Copyright © 1999 NLThomas
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The Western Shoshone National Council denounces the sub-critical nuclear weapons related test conducted by the U.S. on Thursday, September 30, 1999.

"The sub-critical nuclear weapons related test is part of the ongoing human rights crisis adversely affecting the Western Shoshone Nation." stated National Council Representative John Wells. "The presence of ongoing nuclear weapons research and design laboratories together with the associated testing of nuclear materials are deliberate acts of trespass which have resulted in the death of untold numbers of Western Shoshone and American citizens."

The Western Shoshone Nation has an established formal legal relationship with the U.S. manifest through the Treaty of Ruby Valley, 1863. The Western Shoshone Nation and the US were well aware of their status as sovereign nations with all of the legal implications of entering into a contractual relationship. Those facts remain true today and are the basis for the National Council efforts to protect their territorial integrity by intervention in the case, U.S. v. Nye County currently before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The DOE always assures the public of the need for and safety of these nuclear weapons related tests to protect American freedoms. However, the National Council realizes that alterations of the environment are producing serious negative consequences for people today and far into the future.

The National Council believes that American freedom and democracy are at risk by the continued acts of destruction carried out by the DOE. "The U.S. is defending us to death...we must contend with the genetic dangers, threatening not only the Western Shoshone people, but the entire human species," commented Ian Zabarte, Assistant to the Chief. "The DOE is violating the solemn obligations pledged by the U.S. in the Treaty of Ruby Valley by conducting this test...it is the U.S. Constitution and the rights of freedom loving people everywhere which are trampled by the very persons sworn to uphold the those laws."

The National Council has the responsibility and duty to protect the citizens of the Western Shoshone Nation. In discharging this responsibility, the National Council passed Resolution 01-WSNC-95 creating a Nuclear-Free Zone of Western Shoshone Territory. This regulation, intent upon protecting the Western Shoshone people, is based on the National Council focusing on the root cause of the present impairment of rights, physical injury, death, and adverse health effects affecting the Western Shoshone people - illegal U.S. nuclear weapons testing!

The DOE created a process called "cultural triage" in clearing Western Shoshone artifacts and burials from nuclear weapons sites within Western Shoshone Territory. The process, "A forced choice situation in which an ethnic group is faced with the decision to rank in importance equally valued cultural resources that could be affected by a proposed development," is an American brand of "ethnic cleansing." This process of ranking and sorting according to quality amounts to genocide.

The U.S. possesses no right or authority to devalue, dissolve, destroy or impair the social or cultural identity or right of the Western Shoshone people to any part of Western Shoshone Territory. The US cannot justify the perpetration of this ongoing crime against humanity or the collective pain, suffering and loss of the Western Shoshone Nation for the US purposes of conducting nuclear weapons related testing. Nuclear testing kills real people!