Carrie Dann

Photo by Laura Rauch/Associated Press

This #matriarchmonday we honor elder Carrie Dann (Western Shosone Nation) for her amazing life filled with pride for her ancestral teachings, spirituality, love of her home land, leadership, courage, and radical activism. Carrie left this world on January 1, 2021 in her late 80's after a life as a rancher and protector. Born in what is known as Crescent Valley in Nevada in 1932, Carrie grew up on an 800-acre ranch with her sister Mary and brother Cliff.

For over three decades, Carrie and her sister Mary were at the forefront of a legal struggle over Western Shoshone territory, which extends through much of Nevada and parts of California, Idaho, and Utah. Carrie and Mary opposed the permit system imposed by the government for grazing cattle on large parts of their traditional lands. The Dann sisters brought a case to federal court, challenging that the permit system violates Western Shoshone treaty-protected land rights. Simultaneously, the US permitted non-Indigenous individuals and mining and energy companies to use and occupy Western Shoshone lands exposing it to environmental damage caused by nuclear waste storage, open pit cyanide heap leach gold mining, and other industrial activities. The case made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which sided with the federal government’s argument that their land rights were "extinguished" under U.S. law. However, the Dann sisters did not give up, even after hundreds of their livestock were seized in raids. In March of 2006, the United Nations issued a decision urging the United States to "freeze", "desist from", and "stop" actions taken against the Western Shoshone peoples.

Along with her legal battle, Carrie Dann co-founded the Western Shoshone Defense Project in 1991 and spent decades fighting mining projects and nuclear waste disposal.

Carrie Dann is an elder of momentous proportions and her contributions to our fight for our lands and right to live as Indigenous people is so special.

Words from Carrie :
I have voiced again and again, Western Shoshone Land – Our Mother Earth – is not for sale!!!

Photo by Ilka Hartmann

Photo via Special Collections & University Archives at UNR