89.) This is a newspaper article from March 5th, 2000, about the Shoshone's facing cash settlement for land claims with "extinguishment clause". This newspaper article raises points related to previous Article 88., concerning monetary land claim settlements happening now with the Haudenosaunee in New York State. (7 min. read)

As expressed in article 88.,- "it's an old story".

Here is the newspaper article in its entirety. Title of article: " Nevada tribe has to choose between cash and heritage" By James Rainey, Los Angeles Times. Printed in the Buffalo News/Sunday, March 5th, 2000.

"SOUTH FORK RESERVATION. Nev.- At an isolated subdivision here, boxy government housing perches on a scrub bush hillside, wood stoves provide the only heat, and television screens seem to drone all day - a sad refrain for people who have lost their place.

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 U.S. Treasury and when withdrawal could end a tribe's claim to land that it has longed for since white settlers began to push the native people aside 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 U.S. senators, Harry Reid, to introduce legislation in coming weeks that could dispersed $20,000 to every Shoshone man, woman and child.

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

Some of the Shoshone 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, like the Seneca's in Western New York, that defiantly hold out for a return of aboriginal lands.

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

"You can't just snap your fingers and resurrect an entire culture," said Michael Lieder, and attorney and authority on native land 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 of the problem when, in 1946, they established the Indian Claims Commission. The panel and a court that followed heard more than 600 cases and paid out $1.5 billion.

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 the 1970s. Much of it went to help establish logging, beef cattle and tourism operations, including a ski resort, on the Mescalero reservation in south-central New Mexico.

Today, the largest single unsettled case involved the Sioux. The tribes eight nations have $538 million in claims money held in trust by the Interior Department.

Activist today consider attempts to put a dollar value on the Sioux's hallowed Black Hills nothing less than sacrilegious. In an interview, one tribal leader declined even to say how much the trust fund has become.

"Some people perceive that if you even talk about the money, you are thinking about trying to take it," said Lewis DuBray, vice chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux. "It's very touchy."

With that history as a backdrop, the Western Shoshone feud quietly churns through the dozen remote reservations and urban Indian "colonies" of northern Nevada, where most of the tribes 5,062 enrolled members live. A grass-roots group backing the cash payments threatened to remove from office the tribal leaders who have block 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. 

Most Shoshone say they are not a demonstrative people. But when Nancy Stewart told friends that a newspaper reporter was coming to her home in the western Nevada farm town of Fallon, nearly 30 tribal members quickly assembled to have their say.

Marie Ellison, 85, has heard about the "Indian money" most of her adult life. She grew up in a time before indoor plumbing and giggle like a little girl at the thought of $20,000 dollars: "Oh, goodness, I would probably go in a buying spree.... I would buy me a good bed and a mattress."

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 duo have formed an independent committee to petition the government.

Stuart, an ebullient retired school teacher, 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 U.S. lawmakers contend it signaled a fundamental shift among the Shoshones. The result: 1,234 for the payment and 53 against.

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

Two hundred fifty miles east of Fallon on Interstate 80, Elwood Mose sits in a casino coffee shop in Elko and shakes his head when asked about the tribal members who want to cash in. 

"Most of that money is going to end up in the pit over here," Mose said, 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." 

Mose, 48, is chairman of the largest single Western Shoshone political entity - the Te-Moak Bands Council, which represents 2,514 tribal members im Elko, Battle Mountain and Wells on the South Fork Reservation. Mose said only a settlement that includes more land will secure the future of far-flung bands spread over a dozen colonies and reservations in northern Nevada. While much of the land is bleak desert or scrub, tribal members say they could develop it for grazing, hunting or other purposes. 

"We want something that won't just be frittered away," said Mose. "At the base, what we are looking at is values. Are you trying to live by the traditional values or not?" 

Mose plans to release a counterproposal sometime this year that would include land acquisitions, a tribal trust fund for housing, economic development and other projects and some cash to individual tribal members. 

Tribal members such as Maria Stanton Woods, of the South Fork Reservation, are even more militant about rejecting a payoff. "There is no price you can put on the land. It is a part of us," said Woods, 35, whose great-great-grandfather was one of the chiefs who signed the Treaty of Ruby Valley in 1863, making peace with the U.S. government.

Mose say that Shoshones asking for the money to be paid out are bypassing tribal governments recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. 

Ever since the Ruby Valley Treaty, the Indians have been asked to embrace democratic government, Mose notes. He is angry that the 1998 straw vote --- conducted outside those formal tribal structures --- is being recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs officials. 

Mose declines to call another vote to clarify his people's desires. That might pressure him into supporting a position he doesn't believe in. 

"I share the same fears that Red Cloud did negotiating for the Sioux: I don't want to be boxed in," Mose said, referring to an Oglala Sioux chief who fought fiercely to get concessions from the federal government in the 1860s."

( end of newspaper article)

"it's the SAME old story".