[pjnews] Christmas Nightmare for Western Shoshone

[parallax]

For additional information please contact the Western Shoshone Defense
Project at 775-468-0230.


http://www.insightmag.com/news/342493.html

The Nightmare Before Christmas
Posted Dec. 23, 2002
By Martin Edwin Andersen 

For two elderly American Indian sisters who have fought the federal government 
for 30 years for the right to graze their livestock on traditional Indian 
lands, a new notice that takes effect Christmas Day is both Dickensian and 
draconian. 

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is threatening to impound more of their 
animals and, in so doing, ruin their livelihood. Scrooge and the Ghost of 
Christmas Yet to Come apparently have morphed into bureaucrats in cowboy boots. 
Despite the outcry from both Indian-rights activists and international human-
rights organizations, the feds seem bent on yet another inflammatory and 
unnecessary clash between the BLM and Nevada's Western Shoshone tribe.

On Dec. 17, two government agents served Carrie Dann, 70, and her sister Mary, 
80, with a notice of unauthorized use of federal lands and ordered them to 
remove their livestock -- some 250 cattle and 1,000 horses -- from the 
premises. Already in September, 40 heavily armed federal agents backed by a 
helicopter seized 227 of the Danns' cattle and sold them at public auction.

The government claims that the Danns' livestock are overgrazing the range, 
located about 60 miles southeast of Elko, Nev., damaging land also used by five 
ranchers with valid use permits. The BLM also alleges that the Danns owe 
grazing fees of almost $3 million -- representing three decades of accumulated 
arrears. However, the Danns say they have a right to pasture their animals on 
the federal land under the terms of the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley.

It's one heck of a Christmas present from the U.S. government for a couple of 
70-year-old women and for the Western Shoshone, said Steve Tullberg, 
Washington director of the Indian Law Resource Center, one of the groups 
representing the Danns.

A month after the September raid, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights 
(IACHR) of the Organization of American States (OAS) weighed in on the long-
simmering dispute. For the first time in a case involving Indian rights in the 
United States, the IACHR found that the treatment of the Danns violated 
international human-rights laws. 

In its ruling, the IACHR agreed with the Danns that the United States used 
illegitimate means to gain control of the American Indians' ancestral lands. In 
taking control of the disputed territory, the IACHR said, the federal 
government violated the equal-protection, fair-trial and right-to-private-
property clauses of the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man. 

The IACHR demanded that the U.S. government return the Danns' confiscated 
cattle and halt further actions against the sisters pending review of the case. 
However, as the Danns' cattle were sold at auction, a BLM spokesman said 
flatly: The OAS has no jurisdiction here. 

The Western Shoshone have refused to pay fees for grazing their animals on land 
they consider part of their birthright. Some 26 million acres in Nevada alone 
are under dispute, rangeland the Indians say they never legally turned over to 
the federal government. 

At a time when all Americans face the bitter prospect of a protracted war on 
terrorism, the federal government needlessly is presenting an ugly face both at 
home and abroad by spurning the Western Shoshones' efforts to engage it in good-
faith talks on land issues. The Western Shoshone communities, noted 
spokesperson Fermina Stevens, have worked diligently to identify areas and 
make proposals to the U.S. [government]. However, to date, we have received no 
commitment or acknowledgement of our land or treaty rights from the United 
States.

They [the U.S. government] have been asked to provide documents regarding the 
bill of sale or cession of land -- apparently they have no such documents. The 
U.S. is being unfair and unjust with regard to addressing the issue of Western 
Shoshone land in order that we can provide for ourselves, culturally and 
economically.

Holiday wishes of peace on earth and good will to men should extend to the 
Western Shoshone, too. Anti-American propagandists abroad shouldn't be given 
their best material by thoughtless and ungenerous acts taken by our government 
against its own people.

[pjnews] 2/2 MLK Christmas Sermon on Peace

[parallax]

A Christmas Sermon on Peace
Martin Luther King
December 1967

...continued...


There are three words for “love” in the Greek New Testament; one is the
word “eros.”  Eros is a sort of esthetic, romantic love.  Plato used to
talk about it a great deal in his dialogues, the yearning of the soul for
the realm of the divine.  And there is and can always be something
beautiful about eros, even in its expressions of romance.  Some of the most
beautiful love in all the world has been expressed this way.

Then the Greek language talks about “philia,” which is another word for
love, and philia is a kind of intimate love between personal friends.  This
is the kind of love you have for those people that you get along with well,
and those whom you like on this level you love because you are loved. 
Then the Greek language has another word for love, and that is the word
“agape.”  Agape is understanding, creative, redemptive good will toward all
men.  Agape is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return.

Theologians would say that it is the love of God operating in the human
heart.  When you rise to love on this level, you love all men not because
you like them, not because their ways appeal to you, but you love them
because God loves them.  This is what Jesus meant when he said, “Love you
enemies.”  And I’m happy that he didn’t say, “Like you enemies,” because
there are some people that I find it pretty difficult to like.  Liking is
an affectionate emotion, and I can’t like anybody who would bomb my home.
I can’t like anybody who would exploit me.  I can’t like anybody who would
trample over me with injustices.  I can’t like them.  I can’t like anybody
who threatens to kill me day in and day out.  But Jesus reminds us that
love is greater than liking.  Love is understanding, creative, redemptive
good will toward all men.  And I think this is where we are, as a people,
in our struggle for racial justice.  We can’t ever give up.  We must work
passionately and unrelentingly for first-class citizenship.  We must never
let up in our determination to remove every vertige of segregation and
discrimination from our nation, but we shall not in the process relinquish
our privilege to love.

I’ve seen too much hate to want to hate, myself, and I’ve seen hate on the
faces of too many sheriffs, too many white citizens’ councilors, and too
many Klansmen of the South to want to hate, myself; and every time I see
it, I say to myself, hate it too great a burden to bear.  Somehow we must
be able to stand up before our most bitter opponents and say: “We shall
match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure
suffering.  We will meet your physical force with soul force.  Do to us
what you will and we will still love you.  We cannot in all good conscience
obey your unjust laws and abide by the unjust system, because
non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation
with good, and so throw us in jail and we will still love you.  Bomb our
homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still
love you.  Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities
at the midnight hour and drag us out on some wayside road and leave us
half-dead as you beat us, and we will still love you.  Send your propaganda
agents around the country, and make it appear that we are not fit,
culturally and otherwise, for integration, and we’ll still love you.  But
be assured that we’ll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day
we will win our freedom.  We will not only win freedom for ourselves; we
will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the
process, and our victory will be a double victory.”

If there is to be peace on earth and good will toward men, we must finally
believe in the ultimate morality of the universe, and believe that all
reality hinges on moral foundations.  Something must remind us of this as
we once again stand in the Christmas season and think of the Easter season
simultaneously, for the two somehow go together.  Christ came to show us
the way.  Men love darkness rather than the light, and they crucified him,
and there on Good Friday on the cross it was still dark, but then Easter
came, and Easter is an eternal reminder of the fact that the truth-crushed
earth will rise again.  Easter justifies Carlyle in saying, “No lie can
live forever.”  And so this is our faith, as we continue to hope for peace
on earth and good will toward men: let us know that in the process we have
cosmic companionship.

In 1963, on a sweltering August afternoon, we stood in Washington, D.C.,
and talked to the nation about many things. Toward the end of that
afternoon, I tried to talk to the nation about a dream that I had had, and
I must confess to you today that not long after talking about that dream I
started seeing it turn into a nightmare. I remember the first time I saw
that dream turn into a nightmare, just a few weeks after I had talked about
it. It