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

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Resistance


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


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


Carrie Dann (left) with her sister Mary (right)

The double standard in the media’s treatment of Ammon Bundy and his gang 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. 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 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.

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In September of 2001, the government sent in the cavalry 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.

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http://usuncut.com/resistance/dann-sisters-brutalized-by-blm-defending-land/