A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed this year by the Western Shoshone National Council, saying the U.S. District Court in Las Vegas lacks jurisdiction to decide if an 1863 treaty prohibits the Department of Energy from proceeding with plans to build a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.

"Barring some other waiver, the United States' alleged treaty violations may not be redressed by a civil suit in this court," U.S. District Judge Philip Pro wrote in his Nov. 1 order granting a motion by lawyers for the Energy and Interior departments to dismiss the case.

A statement Wednesday by Robert Hager, attorney for the Western Shoshone National Council and four members of the tribe, says he will ask the court to reconsider its decision.

"If the court does not reverse that decision, an appeal will follow" with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, said Hager, a Reno attorney.

When the Western Shoshones were asked to enter into the Ruby Valley Treaty of 1863, "no one said that the U.S. government would thereafter make up laws which would be designed to break the promises of the United States," Hager said in statement. "It is shameful that the government has done just that in order to bring nuclear waste from around the world to dump on sacred Western Shoshone land."

Hager castigated the government for violating Western Shoshone land rights as well as the tribe's human rights. He cited a recent United Nations inquiry and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States' siding with the Western Shoshone in 2002.

Yucca Mountain is a volcanic-rock ridge 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas where the government plans to spend about $58 billion to entomb 77,000 tons of radioactive defense waste and spent fuel from commercial power reactors. The spent fuel is stored at reactor sites in 39 states.

To the Western Shoshones, the mountain lives as a giant snake slithering westward for nearly 20 miles across southern Nye County. The ridge and nearby Forty Mile Wash are considered sacred areas of their native land that spans 93,750 square miles across parts of Nevada, California, Utah and Idaho.

The lawsuit, with a motion to stop the project, named Energy Department Samuel Bodman and Interior Secretary Gale Norton as defendants.

Plaintiffs from the Western Shoshone Timbisha and Te-Moak bands -- John Wells, Joe Kennedy, Pauline Esteves and Kevin Gillette -- and the national council claimed the treaty allows only five uses for the land: settlements, mines, ranches, roads and a railroad.

Wells, southern representative for the Western Shoshone National Council, reacted to the ruling late Wednesday, saying, "It's not surprising to me that whenever we get into the courts the findings are always so hypocritical."

Wells vowed to continue to fight the issues through the federal court system.

"We have a treaty with the United States of America. We have endeavored always to abide by the treaty and we have asked why does the United States not abide by the treaty," he said. "The United States does not treat other countries that it has treaties with the way it treats Indian nations."

In May, Pro denied the tribe's plea to block the Yucca Mountain Project from proceeding. He ruled that the Western Shoshone National Council couldn't show that the tribe had "immediate and irreparable" harm, since the nuclear waste dump has not yet opened and a rail line to haul nuclear waste to the mountain has not yet been constructed.