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Our
icons reflect our passion for remembering events as we want
By
Caitlin DeSilvey
for Headwaters News
Several months ago the Nevada Legislature authorized the production
of a commemorative license plate for the Nevada Test Site.
When Nevada's governor and the Department of Motor Vehicles director
recently pulled their support for the chosen design — a bulging
mushroom cloud flanked by the atomic energy symbol and the formula
for Einstein's theory of relativity — the members of the Nevada
Test Site Historical Foundation were indignant. Bruce Church, vice
president for the foundation, called it an insult.
"We believe that the efforts of the foundation to preserve
a significant portion of Nevada's history is apolitical and one
would think that it would be supported by all," he said. (Associated
Press, 13 June, 2002).
Is it really possible for history to be "apolitical"?
The way we tell stories about our past has everything to do with
our hopes and fears about the future, and no where is this more
evident than in the 21st-century American West.
History is not a neutral body of objective knowledge about what
happened in the old days. It is actively produced and reinterpreted
in the present. And sometimes this becomes evident not in a seminar
room but in a scuffle over a popular representation on, say, a license
plate.
When the foundation released the design in April, secretary Linda
Smith said members chose the image because they wanted to honor
the role the test site played in winning the Cold War.
"The test site was such an integral part of the history of
the state that I hope people would view it as just that, a statement
of what once was," she said (Reno Gazette-Journal, 23 April,
2002).
In the end, the officials responsible for approving the plate were
unable to view it as a harmless historic symbol of "what once
was." DMV director Ginny Lewis cited several reasons for her
rejection of the design.
"In light of the intense efforts Nevada is making to prevent
our state from becoming a nuclear waste dump (at Yucca Mountain),
the present threat of nuclear war between India and Pakistan and
the fear of new terrorist attacks since Sept. 11, any reference
on a license plate to weapons of mass destruction is inappropriate
and would likely offend our citizens," she wrote. (Associated
Press, 13 June, 2002).
Lewis also expressed concern that the plate design was insensitive
to "downwinders" who claim prolonged exposure to test
site fallout severely affected their health. A recent National Cancer
Institute and Center for Disease Control study estimated that as
many as 11,000 people contracted fatal cancers as a result of the
testing activity (Las Vegas Review-Journal, March 1, 2002).
Troy Wade, former test site manager and foundation director, protested
the decision to remove the test site's "undeniable icon"
from the plates.
"No amount of revisionist history will change the fact the
Cold War was fought and won on Nevada soil," said Wade. "Nothing
can change the fact that this state, its citizens, toiled tirelessly
for this nation's security. Yet politics has found its way into
doing just that." (Las Vegas Review-Journal, 7 June, 2002).
In this case, apparently, history and politics cannot be teased
apart. It takes a blow-up over a license plate design to expose
the ambivalence that characterizes our region's feelings towards
our complex and often unflattering past — and our feelings
about how to relate that past to our plans for the future.
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Western
Shoshone say land settlement
is attempt to revise history
By
Greg Lakes, editor
Headwaters News
June 26, 2002
Some leaders of Nevada's Western Shoshone say their
tribe has been fighting attempts to rewrite history for 139 years,
since the the Treaty of Ruby Valley. More recently, the controversy
has pitted tribal members against each other, Indian ranchers against
the BLM and some Shoshone factions against others.
The treaty either gave the U.S. 23.6 million acres of Shoshone land,
according to federal officials, or it ceded only access rights,
according to tribal leaders.
In an attempt to settle the Shoshone claims and other festering
aspects of the "Indian question," President Truman in
1946 created the Indian Claims Commission, which eventually settled
more than 600 claims for an aggregate $1.5 billion.
The commission ruled in 1979 that the Western Shoshone were due
$26 million in reparations. But tribal leaders refused the money,
saying the law that created the commission made it clear the payment
would be in exchange
for any claim to the land.
The debate simmered for two decades more, with traditional Shoshone
arguing they wanted their land back, not money that would be
frittered away in a short while, and others on remote reservation
lands and in urban colonies demanding to accept the funds.
Some tribal members continued to exercise rights they claimed were
theirs, grazing cattle on land the BLM recognized as federal and
for which officials demanded grazing leases and fees.
In 1985, tribal members and sisters Mary and Carrie Dann lost
their case over cattle seized by BLM officials when the U.S.
Supreme Court. The decision said the Interior Department had settled
the claims by accepting the commission's offer on the tribe's behalf
and placing it in trust.
Since 1984, when Shoshone ranchers quit paying fees to graze their
livestock on disputed treaty lands, federal officials have levied
$2.5 million in fines against them.
In late May, Interior officials and contracted cowboys seized
162 head of cattle from two Indian owners, including Raymond
Yowell, traditional chief and spokesperson for the no-payment faction.
Just to infuse the issue with a little more irony, the disputed
lands include the site of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste
storage site, a project opposed
by most Shoshone.
Last spring, Nevada Sen. Henry Reid said a majority of Shoshone
clearly wanted to accept the settlement, and the money that had
grown to some $138 million while in trust.
Tribal sentiment first appeared adamantly
opposed to accepting the money, an average of about $20,000
for every man, woman and child enrolled.
Criticism increased until Reid vowed to step out of the fray. Then,
tribal leaders backed the proposal, although critics threatened
to immediately depose them.
On June 4, in a tribal vote still
under protest, some 90 percent of members voted to take the
money.
It'll be interesting to see how that ends up on a license plate.
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