corporate WEAK - day five

western shoshone nation vs the government

the shoshones want 'fair' resolution in court. FAIR? FAIR? c'mon that AIN'T gonna happen

'Western Shoshone said they are denied fair resolution in U.S. courts. '

Western Shoshone urge probe of human rights violations
C Indian Country Today January 27, 2006. All Rights Reserved http://www.indiancountry.com/
ELKO, Nev. - While the United States fails to respond to the United Nations inquiry into violations of human rights of Western Shoshone, supporters have surpassed an original goal of 10,000 signatures to maintain pressure on the government to answer for the harassment of Shoshone people.
''We've got a fight on our hands,'' Western Shoshone Carrie Dann told Indian Country Today, encouraging the United Nations to increase pressure on the United States to uphold the rights of indigenous peoples.
''This is supposed to be democracy?'' Dann asked and described the United States' manipulation of laws that affect American Indians.
''What is democracy? Is democracy destroying the rights of the indigenous people? We don't see any democracy where indigenous people are concerned.''
The United States missed a year-end deadline to answer questions from the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination concerning violations of Western Shoshone human rights and their right to ancestral lands.
The committee issued a list of 10 questions the government failed to answer by Dec. 31. The questions follow a request for urgent action, which, if accepted, would allow the committee to open an investigation into U.S. conduct regarding land issues and the treatment of indigenous people.
Julie Ann Fishel, land recognition program director for the Western Shoshone Defense Project, said Western Shoshone elders see pressure from the United Nations as the only solution; the petition reveals the support of the people.
''It tells the United States the Western Shoshone are not going away,'' Fishel told ICT. ''We will seek out every opportunity and forum to press this issue.''
Fishel said Western Shoshone rights are a fundamental human rights issue that affects all of civil society in the United States. Further, Western Shoshone hope pressure from the United Nations will increase awareness of indigenous rights as a mainstream issue.
Dann and Fishel were interviewed by telephone in Miami, where they are participating in the Seventh Tribal Sovereignty Symposium, ''Sovereignty and Sustainable Development of Indigenous Peoples.''
Siegfried Wiessner, professor of international law and constitutional law at the St. Thomas University School of Law in Miami, said the recognition of indigenous rights worldwide has made tremendous progress.
''There has been a remarkable resurgence of indigenous rights,'' Wiessner told ICT.
Indigenous rights of self-governance, recognition of autonomy and the execution of treaties are progressing worldwide. Indigenous peoples are transcending borders and coming together as never before to communicate, and the mass media is helping advance indigenous rights, he said.
''Indigenous people are coming together because this is the air they breathe, the land where they live.''
Western Shoshone plan to travel in a delegation to Geneva, Switzerland, in March to meet with UNCERD members and present their case and the petition.
The petition states that the U.S. government is violating the rights of the Western Shoshone to ancestral lands - rights recognized by the Treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863. The lands in question cover 60 million acres stretching across Nevada, Idaho, Utah and California.
The United States, without Western Shoshone consent, has allowed gold mining and military testing of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons on their ancestral lands. Further, Western Shoshone said they are denied fair resolution in U.S. courts. .........

US Fails to Respond to UN Request; Western Shoshone Petition for Public Support

.....The Western Shoshone have now launched a nationwide petition calling on the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, or CERD, to act immediately to address the human rights violations the Western Shoshone have long endured..............

.....“This isn’t just about Indians. It’s about everybody,” added Fishel. “It’s about land, clean water, clean air, and protection of significant areas. This is about not allowing the US government to place corporate interests before human rights and environmental concerns.”............

and a few words from ONE OF MY ALL TIME FAVORITE MUSIC MAKERS (yeah, i know she's an aquired taste but i LOVE HER) buffy sainte marie:
(and she is not shoshone she is cree)

.........She disappeared suddenly from the mainstream American airwaves during the Lyndon Johnson years. As part of a blacklist which affected Eartha Kitt, Taj Mahal and a host of other outspoken performers, her name was included on White House stationery as among those whose music "deserved to be suppressed". In Indian country and abroad, however, her fame only grew. She continued to appear at countless grassroots concerts, AIM events and other activist benefits. She made 17 albums of her music, three of her own television specials, spent five years on Sesame Street, scored movies, helped to found Canada's 'Music of Aboriginal Canada' JUNO category, raised a son, earned a Ph.D. in Fine Arts, taught Digital Music as adjunct professor at several colleges, and won an Academy Award Oscar for the song "Up Where We Belong"..........
my country tis of thy people you're dying

Now that your big eyes have finally opened,
Now that you're wondering how must they feel,
Meaning them that you've chased across America's movie screens.
Now that you're wondering how can it be real
That the ones you've called colorful, noble and proudIn your school propaganda
They starve in their splendor?
You've asked for my comment
I simply will render:
My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.
Now that the longhouses breed superstition
You force us to send our toddlers away
To your schools where they're taught to despise their traditions.
You forbid them their languages,
then further say
That American history really began
When Columbus set sail out of Europe,
then stress
That the nation of leeches that conquered this land
Are the biggest and bravest and boldest and best.
And yet where in your history books is the tale
Of the genocide basic to this country's birth,
Of the preachers who lied,
how the Bill of Rights failed,
How a nation of patriots returned to their earth?
And where will it tell of the Liberty Bell
As it rang with a thud O'er Kinzua mud,
And of brave Uncle Sam in Alaska this year?
My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.
Hear how the bargain was made for the West:
With her shivering children in zero degrees,
Blankets for your land, so the treaties attest,
Oh well, blankets for land is a bargain indeed,
And the blankets were those Uncle Sam had collected
From smallpox-diseased dying soldiers that day.
And the tribes were wiped out and the history books censored,
A hundred years of your statesmen have felt it's better this way
.And yet a few of the conquered have somehow survived,
Their blood runs the redder though genes have paled.
From the Grand Canyon's caverns to craven sad hills
The wounded, the losers, the robbed sing their tale.
From Los Angeles County to upstate New York
The white nation fattens while others grow lean;
Oh the tricked and evicted they know what I mean.
My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.
The past it just crumbled,
the future just threatens;
Our life blood shut up in your chemical tanks
.And now here you come, bill of sale in your hands
And surprise in your eyes that we're lacking in thanks
For the blessings of civilization you've brought us,
The lessons you've taught us, the ruin you've wrought us --Oh see what our trust in America's brought us.
My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.
Now that the pride of the sires receives charity,
Now that we're harmless and safe behind laws,
Now that my life's to be known as your "heritage,"
Now that even the graves have been robbed,
Now that our own chosen way is a novelty --Hands on our hearts we salute you your victory,
Choke on your blue white and scarlet hypocrisy
Pitying the blindness that you've never seen
That the eagles of war whose wings lent you glory
They were never no more than carrion crows,
Pushed the wrens from their nest, stole their eggs, changed their story;
The mockingbird sings it, it's all that he knows.
"Ah what can I do?" say a powerless few
With a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye --
Can't you see that their poverty's profiting you.
My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.
buffy, walk the old way heyo ha heya