now almost 2,500 acres of land. In
Crescent Valley also lay a ranch belonging to the Dann Western
Shoshone Traditional Family. Mary and Carrie Dann have been
fighting really hard for natives' sovereignty rights. Thanks to
their struggles for the cause, they received the "Right
Livelihood Award", which is also called the "Alternative Nobel
Prize". According to Carrie Dann, the situation is seriously
worrying. "When I look out of my window in the morning", she
says, "the first thing I see is cranes working in golden mines.
It is without doubt a distressing sight. Land and water are
sacred to us. But mines are destroying everything: they drill the
land in search for gold seams and they waste precious
water".
Today, many Western Shoshones work as ranchers in small
companies. People who cannot cultivate their own land are forced
to search for employment, which is usually found either at
Casinos in Las Vegas or in gold mines. However, in spite of
economic dependency, Western Shoshones keep fighting gold
extraction, which is destroying their land. The Western Shoshone
Defence Project (WSDP) was founded with the aim of defending
Western Shoshone's right to their own land, and it has been
working as a competent mouthpiece for Western Shoshone protests
in court and companies' board meetings. In doing this, the WSDP
had to deal with cyanide gold extraction, a subject to which
public opinion had no access at the time.
Gold mines are chemical time bombs
Gold extraction produces more waste than any other mining
activity. In fact, 99.9% of dug material is useless, as there are
only 1 to 3 grams of gold in each ton of rocks. This
"micro-gold", so to speak, can be found virtually anywhere, also
in Europe. Searching for micro-gold in Europe, however, is out of
question, and rightly so. Mining companies, most of which come
from Canada, the United States and Australia, engage in gold
extraction only where there are no strict environmental laws.
Native populations, who depend on land and water for survival,
are the victims of mining companies' craving for profit.
Big-scale industrial exploitation of gold sources started at the
beginning of the 1970s, with the development of the cyanide gold
lye-washing technique. In Nevada, cyanide gold lye-washing was
used for the first time by Newmont. Today, industrial gold
extraction is unthinkable without cyanide. Sodium cyanide, a salt
of hydrocianic acid, is a quick-effect poison. Dissolved in
water, it immediately kills any life form. Cyanide is useful in
the process of gold extraction because its molecules alloy to
themselves particles of gold that are present in rocks. First,
huge piles of ground rocks are imbued with cyanide solution.
Subsequently, in a chemical processing plant, gold is refined and
divided from the remaining minerals. Huge quantities of cyanide
are used in this process: several tons per day, depending on the
size of the mine and on the quantity of gold contained in the
rocks.
Gold mines steal water from the Earth
In many areas of the world, water, which is the prime element of
life, has reversed into the opposite: it can bring death and
illness, when it is infected by residues of industrial
activities, such as gold mining. In Nevada, water precipitations
amount to less than 12 inches per year, and droughts can last
several years. Solely in the Humboldt River area, mines pump over
250,000 gallons of water every day. Since mine shafts lie below
the level of the phreatic layer, water flows in them. In order to
keep the shafts dry, mining companies like Pipeline Mine remove
almost 40,000 gallons of water per minute, twenty-four hours a
day. As waste of water is against the law, water is collected in
drainage areas, so that it can flow back to the phreatic layer.
However, this does not work wherever the soil is impermeable:
therefore, a considerable part of the water evaporates due to
Nevada's dry weather.
When environmentalists and Western Shoshones started protesting,
mine managers responded by altering expert reports. According to
them, their activities have little effect on water springs and
rivers. Where phreatic layer's level has lowered, though, springs
and rivers have disappeared. Western Shoshones, who live as
shepherds in the semi-desert climate of Nevada, can't afford to
build new wells. If they can't find water on their paths, their
cattle die. Moreover, when mining companies stop activity,
residual water flows into the wells again: poisoned by waste from
gold extraction, they become very dangerous. Basins used for the
gathering of toxic mud represent the main cause of environmental
disasters linked with mining activities. Companies often do not
comply with security standards for the construction of such
basins, because their only objective is cost reduction. The
basins can contain several hundreds of cubic meters of mud. Dams
often cannot stand the pressure caused by such masses of mud, so
waste that contains cyanide ends up leaking and poisoning the
surrounding environment.
More issues are caused by rock waste. If, as in the case of Newe
Sogobia, whole mountain massifs can be turned into "remainders",
it is easy to understand that mining waste depots are difficult
to manage firstly because of their huge size. Depending on the
type of rocks in question, then, materials stored in these depots
contain arsenic, sulphur and poisonous heavy metals, as for
example different radioelements, like uranium. Once they are
brought out as a consequence of rock grinding, these elements
divide from particles of rock, and end up contaminating water and
land through atmospheric precipitations. This process is called
"acid drainage". It consists in rains conveying into water masses
heavy metals and other toxic elements that result from rock
grinding. Over one hundred and fifty years after the 1849 gold
fever, the state of California is still struggling against this
dangerous phenomenon.
Sacred and historic sites are being
destroyed
Big-scale land destruction also results in the loss of sacred and
historical sites. Many of the sites that are threatened of
destruction have been recognized the necessary qualifications to
become part of the National Heritage register for the protection
of cultural or historical sites. For example, Rock Creek Canyon
belongs to the National Heritage thanks to its sacred water
sources, which are still used in Western Shoshone traditional
medicine. Also, Western Shoshone tribes from all over Newe
Sogobia gather in Rock Creek Canyon for sacred rituals.
Tosawihi (White Knife) Quarry is another Western Shoshone
National Heritage site. The White Knife Shoshones are named after
this quarry because virtually all of their utensils are
fabricated with the white stone that can be found there.
Anthropological research has shown that Tosawihi Quarry has been
used to this end by White Knife Shoshones for 5000 years. A third
Western Shoshone cultural site that is being threatened is
Shoshone Mike. It is a sacred graveyard, where the last massacre
of native people took place, and it is now surrounded by mineral
waste depots belonging to Twin Creeks Mine. As is he case for
every gold mine, access to Shoshone Mike is kept under strict
surveillance.
The Bureau of Land Management
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is the federal authority in
charge of land protection. It is also competent for licences of
land use for military and industrial purposes. The environment,
however, lacks proper protection because of the clash of
interests and of the concentration of power within the BLM. Due
to the collusion between the BLM and the mining companies, expert
reports about the effects of mining activities on the environment
are falsified, and environmental crimes are not persecuted. The
contamination of big liquid masses with cyanide and other
poisonous substances is against the law, and so is the
destruction of historical and cultural sites. However, instead of
punishing crimes, in Newe Sogobia powers work together in order
to hide them.
Resistance
Until the 1990s, public opinion knew nothing about issues related
with gold extraction. Indeed, these problems used to concerned
solely Third World native populations. However, oppressed native
populations started to organise, and in 1994 their delegates from
all around the world met in London, in order to define a common
strategy and take action. Then, in 1999, native people's
organisations met again at the Peoples' Gold Summit in
California. Originally, the meeting was intended to be hosted by
the Western Shoshones. However, organisers thought that, had a
conference against gold extraction taken place in Newe Sogobia,
the BLM could have taken it as too big a provocation, and it
could have obstructed it. The relationship between the BLM and
the Western Shoshones can be compared with that between the
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and most of the US native peoples:
since the BLM is the competent authority for gold extraction, and
it works closely with mining companies, it identifies with their
interests. In conclusion, the Peoples' Gold Summit was held in
California, where gold extraction in the 19th Century put an end
to many native peoples' survival.
Unfortunately, the same holds true also in the case of Western
Shoshones: gold extraction could mark the end of their
sovereignty rights on their ancestral territories. In fact, this
once ignored semi-desert land has become expensive because of
gold. Nevada policy-makers, therefore, are eager to sell the land
to private investors. However, this will not be possible until
the judicial controversy regarding Western Shoshones' claim to
their land is not solved. This is why senator Harry Reid is
trying to promote a law that aims at forcing Western Shoshones to
give up their rights once and for all, accepting monetary
compensation for the taking of their land. However, Western
Shoshones never agreed to accept money. The Reid Bill states that
each Western Shoshone individual receive an equal part of the
compensation money that was decided in 1979: 20,000 dollars per
tribe member.
In order to defeat Western Shoshone resistance, Reid tried to
collaborate with some tribe members that were interested in
accepting the compensation money. Along with them, he held a
voting session, without informing all of the Western Shoshone
population. Although the vast majority of them could not
participate in the voting, then, the press reported that most
Western Shoshone had agreed to accept the compensation. In
reality, however, out of the 4,000 Western Shoshones that live in
Nevada, only 1,183 took part in the voting. Among the people who
voted there was the chief of the Temoak tribe, who tried to give
a speech against money compensation in exchange for land. As soon
as he started the speech, however, his microphone was turned off.
In August 2002, the Senate Committee for Indian Affairs,
Washington DC, held a hearing about the Reid Bill. Although
Senator Reid made sure to choose personally the Western Shoshone
representatives that took part in the hearing, however, the
Senate rejected his Bill. Evidently, contrary opinions could not
be completely silenced. In any case, Nevada politicians have
announced that they will not stop trying to have the Bill
approved.
More than once, Western Shoshones have applied to international
institutions in order to defend their right to their ancestral
land. Although their situation may look hopeless, so far they
have continued to stand up for their cause. In Geneva, several
organisations have been dealing with the Western Shoshone case:
among them, the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous
Populations (UNWGIP) and the Committee for the Elimination of
Racial Discrimination (CERD). The situation has also been
reported to the Human Rights Commission of the Organisation of
American States (OAS). This Commission has given several warnings
to the US Government, saying that monetary compensation for the
taking of land constitutes a violation of Western Shoshones'
fundamental rights, in particular the right to own, trade, and
dispose of property freely and the right to legal recourse.
Finally, it should be noted that Western Shoshones have been the
first North American natives to turn to the Organisation for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), to seek defence from
the selling of their land through the Reid Bill. They asked
Antonio Martins da Cruz, President of the OSCE, to order an
inquiry about human rights violations perpetrated by the USA
against the Western Shoshones.