Protesters: Test site violates land

By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal

      Western Shoshones supported by hundreds of protesters erected a tepee Monday beyond the entrance to the Nevada Test Site and claimed to occupy land close to where the government conducted 928 nuclear weapons tests between 1951 and 1992.
      Test site spokesman Derek Scammell said 10 protesters were arrested Monday. That brought to 114 the number of citations issued for trespassing since Friday during a series of rallies targeting the test site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. All those cited were released shortly afterward.
      By late Monday, about 25 protesters remained at the demonstration site on a stretch of Department of Energy land a quarter of a mile north of the test site's Mercury entrance off U.S. Highway 95. The location is federal land bordered by a Nevada Department of Transportation fence.
      Scammell said a group of Western Shoshones and their spiritual leader, Corbin Harney, erected the tepee after entering through a section of fence that had been cut.
      Two groups, each with about 100 protesters, congregated at dawn at the Mercury entrance and the tepee's location.
      Scammell said the 10 who were arrested had spread out on federal land from the core demonstration site. The others were allowed to remain.
      "We're just going to leave them alone," Scammell said. "They're not doing any harm to anybody. They'll eventually just pack up and leave, I guess."
      A Department of Energy security contractor, Wackenhut Services Inc., was helped in the arrests by the Nye County Sheriff's Office and the Nevada Highway Patrol.
      In statements and in a low-power radio broadcast from Peace Camp, an area on public land south of the Mercury entrance, protesters from the Las Vegas-based Shundahai Network bemoaned the Department of Energy for contaminating American Indian lands.
      "They're broadcasting the fact that DOE is on Shoshone property and desecrating the Earth. Everything is peaceful," Scammell said.
      The protesters said they were inspired by five Colorado River tribes that set up camp Feb. 13 in Ward Valley, Calif., 117 miles south of Las Vegas, to protest Interior Department plans for releasing the land to California for a low-level radioactive waste dump.
      That occupation is nearing the two-month mark, and the tribes have said they will not budge until Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt or President Clinton visits the Ward Valley site.
      Babbitt on Monday was visiting Mount Charleston. Asked what he intends to do about the Ward Valley occupation, he said , "We'll just keep working on it."
      Harney, who is Shundahai Network's executive director, said in a statement at the test site that the Shoshones "were put here by the creator as a native people to take care of this land and all the life on it.
      "Shoshone people have taken care of this land for thousands of years. The government has stolen this land from us and now it is very contaminated. For 50 years they have kept us out with fences and guards," Harney said.
      Scammell said 91 protesters were arrested on Sunday. Many of those were from a religious-based contingent of peace activists known as the Nevada Desert Experience. Thirteen were arrested Friday. On Monday, they rejoined a throng of up to 300 protesters at Peace Camp.