Who speaks for Newe Sogobia?

Abstract

Approximately two-thirds of Nevada is Western Shoshone homelands called Newe Sogobia. In contrast, around 85% of Nevada has been designated as federal lands managed by United States federal agencies like the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, Department of Defense, and the Department of Energy. Consequently, access to our homelands and our traditional foods has been intentionally commodified for settler consumption. Not only has this contributed to Shoshone health disparities but it has also severed spiritual connections to the land where ceremonies are disrupted by competing economy-based activities. Shoshone people are forced to compete as if we are part of the general public rather than part of the land itself.

Furthermore, Shoshone people have been erased and rendered invisible in conversations around health impacts resulting from the Nevada Test Site where nuclear devices were tested beginning in the 1950s. Central Nevada has been termed a wasteland in public discourse as a way to justify the storage of nuclear waste, resource extraction, and public recreation as my homelands are termed “public lands”. Cultural heritage authority has been given to the State Historic Preservation Office allowing settlers to circumvent speaking to living communities; instead, power of authority is granted to settler [academics] to speak over and for Great Basin peoples. In this paper, I will document the impacts of how government policies and settler politics have exacerbated dispossession from the land for Shoshone people, as well as strategies for renewal and reconnection that are grounded in Shoshone ontologies.