Carrie Dan is a Western Shoshone elder who, together with her sister, has been at the forefront of the battle to save the Shoshone ancestral lands in Nevada and bordering states. Despite a treaty signed by the US government in 1868 guaranteeing the Shoshone rights to their territory, more than 90% of their lands have been taken away since then. Gold mining has destroyed some of the land and more than 950 nuclear bombs were tested on Shoshone land against the wishes of the Shoshone . In 1973, sisters Carrie and Mary Dann were fined for allowing their livestock to graze near their ranch in the Crescent Valley, Nevada; they argued that they were grazing on Shoshone land, which was a right guaranteed under the 1868 treaty. They have been fighting with the US government, the nuclear indutry and the international gold mining corporations through legal action and non-violent civil disobedience ever since for their right and the rights of the Western Shoshone to maintain their way of life on their ancestral lands. After her sister died in an accident in 2005, Carrie continues this struggle for her people. Carrie and Mary Dann received the 1993 Right Livelihood Award, also referred to as the Alternative Nobel Prize, for "exemplary courage and perseverance in asserting the rights of indigenous people to their land".

"My sister and I have been fighting in a battle we were born into as indigenous people on Turtle Island (United States). The struggle of the Western Shoshone Nation is the struggle of all indigenous peoples. It is not just about abuse of power and economics – it is about the stripping away of our spirit. It is about being forced to live in two worlds – the real world and a world of made up laws and legal constructs which attempt to render us invisible. Laws which claim to transfer power from the sacred things to the almighty dollar. When we have been beaten down, time and time again, when we have to stand by and watch our world and our people collapsing in front of us, the one thing that keeps us going is our spiritual beliefs – our knowledge of the traditional teachings. Mary and I were raised by our grandmother, Mary Hall, who lived a traditional lifestyle until the day she passed to the spirit world and our mom and dad.

What our grandmother taught us is that we, the Shoshone people, Newe in our language, were placed here on this land, Newe Sogobia, as caretakers. Caretakers of the lands, the animals, all the living things.. We were placed here with a responsibility. In traditional indigenous society, there are four things that are sacred above all. Those things are the land, the air, the water and the sun. We see the earth as our mother, that which gives us all life. The water is like the blood in our veins, the air, that which nourishes the cycle of life and the sun, that which encourages growth and replenishment. Without any one of these things there would be no life – these things are sacred above all. This is our religion – our spirituality – and defines who we are as a people. In this struggle with the mining companies and the U.S. government, we fight for our spiritual helpers, our spirituality and our culture and our right to provide for ourselves and our families in our own way. Our grandfather told us this struggle would be very hard and that at times, people would be very cruel to us and that our own people may at times be the most hurtful. He told us that we would have to remain strong and that we would have to learn to let those hurtful things roll off our back, “like water on a duck”, that is what we were told.

Our people, theWestern Shoshone are in the midst of a decades long struggle to retain our homeland, Newe Sogobia. Our lands were never ceded, “conquered”, nor abandoned. We continue to live and pray on these lands. In 1863, the United States entered into a Treaty of Peace and Friendship with the Western Shoshone, the Treaty of Ruby Valley. At the time, as I have been told, the U.S. did not realise there was anything of economic value in these lands – they simply wanted to cross the land to get to California. Our ancestors agreed to let them cross, we agreed to some ranching, small towns, a railroad, a telegraph line and mining, as we understood it in 1863. In return, the U.S. recognised our land boundaries and agreed to fairly compensate the Shoshone people for U.S. activities and for the minerals taken from the ground. Newe Sogobia stretches across about 60 million acres throughout Nevada, California, Utah and Idaho – from the Snake River in Idaho down to Death Valley, California. Despite this formal recognition of our land base, the U.S. now claims that these lands are “public” lands and is attempting to force a one time payment on the Western Shoshone through use of what is called the Indian Claims Commission (ICC). We have asked – for many years now, for the documentation of how our land title was transferred to the U.S. They have never provided us with that documentation.

As a method of intimidation to silence the Western Shoshone people who assert their original and treaty rights, the Department of Interior has been conducting military-type raids on Western Shoshone, seizing hundreds of cows and horses from the mountains and valleys of Shoshone country in the last several years. They have destroyed our economic livelihood and scared many Western Shoshone away from standing up for their rights."