Gods and Monsters: Bulldozer Rips Into Ancient Shoshone Sacred Site
This article was first published on Indian Country Today Media Network in July 2016. A bulldozer plows up an ancient trail, lined with medicinal plants, in a sacred site the Western Shoshone and others have used for more than 10,000 years. A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has denied the Te-Moak Band of Western Shoshone’s request for an emergency injunction to stop the destruction of an ancient trail in the Tosawihi Quarries, a 10,000-year-old sacred site. Though a legal appeal and an over-arching lawsuit concerning the entire project are still pending, an international gold-mining consortium’s bulldozer is already at work constructing a power line along the doctoring trail, said the Band’s attorney, Rollie Wilson, of the law firm Fredericks Peebles & Morgan. The construction equipment was fired up within days of the court’s June 8 order, according to Wilson. The panel’s one-page decision did not detail the court’s reasoning in this matter. D