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After more than four years of jumping through bureaucratic hoops Ely’s Shoshone tribe finally received title to the land they were awarded by the Bureau of Land Management announced administrator Sandra Berella.
The land originally some 3,000 acres in and around Ely was first awarded to the tribe in Early 2008 but the formal hand over was delayed time and time again as a host of federal, state and local governments wrangled over surveys, mapping and defining various rights the tribe could or could not exploit on the various parcels.
Currently the Ely Shoshone colony sits on a total of less than 100 hundred acres dispersed in three major parcels in and around Ely. The Ely Shoshone had little if any room to expand their housing a no land whatsoever to develop commercial property.
The land transfer was part of the 2007 White Pine County Land Bill passed in Congress.
“The White Pine County land bill represents the great art of compromise. I’m proud that so many Nevadans came together to both protect our precious public lands and serve the needs of our growing communities,” US Senator Harry Reid then said in a statement.
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Proceeds from the land auctions in rural, financially troubled White Pine County will be divided, with 5 percent going to the Nevada education fund, 10 percent to White Pine law enforcement, fire protection and transportation planning, and 85 percent for more wilderness protection in the county.
The White Pine County Lands Bill also declared 13 new wilderness areas in the county and expand two existing protected areas. It will shield lands next to Great Basin National Park from most uses, add property to two state parks, convey 1,500 acres for expansion of the Ely airport, and enlarge a county industrial park.
However the most controversial part of the bill deals with one of the smallest parcels of land, 3,500 acres allotted to Ely’s Shoshone.
Which was about 3,500 acres too much for many in White Pine County.
In a series of meeting with the White Pine County Commission earlier that year any release of land to Shoshone control met with fierce opposition and according to thinly veiled racism by many local non-Indians.
The bill transfers roughly 3,500 acres in four separate parcels into trust for the benefit of the Ely Shoshone Tribe. Over half of this acreage is contained in one parcel to the west of Ward Mountain. This larger area is designated exclusively for traditional tribal uses, such as ceremonial celebrations and gatherings and pine nut picking.
The conveyance also includes two parcels to the south of Ely and one approximately 10 miles north of McGill on Highway 93. These lands are available to be used by the tribe for residential and commercial purposes. Importantly, the tribe and the county have both pledged their intention to work together to overcome any outstanding concerns related to zoning, infrastructure and other issues related to the development of these lands.
Numbering at most 8,000 members, Nevada’s Shoshone are scattered in over a dozen extremely small “colonies” in almost every Nevada City. Unlike most other American Indian tribes Nevada Shoshone for the most part were never settled in reservations but rather in “colonies” in white cities.
Critics of the “colonies” have asserted that the effort was a deliberate attempt by first the federal and later the state to assimilate the native people into the non-Indian majority. Nevada’s Indian “problem” would disappear as the small scattered bands acculturated or intermarried with their non-Indian neighbors or both.
If that was the plan it had mixed success. While there are few “pure blooded” Shoshone left in Nevada the concept of pure blood is a European one. While family ties are extremely important to the Shoshone as it is to all native Americans the concept of belonging to a tribe is both innate and external. A person may be born into tribe but whether he or she remains in it is a personal choice. According to Shoshone custom there is no such thing as half blooded or quarter blooded tribal members. One is either a member or one is not.
While the colonies tended to have more intermarriage than reservations, those who stayed in the colonies tended to have a greater sense of self identification. When leaving the tribe was as easy and often involved no more than crossing the street being Indian and staying Indian was a point of pride. In addition colony Indians also had easier access to educational opportunities than those living on the reservation.