Down and Dirty: Destruction Accelerates at Ancient Native Site
This article appeared in Indian Country Today Media Network in 2016. For more on topics like this, see my book, American Apartheid: The Native American Struggle.... M embers of the Battle Mountain Band of Te-Moak Western Shoshone visited the Tosawihi Quarries on June 22 to view and pray over the remains of a doctoring trail that leads into and through the sacred site. The trail, which has been declared eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, is a critical feature of a northern Nevada cultural landscape that the Western Shoshone and other tribes have used for more than 10,000 years. However, construction of a mining-related power line along the doctoring trail is in the process of obliterating it. Starting about two weeks prior to the June 22 visit shown here, a road has been bulldozed over the spiritual pathway, and a long trench has been gouged across the face of a nearby hillside. Battle Mountain Band council member and former chairman Joe Holley said tha