Chief Raymond Yowell of the Western Shoshone Nation, left, confers with tribal attorney Robert Hager, at the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Las Vegas on Friday. The tribe filed a lawsuit against the federal government saying a 19th century treaty with the feds prohibits building a nuclear dump on the Yucca Mountain site. Joe Cavaretta/Associated Press
LAS VEGAS - An American Indian tribe filed a federal lawsuit Friday, hoping to stop the government from building a national nuclear waste dump in Nevada.
Members of the Western Shoshone National Council cited reverence for the land and a 19th century treaty with the federal government that they said gives the tribe the right to stop the nuclear repository from being built on ancestral land at Yucca Mountain.
"Mother Earth is sacred to the Shoshone and is not to be hurt by us," Western Shoshone Chief Raymond Yowell said outside U.S. District Court in Las Vegas, where the lawsuit and an injunction were filed. "That is not negotiable."
The lawsuit against the U.S. Energy and Interior departments cites the Ruby Valley Treaty of 1863, which recognized vast stretches of territory in present-day Nevada, California, Utah and Idaho as tribal land.
"There are only five uses allowed under the treaty," said Robert Hager, the tribe's Reno-based lawyer. "A nuclear dump is not one of them."
Hager said provisions of the treaty allow mining, ranching and agriculture, railroads, roads and communication routes, and settlements.
"Any use inconsistent with that, such as a nuclear waste repository, can only occur with the consent of the Western Shoshone Nation," he said.
A spokesman for the federal Energy Department declined comment. The department plans to entomb 77,000 tons of highly radioactive commercial, industrial and military waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. A planned 2010 opening has been delayed by budget, legal and technical difficulties.
Congress and the Bush administration selected the site in 2002, after 20 years of study and hundreds of meetings with parties, including American Indian representatives.
A plaintiff in the lawsuit, Joe Kennedy, chairman of the Timbisha Shoshone tribe based in Death Valley, Calif., called the legal move a last resort.
"This filing is about nuclear waste, right here, right now," Kennedy said. "Not just the Western Shoshone, but for people of Las Vegas, the state of Nevada and people around the world. The decisions they make now are going to affect future generations across this land.
"We hope Yucca Mountain doesn't happen," Kennedy said.
Estimates of the number of Western Shoshone members vary. Yowell, 75, the appointed tribal chief since 1987, estimated 10,000 but said the federal government puts the number at about 6,000. Most still live in the 93,750-square mile area stretching from the Snake River Valley in Idaho to Salt Lake Valley in Utah, across most of eastern and central Nevada, and into Death Valley and the Mojave Desert in California.
Nevada also is fighting the repository. It won a partial victory in a case last July that said the Energy Department's plan did not go far enough to protect people from potential radiation. A separate ruling on federal funding for state oversight of the project is pending.
Hager said no state or federal money was being used to fund the Western Shoshone lawsuit, which avoids the disputed matter of land ownership. The Western Shoshone have never relinquished ownership, but the federal government maintains the claim is no longer practical.
An Indian Claims Commission established in 1946 decided the tribe lost the land through "gradual encroachment" during settlement of the West.
Tribal members took the case to the Supreme Court, where they lost in 1985.
President Bush and Congress last year approved paying the tribe more than $145 million in compensation and accrued interest. The amount includes the $27 million the claims commission awarded the Western Shoshone in 1979 based on the 1872 value of 24 million acres.
