Western Shoshone grandmother Mary Dann died on April 22 in a farm accident on
her family’s ranch in Newe Sogobia, the land in Crescent Valley Nevada
allocated to the Western Shoshone under the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley. Her sister
Carrie Dann issued a statement after receiving letters of condolences from around
the globe: "We must remember that Mary stood proud, strong, dignified, respectful
against all types of racial discrimination, desecration of her spiritual ways
by the United States Bureau of Land Management, and the U.S. Department of Interior
(who claimed to be her ‘trustee’). She stood up against the mining
industry, the nuclear industry, the energy industry."
The Dann sisters have become champions of the American Indian movement for treaty rights recognition. They took their case to defend their traditional lands from seizure by the U.S. government to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights after federal agents demanded they leave their land and seized 227 head of cattle. In January 2003 the commission ruled that the U.S. claims to Western Shoshone land were illegal and contrary to international human rights law.
