Western Shoshone

The Western Shoshone, also Western Shoshone ( engl. ' Western Shoshone ', Eigenbez. Newe - 'people', read: ' Nih wih ') are a Native American tribe of the Shoshone. They speak a Uto- Aztec language in the dialect of the Shoshone - Comanche.

The traditional territory of the Western Shoshone comprises the central and western part of the U.S. state of Idaho, northwestern Utah, central and northeastern Nevada and the Panamint Valley, the Panamint Mountains and Death Valley in California.

The Western Shoshone are part of the cultural complex of the Great Basin. In addition to the Western Shoshone there was the

• Northern Shoshone and
• Eastern Shoshone (often = Snakes as " snakes " means ).

Groups of Western Shoshone

• Koso (also commonly known as Panamint or Timbisha Shoshone, sedentary living today in the Panamint Valley and Death Valley ( Furnace Creek Reservation ) and walked once between the Panamint Mountains, the Owens Lake and the Amargosa River)
• Tukuaduka ( = " Sheep Eater " = " sheep - eater ," the term for living in Idaho groups of Western Shoshone )
• ( Usually referred = " Cattail Eaters ", " eater of broadleaf pipe piston " whose " rhizomes " are rich in starch and edible after cooking as Gosiute, the name given to the people living in Nevada and Utah groups) Toi Ticutta
• Te - Moak ( Moak Tribe officially Te - around Elko (Nevada ), 1938, four living in Nevada groups joined under the leadership of Chief Frank Te - Moak together) Battle Mountain band ( live on the northwestern outskirts of the small town of Battle Mountain in a " Colony" near the border that separated the tribal areas of the Shoshone and the Northern Paiute, Shoshone called this region Tonomudza )
• Elko band ( settled near the town of Elko, to find there the construction of the railway work)
• South Fork band ( live on the Upper Reese River)
• Wells band ( Eigenbez.: Kuiyudika = " eaters of Kuiyu plant", an edible desert plant life in the desert plateaus in northeastern Nevada ) Doyogadzu Newenee ( end-of -the- mountain people )
• Waiha - Muta Newenee ( fire -burning -on ridge people)

Demography

The U.S. Census estimated in 1910 the number of Western Shoshone in 1800 and twenty years later in 2000. 1937 called the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1201 with a much smaller number. Today ( 2005) the number, depending on how you count, as between 5-10,000 is specified lying.

Life and culture

The Western Shoshone differed from the Northern and Eastern Shoshone fact that they had no horses and therefore not involved in the hunt bison on the Great Plains. Therefore, they are often commonly referred to as Shoshoko or as Walker Shoshone, "walking on foot Shoshone ". Along with the neighboring Bannock and Paiute they were often contemptuous of the Europeans as Diggers ( = " tombs " ) because they ransacked by a grave Stocks soil for edible roots, grasses, seeds and animals. Unlike their relatives the Western Shoshone did not develop based on the horse nomadic Plains culture. The Western Shoshone mostly inhabited easily covered with willow, bark mats or animal skins bush huts, called Wickiups; wandering they built, if it would allow the season and the weather, mostly simple windbreaks (Spanish ramada ).

History

Probably came the trappers and fur traders Jedediah Smith in 1825 when hunting in the western Rocky Mountains ( in present-day Utah) as the first white man to the Western Shoshone. In 1847 let the Mormons settled in Nevada and came up with the Western Shoshone in contact, who lived on the southernmost. The Western Shoshone saw themselves threatened by the influx of white settlers attacked and increases the Pony Express or other facilities of the whites on. To protect the whites built in 1862 in Ruby Valley Fort Ruby. That same year, an army unit massacred a large number of Western Shoshone.

1863 included the chiefs of the Western Shoshone at Fort Ruby with the United States, represented by some Army officers, a "Treaty of Peace and Friendship " from that approved as an international treaty between two sovereign nations in 1866 by the U.S. Congress and in 1869 by President Ulysses S. Grant was finally inkraftgesetzt.

1869, the railway line had been completed across the continent. They also introduced through the territory of the Western Shoshone. The completion of the railway line came to the Western Shoshone to the end of their lives in freedom equal. 1877, they were attributed to the Duck Valley Reservation; but it never attracted all Western Shoshone there. Some attracted instead to the Paiute in reserves in western Nevada. However, most remained in their traditional hunting grounds. By the time they gave, especially under massive adjustment forced by the whites (hunting bans, prohibition to speak their own language, etc. ), their ways of life largely and increasingly worked on ranches or in mines.

Contemporary life

Today, the Western Shoshone are greatly affected by the health consequences of nuclear arms and nuclear Endlagerungspläne the U.S. government. In their field found hundreds of surface and underground nuclear tests instead (Nevada Test Site, Nye County, southern Nevada). Add to them the sacred Yucca Mountains in the area of the Nevada Test Site is planned for the future, the central nuclear storage in the USA. Against these plans, the Western Shoshone filed in March 2005, before the " Federal Court " in Las Vegas action. They refer to the "Treaty of Ruby Valley."

To date forms, as never terminated, the " Treaty of Ruby Valley " of 1863 a source of contention in the Western Shoshone with the United States. For the Shoshone, it is the basis of their never extinct sovereignty claims on their vast tribal area, the cross down from southern Idaho through Nevada to Death Valley, California, is sufficient. The U.S., however, consider the agreement today, in side - normative interpretation of the colonization of the area concerned by the whites ( "gradual encroachment " ), as de facto " nil".

Against this view, the tribal government of the Western Shoshone, the " Western Shoshone National Council," and many traditional Western Shoshone continued for decades to fight back. With the enactment of so-called " Western Shoshone Claims Distribution Act" on 7 July 2004, the Democratic U.S. Senator from Nevada, Harry Reid, and Republican Rep.. James Gibbons had introduced in the U.S. Congress who received approx. 8,000 registered Western Shoshone finally - after a tribal internal referendum - for the effective loss of 11,000,000 ha of their land compensation from ( including interest ) paid by the federal government 145 million U.S. $ in cash ( approximately $ 30,000 per tribesmen ). In order for the land rights of the Western Shoshone claim has become formally invalid.

The land rights struggle of the Western Shoshone took place against the background of the interests of the military ( nuclear testing and nuclear waste repository in the Yucca Mountains ), the vast pastures and livestock and the economic interests of the international gold companies instead; Nevada has with the richest gold deposits in the world. He eventually became the 1990 finished end by the payment of an indemnity to the Western Shoshone by the U.S. government for the adoption of a majority of the Shoshone - against the bitter opposition of "traditional" Shoshone as the siblings Mary and Carrie Dann ( Crescent Valley, Nev. ) -. had spoken.

Internationally found the land rights struggle attention, when in 1993 the two Shoshone Rancherinnen Mary and Carrie then the " Alternative Nobel Prize " ( " Right Livelihood Award" ) were awarded in Stockholm - in recognition of her many years of struggle for the securitized land and fundamental rights of the Western Shoshone. Calls on the part of the " Organization of American States' ( OAS) to the address of Washington to respect these rights have been ignored by the United States.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination ( CERD) has issued for this reason on 10 March 2006 against the United States a verdict confirming the complaints of the Western Shoshone, the United States in violation of their traditional land rights. Particularly concerned about the UN Committee on reports of legislative efforts in the U.S., traditional land of the Western Shoshone was to privatize, then offer it to multinational gold and energy companies, or to use as a nuclear test site or repository. Equally concerned showed the UN Committee on the penalty imposed by the U.S. authorities against Western Shoshone ranchers grazing fees, also on Arrest Verhängungen, livestock confiscations and the limitations of the hunting and fishing rights in the Western Shoshone. A statement from the U.S. to the UN verdict is not yet (March 14, 2006) failed to materialize.