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http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/056/nation/Shoshone_debate_Cash_or_culture
+.shtml

>In Nev., some in tribe seek land's return over $116m payoff

By James Rainey
Los Angeles Times, 2/25/2000

SOUTH FORK RESERVATION, Nev. - At an isolated subdivision here, boxy
government housing perches on a scrub brush hillside, wood stoves provide
the only heat, and televisions seem to drone all day.

At least a third of the Shoshone Indians on this reservation don't have
jobs. Those who do usually struggle to make a living on a tiny sliver of
their once vast homeland.

So it's hard to say what is more surprising: that people here have $116
million in the bank, or that some of them don't want the money.

But ''money in the bank'' takes an entirely different cast when the bank is
the US Treasury and when withdrawing that money could end a tribe's claim to
land that it has longed for since white settlers began pushing aside the
native people more than 150 years ago.

After decades of impasse, a resolution may be at hand this year to
distribute the fortune, payment for 23.6 million acres taken from the
western bands of the Shoshone tribe more than a century ago. Tribal members
have persuaded at least one of Nevada's US senators, Harry Reid, a Democrat,
to introduce legislation in coming weeks that could disperse $20,000 to
every Shoshone man, woman and child.

In the eyes of the government, payment would end the tribe's claims to its
historic homeland.

Some of the Shoshones' top leaders are fighting fiercely to leave the money
untouched in a Department of Interior account. They want to stand fast with
the remaining handful of American Indian tribes that defiantly hold out for
a return of aboriginal lands.

The ferocity of the disagreement is a reminder that, even in a new century,
America and its native people still struggle with the great, unresolved
''Indian question.''

''You can't just snap your fingers and resurrect an entire culture,'' said
Michael Lieder, an attorney and authority on native claims against the
government. ''We have been fighting that issue and we will keep on fighting
it.''

Congress and President Harry S. Truman hoped for a cleaner, more expedient
resolution when, in 1946, they established the Indian Claims Commission. The
panel and a court that followed it heard more than 600 cases and paid out
nearly $1.5 billion.

But that meant the average American Indian often received a check for less
than $1,000 - money that went for decidedly mixed uses, said Lieder,
co-author of the book ''Wild Justice'' on the claims commission's work.

Some tribal members spent their money on new cars or other goods that have
long since landed on the junk heap. But others pooled their resources and
invested in economic development.

Several Apache tribes received payments totaling $32 million in the 1960s
and 1970s. Much of the money went to help establish logging, cattle, and
tourism operations, including a ski resort, on the Mescalero Reservation in
south-central New Mexico.

Today, the largest single unsettled case involves the Sioux. The tribe's
eight nations have $538 million in money held in trust by the Interior
Department. Despite the tribe's size and far-flung nature, it has remained
the most steadfast in opposing distribution of the money.

Meanwhile, the Western Shoshone feud quietly churns through the dozen remote
reservations and urban Indian ''colonies'' of northern Nevada, where most of
the tribe's 5,062 enrolled members live. A grass-roots group backing the
cash payments threatens to remove from office the tribal leaders who have
blocked distribution. Blood relatives have stopped speaking to each other
about the issue.

Opposing camps frame the debate as a struggle between traditional values and
a devotion to the land on the one hand, and pragmatism and devotion to
economic development on the other.

Nancy Stewart and her principal ally, Larry Piffero of Elko, are leading the
charge to claim the money. Despairing of elected tribal councils that mostly
continue to oppose the payments, the two have formed an independent
committee to petition the government.

Stewart, an ebullient retired schoolteacher, and Piffero, a gruff,
chain-smoking floral designer, conducted a straw poll two years ago that
seemed to show overwhelming support among tribal members for a cash
settlement. Although some have called the vote a sham, the Bureau of Indian
Affairs and Nevada's federal lawmakers contend it signaled a fundamental
shift among the Shoshones. The result: 1,230 for the payment and 53 against.

Fueled by the vote, Stewart's committee has proposed legislation that would
distribute the vast bulk of the money to the 5,000 people with at least
one-quarter Western Shoshone blood. But even Stewart's allies acknowledge
that the settlement is a paltry sum, considering the land lost.

In a casino coffee shop in nearby Elko, Elwood Mose shakes his head when
asked about tribal members who want to cash in.

''Most of that money is going to end up in the pit over here,'' Mose says,
jerking a thumb over his shoulder toward a row of blackjack tables. ''Or
it's going to be spent down the street here, to buy two-thirds of a pickup
truck. That's all it's going to get you.''

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