Never Mind Cliven Bundy: Here’s the Real David vs. Goliath Story Between Ranchers and Feds | Alternet

8.1.16

Never Mind Cliven Bundy: Here’s the Real David vs. Goliath Story Between Ranchers and Feds | Alternet: Bundy, a multi-millionaire farmer who hasn't paid for grazing rights on public lands for more than 20 years, also stands to garner substantial support from some very wealthy enemies of President Obama. Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group backed by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch (which spent $122 million trying to defeat Obama and other Democrats in 2012), is already instigating a campaign against the Bureau of Land Management on Bundy's behalf. It began a social media campaign, using the hashtag #BundyBattle, and is taking to the Internet to mock the time and money the bureau has wasted (some $1 million according to its poster) fighting the "little guy."

But Nevada is home to another epic battle between ranchers and the feds. As in Bundy's case, it involves ranchers Mary and Carrie Dann, whose ancestors lived on the land long before the federal government staked a claim to it.

Unlike Bundy, who claims his ancestors were homesteaders on his ranch in 1877 and never ceded it to the federal government, the Danns, two Western Shoshone sisters, were not trampling over land set aside for sensitive plants and animals. Nor were they getting rich off the land while, in essence, robbing the taxpayers of grazing fees.

The Danns have lived without running water or electricity their entire lives. Their tribe, the Western Shoshone, have lived in Nevada and parts west since time immemorial. The land was Shoshone land, and the U.S. formally agreed that was the case when it signed the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley, which explicitly stated that the Shoshone would never have to give up their land. That is, until the U.S. began