Oxfam Urges End to 'Injurious Problem' Native Americans Face Over Land Rights

Posted: 29 January 2007

More than three years past the due date, the US State Department is finally preparing a report for a United Nations committee on racism that has charged the federal government with human rights violations against Native Americans. Oxfam America wants to make sure the report includes concrete steps the US will take to address those violations.

The case pits the federal government against the Western Shoshone in a fight over who owns 60 million acres stretching across most of Nevada, and parts of Idaho, Utah, and California. The Western Shoshone maintain that that the US recognized their ancestral rights to that land in the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley. But the US now claims it as public, and has allowed the land to be used for military testing and gold mining. As part of that claim, the government has seized Western Shoshone livestock and imposed heavy trespassing fines.

In a 2006 decision, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) found that the Western Shoshone were being denied their traditional rights to the land and that the US was not complying with contemporary international human rights principals that govern the determination of indigenous property interests. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights made a similar finding in 2002, calling the US government’s process an "illegitimate" means of claiming land title.

"Just as the US government urges governments around the world to protect the human rights of its citizens, the US needs to set the highest example in our own country," said Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America. "The rights of the Western Shoshone to their land, their livelihoods, and their culture, should not be compromised."

The federal government has failed to respond to a set of questions posed by CERD in August 2005 as well as CERD's 2006 decision.

In a written statement to the US State Department, Offenheiser made his concerns very clear.

"Abrogation of the Treaty of Ruby Valley and intimidation and harassment of the Western Shoshone people are actions that have had devastating impacts on Western Shoshone communities," said Offenheiser. "Uncertainty about the ownership of their ancestral lands affects their ability to pursue traditional, land-based livelihoods. Given that indigenous peoples have the highest poverty rate (upwards of 25 percent) of any ethnic group in the country, this has had devastating economic effects."

Offenheiser called on the US government to take concrete steps to work with the Western Shoshone to resolve this "injurious problem."

Carrie Dann, a Western Shoshone grandmother and leader on the land rights issue seconded that call.

"The US has been attempting to deny us for the last 30 years our rights to do what we are here to do--to protect our environment and protect the most precious and sacred things--the land and water and the right to breathe clean air,” she said. “What we want now, and what we have always wanted, is an opportunity to negotiate in good faith an agreement to resolve these issues."